How to Quickly and Effectively Earn Respect from Others Through Confident & Authentic Communication

Do you lose respect faster when you can tell somebody's not respecting themselves or when somebody says something disrespectful to you?

When somebody says something disrespectful to you. If you don't respect yourself, that's a place for me to show you grace and kindness and patience. Like, yeah, I'll give you time for that. I understand, yeah, you shouldn't have said that. This is what I'm thinking. Yeah, you shouldn't have said that, but I'm gonna let it go. You know you shouldn't have said it. Versus if they say something like much uglier that was only meant to hurt. Again, it depends on context, but yeah, you can lose respect for them much faster when they choose harm over healing.

Do you think conflict can be settled at all through text messages or online messaging, or do you think with when it comes to friendships, professional relationships, romantic relationships, it's always going to be best to hop on the phone, video chat, in-person meeting.

Yeah, I mean, they can be if you and the person are mature and intelligent and give each other the benefit of the doubt and not make a, you know, mountain out of a molehill. But if you're not, or if you don't know each other that well, always much wiser to just pick up the phone, let them hear your voice. That makes a big difference. I, I, I do it— I mean, I do it all the time. Text, text with my wife, and oof, I got a response that felt very cold. Uh, you know, it— anytime you get the K text, okay, oh well, okay, she— they're ready to destroy me, you know, my life is over, I just got a K, or an MK, an MK. Like, there's all different ways that we go, oh, that doesn't sound— that doesn't sound good. It depends on the person. Like, my dad, my dad will just text okay to anything really you, you send him. I just know that's him. And I'll call him and he'll be like, oh, that's fantastic. But, you know, the text you got. So it just depends on the person. But yeah, you're never going to go wrong getting to hear their voice. And besides, a lot of times, like, hearing your voice can make somebody's day. We, we were— we are meant to hear and connect and speak as humans. It's not good for humans not to talk to other humans. I was always— there's that show, I forgot what it's called. It's like they go up, they send them to Alaska for like, say, spend 100 days alone in Alaska.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Yeah. And for— and at first they love it. They're so excited. They build their shelter. They're like, oh yes, I just 'You know, got— I just harvested this, uh, rabbit and I'm doing all this.' But by like 20 days, they're like, 'I haven't spoken to anybody. I miss my friends. I miss hearing people's voices.' It's, it's the loneliness that gets them. It's not their capability. I always just found that, found that really interesting.

What are some subtle ways that people can sound more intelligent when they're speaking? I think sometimes people, when they'll say— when when you'll hear people say if somebody says like a lot or um, that they don't sound as intelligent. I say like a lot and um, and I'm like, I think I still am pretty smart, but I know I could get better. So what are your thoughts on just some subtle ways people can improve?

Yeah, you want to try to eliminate filler words the best you can, but it depends on context. So if you and I are just talking and I'm just being casual, say like and um as much as you want. But if you're in front of a presentation and a group of people, and you need to persuade, like and um become distractions. That's the problem. It's not that they're not comfortable, everybody uses them. It's that they're distractions, and that distraction is telling you, I'm not confident, I'm not knowledgeable, I'm nervous. And people start to pick up on those little bitty things. So all you need to do is just replace that filler with silence, and you sound a thousand times more confident. Then it sounds intentional. But yeah, it doesn't mean that there's something bad about them. I mean, I use them in just normal everyday speech, but it's when you want to— when you're on a different level of conversation with somebody that it makes a difference. So if you're like my boss or something— you see how I just said that? If you're like my boss, then if I need to approach you about a salary or whatever I come up to you and I say, um, yeah, okay, so like, I am— okay, here's the thing, I like am really concerned about my— you've lost them. Yeah, you just wasted 12 seconds of them going, okay, whatever is coming out of your mouth, I'm already not wanting to hear it. Or if you say, uh, hey, I hate to bother you. Oh great, you just told them I— what I'm about to do is bother you, so, so buckle in. You know, there's these just phrases and ways to talk that they aren't going to be the best foot forward if you want to come off with confidence.

So the best way is just to be direct, like if you were talking to your boss and you wanted a raise, saying something like, hey, I want to talk to you about something that's super important to me.

I would even make it more specific. I'd like to talk to you about my salary. When's the best time we can visit? Okay. You know, just right out of the gate. And there's no question. Because you have to think of it from their point of view, as somebody who's of the employer's side. What are they thinking? They don't want to be blindsided either. So why do you make it to where you wait until you're face-to-face for them to have any clue of what you're talking about? You need to be able to prep them for that conversation. You need to let them massage it, let them think about things. So the more specific, the better.

And you think it's better just to lead with that out of the gate? Sometimes people will put a buffer at the beginning, like, hey, hope you're doing well, hope you had a great weekend, hope that blah blah blah.

Yeah, you just think it's just be direct with it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, because they know that's not— that doesn't matter. They know it. It's the same with delivering bad news, right? If you're going to deliver bad news, same— delivering bad news is the same way of delivering sensitive— I want to have a sensitive conversation with somebody. If you are— I need to deliver bad news and I say, hey, so how are you? So how you been? I know, yeah, you doing good? You feeling all right? Okay. Okay, well, I got some things to tell you. And I mean, you're just going— just making them twist off in the wind of going, okay, what's happening? What's going on here? Are you quitting? Are you not quitting? What's going on? Versus If you come out right out of the gate with bad news, they say, just go, I got bad news, and give it a 2-second beat. I need to let you go. Well, now they know. Great. But if you need to have a sensitive conversation about something, it's much easier to say, hey, I need to talk to you about what you said at the party on Friday. When's a good time to talk? That'd be very specific. And then they know, then they're prepared. Instead of just the vague text, we need to talk, period. Nobody likes that. Nobody loves that text. We need to talk. Talk about what? Yeah, be more specific.

And if the other person doesn't respond to that, do you give them any time window before— like, I mean, like, for instance, like, if it's a relationship situation, you're texting somebody like, hey, I'd like to speak with you about what you said to me on Friday, and they don't respond to you about it, or they beat around the bush or whatever. Do you follow up with them about it in a few days, a few, like a week? Like how does, how do you handle that? Because sometimes that does happen.

Yeah. Well, it depends how much that person matters to you, but the fact that they don't want to interact should mean maybe you've made a mistake on how high up that person is on your priority list or how important you are to that person. Because often, you know, people, people will want you for what you give them. Not the other way around. And so if they're not willing to talk with you and reason with you and empathize with you and listen, they may not be your person. They just— they might just want to use you for whatever. I feel like if they're not one to engage, that is a big red flag of they don't value you as much as you think they do, which is a hard realization. How some people just might— they might miss the text, they might not get it, they might try and push it off. But understand, if it's important to you, it should be important to them.

If I were trying to earn your respect throughout this conversation, if I were to want to come across as somebody that I know what I'm talking about, if I was somebody that wants to come across as being high value, what do you think is the biggest thing that I should focus on for me to portray that to you?

It's a feeling, and that feeling is warmth. If you really want to portray confidence, there's the temptation to feel like you have to be big. You need to be right in their face. Hey, high energy, high impact all the time. That does not convey confidence right away. It conveys desperation. It might convey eagerness. It might convey too much. So if somebody's just you're sitting with me or with anybody and you come on super strong, that might throw off the equilibrium of the conversation, or it's going, oh, this is too much. I'm just getting to know you. So it's much more easier if you think about the feeling of warmth and what that is and how that sounds and how that resonates with you. So if I want to portray confidence, it's to slow down my words. To make sure that I don't uptalk with things. It's to make sure that I am pausing correctly with you and making eye contact and having that intention. I'm not looking around the room. I'm focused right with you. My chin's up. I'm not looking down. My shoulders are back, and I'm just wanting to engage fully with who you are and who I am and making sure that we match the same frequency rather than coming in hot and heavy.

Why do you think people come on too strong in conversations?

A desire to be loved, a desire to be liked, a desire to feel like they are special and they're different from somebody else. It's just overcompensating most of the time. If somebody is— you're wanting to project high energy, it's different if you're performing in front of a whole bunch of people, you're speaking to a bigger audience. Got it. You need to have that energy because it has to be spread over a much bigger number of people. But if it's just one person, you don't need to come on that strong. It's much easier just to meet them where they are. In other words, I don't have to come parachute into the conversation. I just need to walk up and shake your hand, and they need to feel that in your voice and your tone and your tenor and how that operates.

Yeah, I mean, I've noticed with myself that the lower my self-esteem was at the time, the more I needed to fake it in a conversation and try to show up in a way that wasn't who I was because I was so miserable with the person that I was. I felt that the other person would automatically know that there was something wrong with me because of the way that I was feeling. And then what I realized is, you know, most people aren't really paying attention to that. You actually look more unconfident when you're trying to, you know, fake it to somebody throughout the course of a conversation. Like, I'm wondering, I know for me it helped me a lot to work on myself through other mechanisms— fitness, my relationship to myself, my personal relationships, purpose, and so on— that, that allowed me to be able to, I think, sit here and be able to have these conversations like this. Do you think that for you personally, is that the way to appear more high value, high level of self-respect, et cetera, or is it just exposure therapy through practice through having conversations like this?

It's a comfort with yourself. Exposure helps just by repetition. You can only know so much. It has to have application, but it comes from within. I see this a lot of time in a jury trial. So, as a litigator, I go to court and often I will have a witness or I'm cross-examining a witness who is trying to be somebody they think the jurors in the jury want them to be. They need to portray some, maybe they need to portray sympathy, hoping to gather sympathy from the jury. But people have a sixth sense about them. We can just tell. There's no way to really put words to it, but it's very easy to go, That person is not being true to who they are. Something is off. Something is— I can't describe it, but I can just feel it. I can hear it. You know it when you see it. And so there's that temptation to be something different than who you are, but that typically draws away. It rarely, if ever, gives you the outcome that you want. Authenticity is being exactly who you are on the inside as you are on the outside. People, it's leave the window fronts for, for shopping, but don't, don't make it your home base of who you are and your personality, because eventually it's going to either hurt the relationship that you're trying to have, which is based upon a falsity, or it's going to eventually grind you down, because after a while it's just going to be friction, and, and that's going to have a rub, and that's going to get worn, and that's going to be hard to you're going to have that identity crisis further down the road. Much better to be who you are now.

Yeah, we often have that problem with overcorrection, right? Where if we're feeling a lack of self-esteem, we want to overcorrect it by trying to portray that we have a higher level of self-esteem than we actually do. And people can pick up on that right away. But I will say, I think on the opposite end of that, I can tell a lot by somebody when they shake my hand. If they have a weak handshake, I can just tell like they're struggling, they got something going on, they have a low level of self-esteem. Maybe this is me overgeneralizing, but. But for the most part, that's just maybe my perception and my bias and people who walk with and looking, you know, at the ground when they're walking, because I did all of that and I wasn't very confident. So do you think in situations like that where people are feeling less confident, passive, they're maybe not an extrovert, but they're trying to appear confident, how, like, in your experience, like, what's the best way for somebody to bridge that gap so that they're not turning somebody off by being too passive, having a weak handshake, looking down, but they're also not coming out as this over-charismatic person, which can be easy for people to pick up on right away?

It's a, it's a balance, and that balance is specific to context, it's specific to the situation, and a lot of different factors. There's this fear And it's a type of psychological threat of identity. And that makes you question, what if they don't like me? What if they don't like who I am? Is who I am enough in this moment? And that causes you to have maybe not the weak handshake, but it causes you to feel down, to have that negative energy. Whereas on the opposite end, if you're always always needing to be the person to say something. Often the person who says the most knows the least. You've been in those boardroom meetings and the person who's always chiming in is typically the person who's least connected with what's going on. But the confident person, the authentic person, knows that they don't have anything to prove. So the advice is understand you have nothing to prove. Your value is exactly what your value is. You don't dilute it by saying too much. You don't undervalue it by not saying enough. So it's this understanding of, I don't have anything to prove, not with my words, not with my actions. I know exactly who I am. And that allows you to be able to use pauses more effectively. It allows you to have stronger conversations because less is often more when your words are more concentrated, when you say less. Confident people know they don't have to have an answer to everything. They don't have to say every little thing that comes to their mind. The person who's the most knowledgeable in the room, typically in that board meeting, is the one who says the least. And so it's always the reverse of what we originally think. If you enjoyed that clip and want to see the rest of the conversation, you can click right here. Or if you want to see the latest episode of the Jefferson Fisher Podcast, click right here, and I'll meet you there.