Speaking Mistakes: Ending Your Sentences With Power, with Ramit Sethi

In social situations, there are classic mistakes that men make, and there are classic mistakes that women make. They often will upturn their voices at the end of a sentence like this over and over and over again. And it often becomes more pronounced in formal situations like job interviews. Well, this can actually cost you dearly because an experienced interviewer will say, oh, I see, this person isn't especially skilled at interviewing, which means I could probably get them for cheaper. So even little verbal tics like this can cost you five or ten thousand dollars or more. Take a look.

Hey, Ryan, how you doing?

I'm doing well. How about yourself?

Good, good. Where are you calling in from tonight?

Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Excellent. Okay, and before I get to your question, what has been one insight you've learned this week?

I think the one insight, and it will lead into my question, is I'm used to really being very flexible in my job and learning more and more skills. So whenever new opportunities pop up, I normally raise my hand and say, yeah, I want to do that. One of the things I think my big takeaway or insight is as I do that I've acquired a lot of skills. But this exercise of looking for job titles and trying to my skills in that has led me to say, hey, maybe I need to slow down a little bit and actually look at what can I do and how does that actually move me forward? Because sitting there patterned through, hey, I can do so many different things. That's tough to kind of narrow it down. Say, hey, what is 1, 2, 3, 5 job titles that really describe what I'm capable of doing and I'm interested in doing.

Let me give you one more piece of feedback, Ryan. This is just feedback on the question that you asked. You may have already gotten this feedback in the past, and my feedback to you, and I think this could be worth a huge amount in terms of social skills as well as pure numbers. When you go to negotiate, you know that at the end of your sentences, you tend to upturn. Have you noticed that I have not?

No.

So you'll say something like, I've been fortunate enough to work in knowledge management and it has an upturn at the end. We're going to get you a recording of this. We'll send out the recording of this call next week. I want you to make a note to yourself to listen to it again. By the way, there's nothing worse than listening to your own voice on audio. Trust me, I have done this and I want to kill myself. But listen to the audio. I want you to spend a little time consciously controlling the end of your sentences, because that, that can be a very, very powerful thing, especially when you go into interviews and negotiations. The reason I'm telling you this now, you would have discovered it anyway in the interview and social skills section of Dream Job, because I'm going to have you record yourself anyway. But I'm giving you a little bit of a heads up. And it's actually interesting that you haven't noticed this yourself. Listen to the question that you asked me, and I think you'll be surprised. And I want you to practice really controlling that upturn at the end of your sentence, because it can, especially for men, it can be, you know, it can have pretty negative effects. So if you can manage to control this, it can actually change things quite dramatically for you.

Okay, fantastic.

All right, Ryan, appreciate the question.

Thank you very much.

You got it. I love when people take feedback really, really well. Love it. I also love when people, you know, obviously you guys join this course because you have a certain type of personality. You're a little bit open to changing. That's obvious. You also either maybe knew me or got to know me and trusted me. And we're all in a trusted environment here. You can't just roll up to someone and be like, hey, you're really fat. That kind of advice doesn't work. But to me, it's actually incredible to be able to expose yourself to environments where not only can you. Not only can you receive great feedback, but people want to give it. That kind of feedback, that kind of environment. It's like, think back to your favorite class in college, where it was small, everyone wanted to be there, and people could just speak honestly and they could say, you know, I like what you said, but I really disagree. And it's rare in the real world that we still get that kind of exposure. So to me, it makes me happy to be able to give that feedback and, and also to get that feedback from other people.