Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Being right is really easy. We just make it about ourselves and we frame things in our terms and if you don't like it, well, that's too bad, it's your fault, it's your problem. You haven't seen the light like I have. And if you wanna make a difference, you're putting the other person first, you're framing things in ways that resonate with them, make them the hero of things and help them go on a journey where they're excited to work with you not once, but over and over.
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and over again. Welcome back to the speaking and communicating podcast. I'm your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get communicating with that
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guest today joining us from my favorite city, Joshua Bandoch is a persuasion expert, TEDx speaker, who is here to share with us the negotiation tactics and being the author of the book, How to Get What You Want, will exactly share with us how to do that. And before I go any further, please welcome him to the show. Hi, Joshua. Hi, Roberta. Thank you. I'm really excited for our conversation.
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I'm excited that you are here as well, persuasion expert of all the things that you wanted to focus on. What is it about persuasion got you so worked up? Glass ceilings. So many people hit a glass ceiling in their professional and personal lives. It is way too low because they don't know how to persuade. Persuasion is the difference between having a good idea and having other people
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embrace that good idea. Just think about that time you go to your boss and it actually is a good idea and the way you communicate it is just not there. And when you can take a great what, whether it's a great what at work or great what with your family, your partner, whatever, and you can communicate that in a way that they find persuasive, that's how you get what you want time after time after time. So I want to help people crash through their glass ceilings by unleashing their persuasive powers.
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Get what I want. Does that mean I'm being manipulative during those moments? Such a great question. Is persuasion manipulation? No, because it's all about the intentions. Think about the force in Star Wars or think about a knife. So the force, you have the light side, that's Yoda or Luke Skywalker. You have the dark side, that's Darth Vader and the Emperor. Who do you want to be?
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I'll take Yoda. Think about a knife. You can uh cook a beautiful meal with that knife or you can do somebody great harm. What are your intentions with the power that you have? Persuasion is rooted in good intentions. I'll say just quickly, two things I think persuasion is not so we can understand what it is. Cause I think this will really capture the good intentions behind it. A lot of people think persuasion is about winning. And Roberta, if I went against you, what does that make you?
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the loser at that moment. A loser? It's terrible. You don't want to work with me. Persuasion can't be about winning. And some people think that persuasion is about convincing someone to think just like them. The Latin root of the word convince actually means to vanquish or to conquer. Conquest is barbaric. It's not persuasive. Persuasion is shared action. It's shared because something that we voluntarily do with others and it's action because it is about getting things done.
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So when something is voluntarily done with others, there's no manipulation involved. Okay. So let's make an example of this, Yeah. If you're selling me an idea, right? Yeah. And you want whatever the end goal is from me. If I have a different outlook on the very idea that you're trying to sell me, what's the likelihood that we will both win? Because
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If you're going to sell it to me, that means if I had a different perspective about that idea, I've lost on that particular perspective. The likelihood of us both winning is first determined by the intentions. Okay, cool. As long as you're driven by good intentions, what do you do? It's driven first by whether or not you can adopt what I call the persuader's mindset. Because the best way to get as much of what you want as possible is to adopt this mindset.
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A lot of people go into negotiations, conversations, they think and talk about things from their perspective. And the problem with that is that when I make it all about me and I adopt a me first mindset, is that gonna be persuasive to you? Probably not. If I can understand who you are and what you care about and frame things in your terms, listen a lot to your goals, identify overlap with those goals,
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I'm gonna start to hear a lot of things that I like. I'm gonna focus on those things that I like. I'm gonna be able to give you the things that you want, that you asked for, and even ask for a couple of things that I want that are kind of on top of the things that you're happy to do anyways. That's called adopting the persuader's mindset, which is to put them first. That's how you get what you want more often. When putting me first, how do you establish that if I give her these things?
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Do you ask me questions? you? Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Walk us through the process. Cause I'm trying to see if how is it that you're going to find that out and then those overlaps. Absolutely. In addition to what you want as the outcome. Okay. Go ahead. Most people think that persuasion is all about talking. And one of the most powerful persuasive tools that exist is listening. When I ask you questions.
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and I listen, a couple of really powerful things happen. First, you talking and me listening is powerful because it helps you feel heard. That builds an authentic connection and a relationship and eventually helps you trust me more. Think about the alternatives. Sometime when you were talking to somebody and they said, oh, hang on a second, what was that? like, oh my God, that's crushing. And you're asking important questions that are aligned with what you can tell that they care about.
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and then you're demonstrating understanding of that. So you've gotta listen, listen, listen. Ultimately, you wanna start to ask questions that will uncover what their priorities are so that you can see how much they overlap with your priorities. You would ask questions like, what would a great deal look like for you? What would a great outcome be? Or where do you see this partnership in five years? Or how do you wanna proceed? All of those things are gonna say, okay, well,
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I think these are the next three steps. And if those steps sound fine to you, that's good. If you have some problems, you know, need to discuss those things. If you say, what are your top five priorities? And they list five and three of those things sound great to you. You say, look, those three, that sounds great. I would love for us to start there, focus on those things. And how would you feel if we added one or two things to the list? And those are things that are top priorities for you. You don't have to ask for those three because they're already happy to do those in the first place.
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And you're happy to have those two. Is there a way for you to show me that, okay, I'll have my three, but adding the ones that you are suggesting might potentially have a better outcome than what I had envisioned before? Am I even open to that during those moments? It depends. You're kind of testing the waters. And if those three are already good for you, then kind of the minimum is you'll do those three things with that person.
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that might be all you can do in that moment. And if that's all you can do, then you're building a working relationship with them. You both wanna do those three things. You pretty much never get 100 % of what you want anyways. And when you do those three things together and it works well, you're gonna go back to the other person and say, hey, that was great. Maybe we could talk about some future partnerships. So that's kind of the worst case scenario as long as you don't press them too hard. When you say, kind of hear these other things, it depends how you say it.
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I would say something like, how would you feel, and we can talk about why feelings are so important, how would you feel if we also did these two things? And then they're gonna either give you a positive, neutral, or negative reaction. And if it's really negative, you know, okay, well, not that, or at least not right now. Because they might say, look, I wish I could do that, but I just, look, I don't have the money for it. Okay, cool, then you know, they don't have the money for it, come back when they have the money. Or if they say, yeah.
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um That sounds good or I could do one of those things you pick. Okay, you pick. And if they're giving you clear yellow and red flags that these three are all you can do, be happy with that. I was about to ask when you talk about the money, because I'm wondering if you're in sales, usually you are trained, you have a script and you go to sales training and they say, you know, handle objections this way. If Joshua says this and that's how you close him. How does that kick in what you just described to us?
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for them to get what they want, which is the sale in this instance. I think there are three ways that many salespeople go wrong. The first is that they don't adopt the persuader's mindset. They don't put the person they're trying to sell to first. And so they're selling everything from their and their organization's perspective. Okay, we've talked about that. So adopt the persuader's mindset. The second thing is that salespeople try to present
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all of the logic, reasoning, data, numbers, whatever about how great their product is and how good the price is. And they kind of do this data and logic dump on people. And the trouble is that human beings and the intellectual people out there hate this. I used to dislike it. Now I just embrace it. I think it's kind of cool. We feel first, then reason. We can unpack that. But what's so important is that when you're trying to sell somebody something, instead of saying, what do you think about this proposal? Ask them.
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How do you feel about it? Because that generates this really quick intuitive reaction that is much more honest than what do you think? And the final thing that salespeople I think need to adjust is that we think that trying to sell somebody or trying to persuade is about getting somebody to do something. And much more often, it's about removing barriers. Instead of saying, why aren't you signing this deal? Or thinking that, it's like, well, hey, come on, can't we get this done today? You have to ask your counterpart,
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what would stop you from taking the action? For example, what would stop you from forming a partnership with us? What would stop you from buying from us? What would stop you from increasing how much you buy? You might think it's a money issue. You might think they don't have the financing, they don't have the revenue. It could be something totally different. It could be that, look, they just have a contract with another vendor through the end of the year, come back to them in a few months. It could be that they've been with that other vendor for 20 years, they're never gonna sign with you.
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or it could be something totally different. People are much more prepared to authentically and quickly share a barrier, which is the real thing stopping them. And then you have to address it. It sounds like what you described in your book as the, that a persuasive leader paints a better future. When you say what would it look like for you in order? What do you mean by a persuasive leader paints a better future for his team?
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Absolutely. I think that to be a leader, people have to want to follow you. And the most powerful thing that can motivate people to follow you is a vision. Vision animates action. Leaders, whether it's of a country, an organization, corporation, nonprofit, whatever, a university, pick your choice, whatever they're leading, you have to have a vision. You have to know
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where you're going, what your North Star is, what you're rowing towards and what you want your goals and outcomes to be. And if you can articulate that, that's what's gonna get people up every day and say, I'm excited to do this thing. And they're gonna have purpose. If you lack that, you're rudderless. And if you as a leader are rudderless and you can't tell your employees or your team or whoever where you're going, they can never possibly get there.
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and they're not going to do nearly as good of a job. Back to the feelings as well. there's the feelings are what would be more persuasive than you presenting all the data and the statistics and why I should buy this because eight billion people around the world have it as well. How would that translate to let's say you're making a presentation to a thousand people. So in preparing your slides, do you not then
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show the data that, this is where you guys should buy because this is what the data shows. This is what Richard shows, the statistic, you know how we always do that. How do you then bring in that feelings part if you are actually making a presentation to a room full of a thousand people? It's a great question. Let's assume that people are willing just for a quick moment to suspend judgment about the neuroscience and the psychology, the reality that we're all wired to
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feel first then reason. Okay, well then what do do when you're presenting? You have to do a couple of things. You have to understand how your audience is feeling, whether it's in that moment or about you or about the idea, because if they, maybe there's a lot of anxiety in the organization. Maybe they're really worried about layoffs. So maybe your job as a leader is to navigate that. So you have to understand it and navigate their feelings because they're real. And then,
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You have to think about what feelings you want to generate. And if you look at the news, the answer is obvious, negative feelings, but they're not persuasive. You need to generate positive feelings. You need to be for something. And the best way to do that is not to beat people over the head with logic and launch a logic tsunami. You have to do two things. You have to appeal to people's values. And the best way to do that is to tell stories. So instead of
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saying, look, you know, look at this PowerPoint slide. There are seven reasons why this is a great idea. Tell a story about somebody who went from maybe challenging situation, used this product, and then things were just so much better in their life. Or tell a story about somebody on the team who did something amazing. Bob was working on this thing, had a brilliant idea. He brought it to us, executed.
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I want to bring Bob up here. This is amazing. Those sorts of things generate positive emotions and people remember stories. So one of the hats that I wear is I'm a public policy professional. I'm an opportunity advocate and I was at a workshop two weeks ago with lots of super smart people, much smarter than I am. And one of the two most poignant things that I remember from that day is a story that somebody told. The other thing I remember is
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not the data, but a visual, essentially a picture story of a graph that somebody showed because that graph told a story about something. I don't remember all the details that people said about this percent and this number and this increase and decrease. People don't remember those things. So tell stories that are going to generate persuasive feelings and then have your data support that. Tell stories. We emphasize that every single time.
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Everybody who's been here, you know, they talk about leadership, communication. Everybody knows all, little empathy and this and emotional intelligence. What's gonna make listeners remember Josh instead of the others is the stories he's gonna tell today. 100%. Now, you call it a grainy test. What is that? Yeah, the grainy test. is, I don't know, it's one of my favorite parts of the book.
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the I go through, okay, adopt the persuader's mindset, use knowledge of how the human brain works to your advantage, okay, cool, and then I get into some of the tactics and techniques that are really helpful to actually get what you want. And all of those things are for naught if you cannot pass the granny test. Here it is. Would your granny understand what you're saying? And...
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The point is not that Granny is not smart. Granny is smart. Granny just isn't an expert in anything. And if you can't explain things to Granny, then you're just not being clear. Super complicated language is not a virtue. It is a vice. When I was a graduate student, I went to a workshop and there was a kid presenting from the top program in his field, really prestigious, supposed to be like a shooting star. And for like 15 minutes, he talked.
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I didn't understand a word, despite it being in English. I just sat there and I felt so stupid. And then a really famous professor at the end of the presentation raises his hand and he says, I didn't understand a word of what you just said. that's the professor. And then the same professor, maybe it was about a year later, I'd attended a workshop that he delivered. He said, my superpower is that I make complicated things really simple. And I thought,
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God, that's so arrogant. No, you don't. then an hour later, I thought, yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Because he just took so many super complicated topics in political economy and was like with absolutely remarkable clarity. Boom, boom, boom. That was his superpower. And if you can take great IQ and great emotional intelligence and
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bring clarity to all of those things, that is an absolute superpower. An absolute superpower indeed. You remember the movie Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. So he was his lawyer, right? I don't know how many times Denzel said in the movie, explain this to me like I'm a five year old. Absolutely. Absolutely. people think that complicated language is a virtue and research shows that it's actually a vice that when people use overly complicated
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language, the person on the receiving end of that actually judges the person to be less intelligent. Wow. When the intention behind it initially by the person was to show Josh how smart I am and how educated and expert I am. We talk about a lot of the software engineers, the tech people in Silicon Valley looking for funding. We remind them that the investors don't speak tech, not all of them at least. So if you want their money.
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You better make sure that they understand what you're talking about and what you're going to bring to the market. If they don't, why would they put their millions in there? 100%. And OK, even if you have a great idea, again, persuasion, who was possibly the best tech evangelist you've ever had, but certainly say over last 50 years? Who comes to mind? Jobs. 100%, 100%, exactly. Everyone knows it's Steve Jobs. And I talk about him in the book.
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What did he do? Think about when he launched, I'm old enough to remember this, think about when he launched the first iPhone. There wasn't a press release. It was this absolutely remarkable presentation. And now everybody just tries to mimic the kinds of presentations that Steve Jobs gave. His presentations, they are second to none. He took Apple from, hey, cool idea to...
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one of the most important and valuable and influential companies in the entire world because Steve Jobs knew how to persuade. If he didn't, Apple would not be Apple. With just jeans and a black turtleneck. 100%. Right. When it comes to persuasion as well, it's like a coin. It's got two sides to it. Yeah.
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Sometimes we think my actions, you how they say practice with your preacher that children will follow what you do not what you say. Sometimes we set the example and then others follow, especially if you're a leader. But then you have a story in your book about that interview where because you were casually dressed in your interview, a candidate, they came in formal. You just said that they actually took their tie off and thought they were supposed to as casual as you were. Yeah, look.
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We think that persuasion is all about the words that we say. it's not. Sometimes it's as little as 7%. There's some research that shows that our verbal liking of somebody, essentially kind of how much we like them based on what they're saying and how they're saying it. The words can be as little as 7%. What's the rest? Well, it's things like tone and body language. And there are other things that are really important too. How you present yourself, if you're likable, if you're curious, things that I dive into in the chapter.
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There's two sides to this. scary side is, well, what if I get these things wrong? So the example in the book is I logged on to interview a job candidate and I believe I was in a sweater. So I wasn't like in a t-shirt, a sweater, fine. It was a remote interview and he was dressed in a suit. The second that he saw that I was quote unquote only in a sweater, he literally on camera, he took off the tie, threw it across the room and then unbuttoned his first button.
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That is so insanely unprofessional, his candidacy was terminated on the spot even though he had the interview. Here's the really cool thing though. Okay, what are the important things? Be likable. You get so much more when you're likable. Have good tone. That means calm and excited, not annoyed, angry. Have good body language. We could talk about what that is or not. When you do those things, this is the awesome part. When you do those things.
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have good tone, likable, good body language, curious, et cetera. Even if you don't get the words just right, people receive what you say so much better. By contrast, if you get those things wrong, if I say, Roberta, that's a great idea, versus Roberta, that's a great idea, same words. Same words, and I got the tone all wrong, and I rolled my eyes in contempt, which means that that's not gonna land so well.
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You'd like, how are you? I'm fine. Right. Exactly. Yeah. The body language and the tone speaks a lot more than just the words. You said we go into negotiations thinking about me and what I can get out of it, what I can win and make you the loser. You said something about the fact that the other person is the hero. Yeah. Please explain that to us. Super big picture. I think that.
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in each and every interaction, every single day, we're faced with a decision, with a choice. Do I wanna be right or do I wanna make a difference? Being right is really easy. We just make it about ourselves and we frame things in our terms. And if you don't like it, well, that's too bad. It's your fault, it's your problem. You haven't seen the light like I have. And if you wanna make a difference, you're putting the other person first. You're framing things in ways that resonate with them.
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You're understanding them and yeah, if you can make them the hero of things, celebrate their good ideas, make them feel good about their good ideas and help them go on a journey where they're excited to work with you not once, but over and over and over again so that they feel like they're successful. I mean, what's the alternative that they feel like they were a loser in the deal that they got maybe just a little bit out of it, but you know, they didn't get much out of it or you were a real jerk throughout. I mean, they're kind of like a bullied, you know, person who just.
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experience this thing and they sign the deal but they don't want to work with you. If you make the other person feel good and celebrate what they do and their good ideas, that greases the wheels of persuasion time after time after time. That's how you make them the hero. You know the creator of Grey's Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes? She recently was interviewed and they asked her because you know she made the two billion dollar contracts with ABC and whatnot for all her TV shows.
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Recently, they asked her regarding negotiation. They said when she goes into a negotiation table, what are some of the things that she keeps in mind? She said, the first thing I've learned is I only go to a deal if I'm willing to walk away from it. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, you agree immediately. Go ahead. Oh, 100 because part of persuasion is knowing when you cannot work with somebody. And that's OK. You can't always get what you want.
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when you don't identify that quickly enough, then you're wasting your most precious resource, which is time, and possibly a lot of money as well, because if you're investing hours and hours and days and weeks and months in a deal that's not gonna happen because you just, you don't see things clearly or maybe you close your eyes to things, that's a big problem, because those are other deals that you're not making. Absolutely, you have to know when you can't make a deal and not be afraid to walk away.
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And it doesn't mean that then every single situation you have to practice this persuasion tactics that Josh is sharing today. Well, I think you do want to practice them because let's suppose that you engage someone authentically and you put them first and you do all the things that talk about in the book really proceed with maximum emotional intelligence, help them feel good, all that kind of stuff. When you do those things.
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the odds of a deal and the odds of a good deal significantly increase. And even if a deal can't be had, if you exit abruptly and say, ah, it doesn't work for me, no, sorry, I'm out of here, boom, pound the table and leave, then you have generated a lot of negative emotions. Human beings have this funny thing called a memory. And they're long. We do this funny thing called gossip, which means that if Bob comes to you and Bob is a real jerk,
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you're gonna tell people that Bob was a jerk. You're not gonna forget that Bob was a jerk. And if Bob comes to you later and he actually has a good deal for you, you're gonna say, you know what? I don't care, Bob was a jerk. I don't wanna work with him. By contrast, if Bob does all the things that I talk about in that book, this book here, my book, and you still can't come to terms, you're gonna feel good about interacting with Bob. And if somebody else needs what Bob is selling, you're gonna be willing to say,
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Hey, I talked to this guy, he wasn't a good fit for me. I think you should give him a call. You're at least if I say, oh man, you know, I meet with this Bob guy, you're not gonna say, oh my God, he was such a jerk to me. You're gonna say, I had a really good conversation with him. It wasn't a good fit for us and that's okay. Good conversation. I hope it goes well. You have to think beyond this one time to think about future opportunities with this person and all the people that they either will or will not tell that you were pleasant to work with or you were a real monster to work with. That just taught me two things. One,
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If Bob really acts like that, the reason I'm going to remember and tell everyone is because of how that made me feel back to what you said earlier about feelings, right? 100%. Right. And also if despite him making me feel like crap, and I still tell Josh because the deal would be good for you, that's the emotional intelligence part. Because I think sometimes even as grownups, we become petty, even if something will benefit someone else, but just because
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Bob and I didn't get along. Nobody should ever hear from Bob again, according to my orbit. know what I mean? Human beings love to gossip and work gets around. I can give you an example. was talking to somebody in real estate recently about this persuasion stuff. He does 50, 100, $200 million deals, big deals. And he said, we recently left 5 % on the table, which let's call that $5 million. We left 5 % on the table because...
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This other guy, had a better proposal on paper and he is so difficult to work with that we knew that the likelihood that this deal would actually get finalized and the properties would actually get built was much lower because at every step of the way we know he was gonna be difficult, not just with us, but with other people. By contrast, the other guy, he said, look, we know this is gonna get done. So they left 5 million bucks on the table because...
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One person was difficult to work with and wasn't going to happen to the person. Easy to work with and our reputations proceed ourselves. Right. As they say, not all money is good money. If the money is going to give you a headache. yes. I think there's been moments when you're like, you know what? It's not worth it. Absolutely. It's not worth it. Yes. Absolutely. Josh, any last words of wisdom? Anything I've been asked to you are hoping to share with our listeners today when it comes to persuasion and creating win-win situations rather than.
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I win, lose. I would just restate what I think is the most important framing question. Do I want to be right or do I want to make a difference? And people who insist on being right, if they get anything at all, they get so much less. And people who want to make a difference, they get so much more of what they want time after time after time because they engage people the right way and they craft durable deals that everybody's happy to implement and
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They're happy to go back to each other and say, hey, maybe we can do more cool things together. Focus on making a difference. That's when you get more and more yes, because people want to work with you and collaborate with you in the future. Words of wisdom from Joshua Bandoch, the TEDx speaker, persuasion expert, author of How to Get What You Want, sharing so many different tactics on how to negotiate for win-win situations.
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Thank you very much for being on our show today, Josh. This has been really eye opening. Such a pleasure. Thank you. My pleasure as well. Before you go, please, we can our listeners reach you website or social media handles. One is to of course get the book. You can get it at Amazon Barnes and Noble or wherever you get books. It's called how to get what you want. Mastering the art and science of persuasion. You can find me on LinkedIn if you want to connect there and you can find me on my website.
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joshuabandoch.com. You can contact me through that as well. Check everything out. joshuabandoch.com. you very much. Don't forget. you. My pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and review on Apple and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.