The Science and Influence of Storytelling with Richard Newman

Imagine transforming cold, hard data into an engaging narrative that resonates with key opinion leaders and influences decisions. Our guest, Richard Newman, founder of Body Talk, has honed this skill, teaching 120,000+ global business leaders to amplify their communication and impact. Richard's personal journey, from overcoming autism to teaching in a Tibetan monastery, has shaped his unique perspective on non-verbal communication and storytelling. 

Dive into this intriguing conversation as Richard deconstructs the power of storytelling, especially in the context of data presentation. Discover how enhanced storytelling skills led to an $800 million deal. Gain insights into the shifting dynamics of storytelling, with a focus on the true hero of the narrative and the importance of effective story structure. Explore the art of asking the right questions, including surface, emotional, and survival-level inquiries. Richard shares his wisdom on creating a safe space for open expression of thoughts and emotions. 

Finally, we delve into Richard's inspiring journey of self-discovery and the unveiling of hidden potential. His belief in recognizing greatness as a catalyst for success is truly inspiring. Gain impactful insights and practical techniques to immediately elevate your impact. Join us on this transformative journey with Richard Newman to revolutionize your storytelling and communication skills.

NOTABLE QUOTES
"The reason I’m so passionate about communication is that I was really challenged with trying to figure out how to communicate when I was a kid." – Richard
"When I was 18 years old, other friends of mine were going off to university, I decided I wanted to do something good for the world and start to really investigate how I could improve my communication and help other people do the same" – Richard
"Through body language and through tone of voice, I could understand [the monks] and I could connect with them." – Richard
"Public speaking is to really effectively express something in a compelling way to a group of people, whichever the medium that you’re using." – Richard
"The new generation need more connection, explanation, and feel like they’re not being talked at but being talked with." – Philip
"In order for storytelling to be really effective, you need to connect with the survival, emotional, and logical mind in that order." – Richard
"We need to build a story to explain what is the relevance of [the] information, why should they be concerned about it right now, and what will happen if they don’t move forward and take some action." – Richard
"To get people really connected with the story, you’ve got to let them see themselves in the story in a positive way." – Richard
"The real key to having a great impact on an audience [is] to make them the hero." – Richard
“To boost morale and company culture, get input and feedback from your employees.” – Philip
“Nothing is worse for anybody than to go to a meeting that could have been summarized in an email.” – Philip
"You’ve really got to make sure you’re connecting with where are people right now, how they feel, and then land your message based on that." – Richard
"See someone’s greatness." – Richard

RESOURCES
Richard
Lift Your Impact Book: https://liftyourimpact.com/thebook 
Website: https://ukbodytalk.com/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ukbodytalk/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardnewmanspeaks/ 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/UKBodyTalk 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ukbodytalk 

Philip
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Transcript

Philip Sessions: 0:16

In today's episode, we're going to talk about the power and the science of storytelling. What's going on, guys? This is Phillip Sessions, your public speaking coach, here with Richard Newman. He is the founder of Body Talk. Over the past 22 years, his team has trained over 120,000 business leaders around the world to improve their communication and impact, including one client who gained $1 billion in new business in just one year using the strategies that Richard teaches. Today, he's actually going to go into the science and the strategy behind storytelling, which, as a business owner and as a speaker, is one of the most powerful things that you can do. Richard, I'm going to turn it over to you to introduce yourself a little bit more.

Richard Newman: 1:05

Great Thanks, phillip. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Thanks for having me on the show. I've got to say, communication as a small business owner is the area that I'm most passionate about, so really happy to be here talking to you and talking to your podcast listeners as well. As you mentioned, I've been running my business now for a couple of decades.

Richard Newman: 1:23

The reason I'm so passionate about communication is that I was really challenged with trying to figure out how to communicate when I was a kid. I was aware of this from a very young age, when I was four, going on to be about five years old. We moved house. My family moved to a different area. I moved to a new school. I found myself there really challenged with trying to just get to know the kids in my class and try and build up connection, conversation, rapport with them. As a result of that, I felt like I was almost living in this glass bubble, not quite sure how to connect with people.

Richard Newman: 1:56

As I went through my school years, I was trying to develop better communication skills. Then, when I got to about the age of 16, a friend of mine gave me a book called Body Language by Alan Pease, one of the classic works from back in the day I read that and I was just blown away by what I read there. I was fascinated by the topic and decided to really invest my time into figuring out more about communication skills. I read somewhere around 200 books on the subject of communication over the coming years on storytelling, which we'll talk about in this session, and body language and stage presence and all sorts of other aspects of public speaking which I found fascinating. It wasn't until recently that I really appreciated the challenge that I was going through that I now coach a lot of people through.

Richard Newman: 2:40

I was very shy as a kid. I'm very highly introverted. I've also been recently diagnosed autistic, which essentially means that the way that I communicate, the way that I see the world, is slightly different to neurotypical people and therefore the way I approach communication would be different. I had all these challenges that I was dealing with, but I'd been able to overcome those challenges through various different aspects of my life, and my passion is helping other people find their voice and be able to get their message out there, get the results that they really deserve. That's been my passion all the way through my career. Hence I'm so excited to speak to you and your listeners today.

Philip Sessions: 3:19

Yeah, that's great. We definitely had that same passion for helping people and I love bringing people on with that same passion to share a different perspective because, as you know, you and I can share that same message and somebody will perceive it completely different. When you say it, it's like oh, lights go off. It makes complete sense. When I say it, it's like whatever, who cares about fill up? He's just saying some stuff. We really need to bring different people in and I promise I didn't pay Richard for anything that he's doing here today. If he starts saying stuff that I completely agree with, it's not because I paid him to do that.

Philip Sessions: 3:57

I'm excited to go into that and all the stuff that you have. Man, there's so many things really to unpack there. I'm actually curious because you mentioned about being autistic. How have you navigated that? Because I just think about that being. I don't want to call it a limiting factor, but it's definitely something that you have to overcome and we all have certain things that we have to overcome. Some of it's confidence, some of it's just speaking poorly. What are some things that you did or some tools that you used to help you overcome that?

Richard Newman: 4:28

Yes, as I mentioned, this is something that I wasn't aware of early on, so I was just trying to figure out communication. I could just see that my friends were connecting with people and having girlfriends and friendships that were developing in ways that mine weren't. I was thinking there's something missing here. I don't know what it is Like. I said, I started studying books on this and then I think a pivotal part of my life is that when I was 18 years old and other friends of mine were going off to university, I decided I wanted to do something good for the world and also start to really investigate how I could improve my communication and help other people do the same.

Richard Newman: 5:05

I ended up going to Northeast India, where I was living up in the foothills of the Himalayas in a Tibetan monastery where I was teaching English to monks. The big challenge that we had there is that they didn't speak any English. When I arrived, they spoke Tibetan, nepali and Hindi. I spoke a bit of French and a bit of German, and we realized very quickly we didn't have a language to connect with. We had to figure out well, how are we going to connect with each other? How was I going to teach them? How would we exist together in this monastery for six months. I pretty soon realized that through body language and through tone of voice, I could understand them and I could connect with them. In certain ways. I developed these ways of running lessons with them. There was essentially communication, non-verbally.

Richard Newman: 5:51

The biggest breakthrough I got is that I figured out I had to be totally congruent in my communication, given that say, for example, if I was trying to teach them the word excited, if I didn't look excited and I didn't sound excited, then they didn't know what the word meant. I could have been saying pineapple for all they knew. There's no way for them to know. Equally, I say this to people who are business leaders or people who are selling on behalf of their teams these days that if you go into a meeting or a sales pitch and you're feeling nervous because you're afraid of public speaking or you're afraid of pitching in some way, or you feel a challenge when you go into an interview, if you're feeling nervous or you're feeling stressed and you say this is an amazing product, what they see is someone who feels stressed and nervous and they go. Why is he nervous about this product? What is it that he's not telling me. You have to make sure that everything is congruent. You've got to make sure you've got good delivery. You've got to have a great story and you've got to have a good tone of voice, understand how to handle the questions. Everything needs to go in the same direction.

Richard Newman: 6:50

I learned that very quickly with the monks, which then pulled me into alignment, of being super congruent when I was communicating. In terms of building up my business, that's something that was a particular challenge for me, if you like, with being autistic, because it's one of those pieces where a very simple way I can explain to people what this is like for me is I don't understand banter, or at least I didn't used to. Banter for me is when two people say offensive things towards each other and laugh in their faces and they somehow improve their friendship through doing that, and I would look at that and think, oh okay, if I go up to this person, I insult them and laugh at them, then they're going to think I'm a great guy. I try it and that didn't go very well for me. I had to just really break it down along the lines of what's really happening there and how can I do that? What are the elements that make this work. It was really by breaking down those elements and thinking, okay, what works and what doesn't work. That helped me build my communication style, but up to the point where, when later on, as I was building my company, leaders would come to me saying how do I have charisma, how can I have more gravitas?

Richard Newman: 7:56

When I go into this meeting, I'd say, okay, show me a presentation and I'd say, great, let me look at this as if it's a wall. You're trying to build a wall and that wall is gravitas. I can tell you these three bricks are missing in the wall because I've noticed them through observing other people. If you put those three bricks in, you go from where you are to having gravitas, which led all the way up to when I was around 2016,.

Richard Newman: 8:19

I put a study together that's one of the biggest studies ever created on nonverbal influence which was published in the Journal of Psychology, which was showing people these are the aspects that you need that can help anyone to increase their influence, increase their gravitas, increase their authority and so on. That was a big part of the journey for me. It's actually been beneficial, if you like, that I've had a different lens on communication. I've been able to observe neurotypical people which is the average population as an outsider and see, okay, what works about this, what doesn't work about it and how can I then break it down and teach it. It's not just the nonverbal side, as you said. The power of storytelling has been something I've been able to really address and observe and be able to break down for people and help them put that into action, to win new business and to influence people and to cascade messages through their company and so on. All of it I've actually seen from my perspective has been an advantage.

Philip Sessions: 9:12

Yeah, I like that You're using what most people would think as a disadvantage and turning that really into superpower.

Philip Sessions: 9:19

Because, yes, it took you we'll call it extra effort to be able to learn that because of your different perspective on how you look and perceive things.

Philip Sessions: 9:29

But it's also became a superpower because now you can see from that outside perspective which, as a business owner, when you're in the business, you're in the trenches it's hard for you to see where the company's going. So being able to pull back and that's where coach really comes in and is helpful, because they're able to have that 30,000 foot view and see what you're doing now and where you're going with that and I love going into speaking strategies with my clients and I'm sure it's probably the same for you that, okay, you're speaking about this, but what you're speaking about is not getting you to where you're wanting to go. So let's change up these couple of things and then now it lines up or it makes sense. Now, rather than you start at point A, you go to a point E and then you're back to C and then also then you're all the way over to Z, but then you want to come back to L real quick.

Philip Sessions: 10:15

It's like well, let's go through the alphabet in order so people can follow along with you. Because as a business owner, we know every single thing going on, or most everything going on in business, and if we're trying to talk to somebody, let's say, in the sales department, they don't know everything going on with the business. They know sales, they know hopefully they know the numbers of the sales projections and all that good stuff, and so we have to be able to communicate with them properly to be able to give that. So having that outside perspective definitely a superpower for you, but can be a superpower for anybody for sure and I missed our first question at the beginning because I wanted to ask that question, but I'm going to go back to it. My canned question and that is what is the definition of public speaking to you?

Richard Newman: 10:58

Yeah, that is a great question because, you know, having worked with people on communication for the last couple of decades, I've actually seen the definition of public speaking change. So when I would first train clients and they'd come and say they wanted public speaking training way back in the day, it meant that they wanted to improve how they came across when they spoke to a large room probably a conference of people while standing behind a lectern and pointing to slides. That's what public speaking was. And then, you know, after about 10 years of helping people from that perspective of public speaking, where we're trying to ease them away from the lectern, like don't hide yourself behind this box, don't let the slides do the work come out from there, we then saw that business started to change what it felt public speaking really was.

Richard Newman: 11:42

Where, you know, the rise of TED talks and TEDx events meant that suddenly leaders thought, oh, public speaking is a bit more like you know, stand on a red carpet and you know speak and tell a story.

Richard Newman: 11:53

And so the requests we were getting around public speaking training was much more. You know, how can I engage a room, maybe without slides and just through compelling storytelling, and then, as I come up to sort of you know where we are. Today, partly because of the pandemic, public speaking has actually gone to that place where it could be online, where people are, you know, speaking en masse to their teams, where they might have 10,000 people live with them at a sort of a virtual conference they're speaking to and they're doing it all through a lens and doing it through, you know, through a microphone as well. So public speaking I really define, as it's changed through the years, as when you need to express a message to a large group of people, so you're not just having those one-to-one conversations or a small team meeting. It's something that goes beyond that to really effectively express something in a compelling way to a group of people, whichever the medium is that you're using.

Philip Sessions: 13:35

I like that an effective expression. That is super important, obviously, with speaking and communicating everything and speaking of that, well, when you're talking earlier, you're talking about connection. So I really want us to start going down that route, because in speaking, that is important, not just to be able to express yourself and your ideas, but to connect with your audience. Because COVID, I would say, is a big reason why there seems to be more and more of this push for connection. But also, I think, as we get away from the baby boomers and even Generation X, where we're getting these younger groups come into the workforce, they need to feel like they're part of this, they need to feel like they belong, they can fit in, and so this connection is more important versus like those baby boomers, hey, go do this, okay cool, I'll do that, or XYZ is how you get to your goal, or whatever you need to do, and okay, cool. Now, with this new generation, they need more of that connection and that explanation and feel like they're not being talked at but being talked with, kind of thing.

Philip Sessions: 14:39

So how do you go about connecting with people through speaking?

Richard Newman: 14:43

Yeah. So if you want to connect with people through speaking, then you essentially need to know how does the human mind work and how does it want to receive information. And I'd say that you're completely right that this need for connection has had this meteoric rise in demand over the last few years, where people have spent less time together. And even now, even how I find people who are really sociable, who used to be out all the time, are sort of reluctant to leave the house, thinking that they need to have a really good reason in order to get out there and go and spend time, rather than even to go to the cinema, rather than watch something at home, or to go out and connect with people. There's a reluctance I've seen from my highly extrovert friends who used to go out to parties every weekend and now think can I be bothered to leave the house? So we have this rising need in how we connect with each other. So there's various ways that you can do that one to one, but if you need to connect with a group of people, this is going to come most easily through a couple of things. Of course, your body language and your personal expression is important, but the need for really effective storytelling skills is something that is so important, particularly for business leaders, for managers, to be able to express a message that could be a complex message, sometimes it could be quite dry information or there could be challenging information to put across and to make it clear, concise and compelling for everyone to resonate with, even when you can't see their eyeballs. Because so much of that public speaking is now happening where it's like it's a team's meeting and you can't actually see the people on the other end, you've got to be able to connect with them through the process of storytelling. So a few things to say about this is that what I've noticed is a lot of businesses and a lot of business leaders go in the wrong direction when they hear the term storytelling.

Richard Newman: 16:27

So I'm sure you've come across this, philip, as well, many times, where some people, when they hear the idea of storytelling, they think it's about telling anecdotes, and so what they do is they put themselves at the center of the story and they say let me tell you about what happened to me on the weekend or let me tell you about this thing that I did five years ago, and it's about them, and it disengages the listener unless it's done in the right, appropriate setting, and other times people think it's just about giving a list of information or about talking about things that have happened in history, and it really doesn't have to be that. In order for storytelling to be really effective, there are three things that must happen to truly connect with the other person, and that is, you need to connect with three key areas of the mind, which is the survival part of the mind, then the emotional mind, then the logical mind, and you need to connect with those three in that order. And so think about I loved, how you said earlier the idea of people jumping around like they do the A of the alphabet, then the Z, then they go back to the L and people leave those meetings feeling confused, like I couldn't even follow that. I'm not really sure why I heard that information. I'd equally say that a lot of times people go into a meeting and they hear a lot of logical information and the boss thinks, well, that's great, I shared the logic, and they leave feeling disengaged because it didn't engage the survival mind or the emotional mind that cares about information and helps us make decisions. And so you've got to make sure you're engaging those three areas in that order, so that people initially engage with you and think, oh, this sounds important, this is probably worthwhile me listening to. Then the emotional mind gets engaged and says, this is fantastic, I want to know more. Tell me the information, give me the KPIs, give me the percentages that I need to know about next quarter. And then you land them with the logic and they think, wow, that's fantastic, I've got a story of information.

Richard Newman: 18:14

When they leave the meeting, the idea if you've really connected with them is if Bob next week says to them hey, what was that meeting about last week with Sheila, what was that all about? They should immediately be able to retell what happened, just like that you could. If you saw a movie on the weekend and people said, hey, what did you do? And you could retell what happened in the plot, the subplot, the characters, phrases they said that you liked. And you can do that with a movie years later because it engages the survival mind, emotional mind and logical mind. And then you can sort of go back and flow through that memory in that order.

Philip Sessions: 18:48

And that's so good. I'm glad you brought those three points and that is such an important thing because when you just give data, most people can't remember that. There are some people out there that they are. They're data driven, that's all. They love data. So they kind of have that built in emotion to them and I guess really that survivor side of them as well, because they survive and thrive and love data. So then you give them the actual data and they're like they're salivating over it.

Philip Sessions: 19:16

But most people are not that way. So you have to give them, like you said, that, that survival instinct. You have to feed that and then feed that those emotions, and then finally give them that data. And it's definitely a tough thing, especially like engineering companies and I know you work with some technology companies and stuff like that because it's obviously data, it's engineering, it's numbers, it's math, all that fun stuff there that they do need. But you do have to go. So can you like share a story, perhaps to kind of help people really understand this more within practice, where maybe you've done this before, to help connect with that audience or help somebody, a leader, connect with their team?

Richard Newman: 19:54

Yeah, exactly yeah. So a couple of things to say on that. Firstly, you mentioned there are people who really emotionally connect with data. What I noticed with them is that they turn data immediately into a story in their minds. So, for example, you could go into a meeting and you could say Hi, everyone, thanks for coming here. The data from last week shows that we are at 5.67%, and there'll be people in the room who care about the data where they think this is, the world is about to end. My survival mind is suddenly kicking in. We've got to do something about this. And so they're suddenly like intuitively there because they've turned that into a story about understanding the context and the definition of that and what that might mean right now, what it would mean if they don't change anything about it in the future. So this story comes up and whereas you can go into other people and they go, ok, well, that sounds fine, 5.67%, I don't mind. I don't even know what that means. So that's where they're turning it into a story. So from our perspective, you know we work with lots of people in engineering companies, telecoms, we work with marketing insights companies. We work with pharmaceutical companies as well, who are taking the data of a treatment landscape, of all the different treatments possible for oncology patients, for example, and they have to take the latest data and help key opinion leaders in the field understand what that data even means. So that is often about translating it into a story, of saying, ok, some people in the room will know that 5.67% is a good thing, or they'll know that it's a bad thing. That's great For everybody else. We need to build a story to explain what is the relevance of that information, why should they be concerned about it right now and what will happen if they don't move forward and take some action on this. So that's sort of part of the process.

Richard Newman: 21:38

To give you another aspect of the storytelling piece and how this has helped people. You mentioned in my introduction there about how we helped one company win over a billion pounds worth of business in the space of a year by helping them with their storytelling skills. There was another client who this was an American company and it's the largest deal we've helped somebody win. This is one single deal where we helped them win a deal worth about $800 million. It was this one piece and they were aiming to build a new building on the bank of the River Thames in London. This was the project. They've been working towards it for about a year, maybe 18 months at this point. They brought us in for the last two weeks before the final pitch. They knew they were down to the last three places, but they were in third out of the three and they needed to turn that around. They came to us and we were working on various aspects of the story going through. Okay, let's work on survival, emotional and logical pieces. Let's make sure they are there.

Richard Newman: 22:39

But then the other key piece that we had to transform is that the CEO showed up for a rehearsal. This was the day before the pitch. We were there rehearsing in this big sort of glass and steel building that was across the Thames from where they were hoping to build this new project. He started to deliver his information and it was maybe like 5pm and the pitch was the next morning at 9am. I had to stop him after about two minutes. I said to him I don't think you really believe in this pitch. The whole room sort of turned to look at me like you can't speak to a CEO this way. What are you doing? They looked at me and they looked back at him and I said to him tell me, do you really believe you're going to win? He said no, it was like all the oxygen sort of left the room. I said can you explain to me why you don't think you're going to win? I was picking up on this on his delivery. There was no conviction really behind it and there was a bit of tension behind his delivery. He said the reason we're not going to win is because somebody on the decision making panel has decided that they don't like James. Let's call him on our team Because these two don't get on. That means that they're now dead set against us and they're giving us negative scores. It's all going to go poorly after all the work that we've done. I've come in here to save this situation so that we can try and do our best tomorrow, even though we're probably not going to win.

Richard Newman: 23:58

I said to him let's talk about storytelling around this piece. Is it fair to say that if we look at storytelling characters, that you would say, potentially you've been brought in as the hero, because every story needs a hero, the hero who is aiming to save the situation from what's happening? He said yeah, I think that's fair to say. I have. I've had to fly over here, I've had to come out of my way to try and win this.

Richard Newman: 24:23

I said would you say that your company is maybe a victim? If we go for another storytelling archetype, they're the victim of a tough situation. He said that's right, they absolutely are. They're the victim of a bad decision and so on. I said you tell me now who's the client in the story. You're the hero. Who teams the victim? Who's the client? Is it fair to say that they would be seen as the villain in this situation? He said well, yes, you can see this realization on his face of yeah, that doesn't sound good. I shouldn't go in with that. I said if you go in feeling that in the story that you're telling you're the hero, the team's the victim and the panel you're pitching to the villain of the situation, there's no chance that they're going to react. Well, you're not going to get the deal.

Richard Newman: 25:04

I said could we shift the dynamic of how the story is positioned so that you're no longer the hero? And so many business leaders, so many people who pitch, they put themselves as the hero of the story. Or their service is the hero, or their product is the hero. Their company is the hero in some way and it's just the wrong positioning. I said to him could we shift this around such that the client, who's making the decision, is the hero of the story? They've got a challenge, they've got a building they need to create and they've got goals that they want to achieve. Just like any hero, they want to get past all the challenges of getting there and have this highly provisable project they want to work on. Could you position them as part of this pitch that they're the hero, going from challenges towards those goals?

Richard Newman: 25:46

And so we rethought the way that they were framing up this discussion, so the client was the hero rather than this guy. And then they managed to run it much more effectively and I wasn't there on the day of the pitch, but they managed to move to a place where they went from third place up to first place. So it's a dynamic that I like to help people with of understanding If there's one thing they can shift about their storytelling you've got to get the structure right, but you've then got to get the dynamic of the delivery right. So, coming back to your point on connection, that's how you can get really connected with people, because we connect with stories where we feel a connection with the hero, whoever that protagonist is in the story, we see ourselves in them and we see how they're making choices, reflected on how we make choices as well, and so to get people really connected with the story, you've got to let them see themselves in the story in a positive way.

Philip Sessions: 26:35

Man, that is powerful right there. It made me think of going into sales conversation a lot of times, especially for us right here. We're trying to help people with public speaking coaching and we could easily go in the conversation. Yeah, you get the client to come to you, or potential client come to you and say you know, I really just need help, I'm struggling with this, that and the other. And oh, yeah, you know I can help you out with that. No problem there, and you have all the confidence in the world.

Philip Sessions: 27:01

But you and I would be coming in as this hero type and we're going to come in and save this victim and make them into something great.

Philip Sessions: 27:10

And we're not going to make them into the hero, we're just going to make them better and put them in a better spot than they are now. And while that will still convict some people to buy, if instead we came to them and we're really kind of like that sage advisor, you know we're the mentor to them and like, hey, we're going to help you along the way and let you be the hero of your own story, that's going to convict them even more to want to work with us, and so you can translate that into any business, any product, any service that you use. If you bring that customer in with that story and show them that when they have your product or your service, you're simply mentoring them to where they're trying to go, but complimenting what their abilities already with your product or service will allow them to be the hero of their story and their journey. Wow, that is just a powerful thing. So I like that a lot.

Richard Newman: 28:04

Great. It's really reminded me actually of a story I don't often get to tell, but it's how, where I realized in public speaking that the real key to having a great impact on an audience was to make them the hero is that I literally did that. So I often get booked as a motivational speaker. I get to go and speak on big stages at conferences and so on, which is always a joy. But I was always thinking I want to make sure that the person who's booked me feels like I've done a good job, and the best indication I've done a good job is you get a standing ovation at the end, because there's no arguing with the fact that the audience have clearly loved that experience.

Richard Newman: 28:38

The first time I managed to get multiple standing ovations in a session was when I was booked by a company to do a talk. It was about 800 people in the room, something like that, and she went to book me for this talk and she said could you, could you show up for like half an hour? And she laid out what she wanted me to achieve and I said that's not going to be half an hour, that's going to be like three, three and a half hours. And she said like who do you think you are, madonna? Are you going to show up and perform for three and a half hours? I said, just trust me, it's interactive, they're going to love it. And so I did this session, which I think ended up being like three and a quarter hours, something like that.

Richard Newman: 29:13

But the way that I built in these multiple standing ovations is that I made the audience the hero. And at one point I took a guy who was in the audience up on the stage and was giving him live coaching on his own public speaking skills and it was him that generated the multiple standing ovations, not me, because the whole audience then saw themselves on stage through his eyes as I was taking him through different activities and they loved it and he actually ended up based on the talk that I coached him to do. They felt it was so effective. They then sent him to Las Vegas to go and pitch what I'd coached him to work on to the CEO of the company, who then said he liked it enough that he paid for this guy and his family to get relocated to Singapore to set up a new branch of the company, like it's sort of. You know, it's nice hero's journey for him.

Richard Newman: 29:59

But I suddenly realized that the key behind this was, rather than me being up there aiming to motivate them, it was making sure that they see themselves in the entire scenario. And then, you know, he got. I think he got three standing ovations and I got one at the end, or something like that. So you know, allowing people, whoever you're speaking to, to see themselves as the hero of the situation is the ticket to that sense of real connection with your message.

Philip Sessions: 30:24

That is awesome. That's awesome that you did that and really, if you will, stood up for yourself and said, like hey, I need this time, and then bringing that person on, he said that's huge. And that's actually something that I've been trying to figure out, because actually this Friday, from our recording, I've got a networking event and I'm doing, like talking about elevator pitches, and I'm actually going to use that same concept now because I like that and bring somebody up and like, hey, let's actually work through your elevator pitch right here, because I can tell you and just talk to you, but I'm not going to connect as well and it make as much sense, but if I start talking to you about it and using that person, that's going to be so much more powerful and that's literally what you did. So I really liked that you did that. And so, for the audience, I am trying to incorporate some way of bringing somebody in, and a lot of times this would be somebody that works for you is, as you're having these team meetings and as you're speaking with your team and you're talking about new initiatives, bring them in, ask them for their feedback.

Philip Sessions: 31:22

I see too many leaders too often I've talked to too many that they basically say what's going to happen. They've already went to these closed rooms, they've made all these decisions and now they're just letting you know what's going on. If they would just even brought up like, hey, what do you think we're going to be talking about this soon, this topic, we want to move forward with a certain system or technology, what do you think You're going to have? Those people that are on the ground floor, so to speak, the people, the worker bees that will poke holes in this all day long and let you know, and now that leader can go back to the other leadership or senior management and talk about it, and now the workers feel like they have buy-in because they were actually able to give input back on that.

Philip Sessions: 32:10

So kind of that same concept, but something that you could really put into practice there in your own business as well, because too often I've seen too many leaders just think that, well, I've got to figure it out myself, I've got to do it myself, I'll just let the team know what's going on and that kills morale, like it maybe doesn't quite kill it unless you continue like you're doing this and you keep putting your foot down kind of thing, and people understand. There are times where it's just like, hey, this is the direction we're going, ok, understood. But if you do that every single time, you start losing that connection and really losing that culture in the company. And to boost that morale, boost that company culture, to me that is a great way to do that, to get that input and feedback from your, your employees.

Richard Newman: 32:58

Yeah, I so agree with you and I'm sure you've seen this, philip, many times. But I've always been talking to clients about making conferences interactive. So I saw too many back in the day where the first person who stands up is the CEO and they say, hey, everybody, this is where we are and this is where we're going. And then the CFO stands up and says this is what the numbers were last year and this is what the numbers will be next year. And then the COO stands up and then they talk about this is the update and the operations and we're heading over here. And then people go to coffee and they need the coffee because they're, like I've just sat there and passively listened and, you know, I don't feel like I'm really involved in this, and what they could have done was just created a memo on those three talks and said here's an update for you everybody before the conference. Now, when we get there, we're going to have, like you know, something lively, something interactive.

Richard Newman: 33:44

So I'm always talking to clients about saying what can we do to make your conference interactive? How can we show up and do something where people are learning, they are connecting with each other, they are developing skills, they're sharing ideas with each other because you know, people are too rarely together these days. So if they are together, then make sure they feel like they're together and they're not just you know, maybe watching what they could do is watch a movie of the CEO just you know, giving a pre-prepared talk on. This is the updates. You know. In order to make it valuable when people are together these days, you have to make sure you're really truly connecting with them and making them part of that experience. They feel super valued as they go through that conference or team meeting.

Philip Sessions: 34:23

Yeah, and nothing is worse for really anybody than to go to a meeting. That could have been summarized in an email. You spend an hour in a meeting and then I just think about that too, especially as a business owner. You look around in the room and you're like, okay, that person's probably making 50 grand, that person's probably making 100 grand, that person's making 150 or whatever that is. And you go around that room and you're like, man, you break that down to an hourly rate, you're like that's a couple grand here. That's like 10 grand.

Philip Sessions: 34:50

Just sitting here for an hour and I go send an email would have taken them five to 10 minutes to read. Would have saved tons of money. And then we could have came in together afterwards like, hey, make sure you read this before you come in, or we have a quick five minute video to go over something and then really get into that. And so with this interactive scenario and you gave us one, obviously can you share one maybe that's on a more day-to-day basis versus on the big stage that we could use as business owners to be more interactive with our employees as we have meetings.

Richard Newman: 35:24

Yeah, sure. So, yeah, I mean I love getting more interactive with people and I've actually really enjoyed exploring how you do it in person and how you do it virtually. And so you know, with the virtual sessions that I run, I'll have somewhere between sort of 50 people up to the biggest sessions you've done around 3000 people and I'm always keen to make sure that I can make those interactive. So to do that sort of scale of things, we'll use interactive software and essentially it's about ask, don't tell, and so, rather than just telling people hey, these are the numbers for last quarter, these are the numbers for next quarter being interactive and asking people questions, setting up quizzes around it, building curiosity around things, is a great way to bring people in, to really get them to think you know, do I know where we were, do I know where we're going, do I know why we're going there, before you even discuss what's been planned or what's happened or have that debate with them. So asking people, building curiosity into pieces, I think is a great way to go, and even if you have hundreds of people so when I've done, you know, virtual sessions with more than 1000 people because of the interactive software that's out there and available. I highly recommend Mentimeter if people are doing large sessions because it's so fun and it's anonymous and you don't have to download anything. You can take part. I'm not, you know, I'm not paid to promote it, but I really genuinely think it's great so you can get a level playing field where what I really enjoyed about it is that you can know what every person's thinking, that you can get messages from people about what they really care about, what they want from you as a speaker right now, and it's almost like a choose your own adventure as you go through the talk. So it doesn't have to be the way you thought the talk was going to go. It can be changing direction based on the mood and the feel of the audience as you go through. So that's more on a large scale If you've got a smaller meeting and if people are dealing with people in the room where they are aiming to connect with a smaller team of people.

Richard Newman: 37:14

I also talk about if you're asking questions. There's really three levels of questions that you want to be asking people about to get a true in depth, meaningful, purposeful interaction. So you can have level one questions which is sort of surface level questions which are more around sort of facts, data and context, where, if you're aiming to get a group discussion going as you mentioned earlier about you know how do you make sure that people feel involved in where the company is going or what's happening. So level one questions just set the context of you know. Could you share with me from your side of the business you know what the numbers were last week and could you share from your side on that project you're working on? You know where are we aiming to get to by the end of December? So you're getting facts and data from people. So there's a discussion of facts, and that's great, but if you stay there, it just feels a bit empty. It feels like you know numbers that could just be sent in a text.

Richard Newman: 38:05

Once you've done that, though, you set the stage for people being able to share information, and they feel like it was straightforward to do and they haven't been asked to open up too much, so they feel a level of comfort. Once you've done that with a group, you can then go to level two questions, and if you've known them for a long time, you might be able to go there straight away, which is more emotions. Emotions and opinions, and you know, with a group that doesn't know each other well or hasn't been together a lot, having level one questions is an important starting place, so they build up comfort with each other, they build up trust. They've heard their voice in the room and it was received well. Then you can get into level two questions where you talk about emotions, opinions, thoughts that people have around things, and so you freed them up on that idea of you, can share your voice. We will listen to you. You know you're open to say what you feel here and so you're much more likely to have an important bouncing of ideas between people, as they really share.

Richard Newman: 39:01

Okay, these are the numbers, but this is how I'm feeling right now. You know the numbers might be going up, but I'm feeling like you know the state of our company is going down, or it could be the other way around. The numbers don't represent it, but I feel excited about the future. I really think that if we head in this direction, it's going to bring things back around and you can get people excited and having a good, strong conversation with emotional questions Like how do you feel about this, what are your thoughts, what are your opinions? What impact would it make. If this happened, what could be the consequences over here? Getting them on that sort of conversation gets a lot of energy going and then the deeper question to get to is more about.

Richard Newman: 39:37

This is level three, where you get into more sort of survival level of questions of understanding from people. What do they really actually care about? You know what are their values that are driving what's important to them in the business or, if you're speaking to a client, what values are important to them in the buying decisions they might make with working with you. Because once you understand those pieces, then it makes sense of the whole rest of the picture. Because you might be thinking okay, I've shared with you as my team an idea that's going to save time and save money, and you're all saying no.

Richard Newman: 40:08

So clearly there's something deeper behind this that I need to understand about what matters to all of you for us to move forward. Same goes with a client. You're sharing with them something that would save them time and make them money and they still say no. So you need to know what is the deeper element that matters to them, and you can only do that by asking questions. You can't do it if you go into a pitch or you go into a team meeting with a set slide deck or 40 slides you're definitely going to show and, no matter what happens, you're going to share that and you say questions at the end. So you're sort of hoping that people are still awake by the end of the session. You want to be going in with yes, there could be pre-prepared content, but asking questions that really get people to think and to interact with you all the way through.

Philip Sessions: 40:49

I like that. Yeah, asking questions is so important. And something I think about too with that, with asking a question, is you can ask before you give the answer to see if people understand or what their thoughts are. Because if you're like, hey, yeah, how do you think sales are going this quarter? Oh man, they're great. And you're like, whoa, wait a second, like they're in the tank right now. We're down 30%, like why do you think they're great? And you can kind of get that feedback and, of course, don't come in judging them and everything, but understand that so you can understand where they're coming from. And that really gives you understanding of have I been preaching the right message? Have I been sharing our goals enough? Because if maybe your sales are at, you know they're typically up 30% from last quarter, but your goal was 50% from last quarter, and you know this, speaking German probably Germans are notorious for this where nothing's ever good enough, it always needs to be better, it's all.

Philip Sessions: 41:46

We could be better. We could be better, even if you do great, and that may be your mindset as the business owner that like, yeah, we did 30% better than last quarter, but we want it 50. So it wasn't great. Yeah, it's good, but it could be great. But your sales people are like, oh, this is great, we're doing the best we have done, but hit our goal. So you want to make sure you're also so asking that question. It gives a calibration of where they're at, but then you can recalibrate them and say, hey, I'm glad that you're excited about this, but our goal was this we need to make sure we go up there and meet that rather than being satisfied with this, and then the fact that it gets you all on the same page as well, so asking the questions super important thing. So I'm glad you brought that up and I agree with that completely.

Richard Newman: 42:31

It makes me think of a principle I often talk to people about for public speaking, which is the idea of riding the ocean. So what I used to do I trained as an actor when I was younger, went to a London acting school and what I realized I was doing wrong to begin with is I would learn my lines, but I wouldn't just learn the line, I would decide how I was going to deliver that line. I'd read it to myself 100 times and go that's the one, that's how I'm going to deliver it. Then I get into the scene and I deliver it that way, no matter what the other people on stage were doing, how they delivered their lines, how they felt the scene might go. And then I'd sort of be, I'd just be waiting for them to finish. And then I go here's the delivery of my next line, and I have no connection. And so the acting teacher had to say you're like half of acting is reacting. You're supposed to listen to them. And then, like the delivery of your line comes from that reaction. I was like really Wow, so I'm supposed to be like connecting with them, even when I don't have a line. I'm supposed to like be in the scene. Yes, richard.

Richard Newman: 43:28

So that was a huge lesson for me, which I now bring into public speaking, which is where, like sometimes, like I mentioned, I get often booked as like a motivational speaker and so I can go in there. I remember I used to go in thinking right, that's it. I have to go up there and be like so energized and the whole audience is going to be like really pumped from the first thing that I say. And you know, I realized then there were some meetings I went into where the speaker before me might have just announced there was going to be redundancies or I forget if you use redundancy as a word in the state, like there were people going to be fired or a restructure of the company. And then I'm going in as the motivational speaker and you can imagine if I got there like doing rara speaking from the beginning. It's not going to work.

Richard Newman: 44:09

So I talk about this as riding the ocean. So you sort of practice how you're going to pop up on a surfboard while you're on the beach and you get your technique there. But when you go out into the ocean you have to actually feel the ocean. So you know, if you start jumping up on your surfboard, like there's huge waves and the ocean is still. Well, you know you're not going to end up having the result that you wanted there. Same goes if you're imagining that it's still. It's really choppy. You've got to feel what the ocean is like and so you know, as you were mentioning as the suggestion there, philip, that idea of sounding out how people feel about the current state of the company and what the numbers are doing and so on, before you dive into saying these are the numbers and this is how you should feel about it, is going to allow you to feel the ocean and to know how then to move forwards.

Richard Newman: 44:54

And it will also dictate your tone, your body language on landing that message, because you could come in and just be all super excited about something when, when you say it, people might say, well, I don't care about that, and that's not good for me, because the thing I really care about is this thing over here. So, yeah, you've really got to make sure you're connecting with where are people right now, how do they feel, and then land your message based on that, just like I learned from those acting days.

Philip Sessions: 45:19

Yeah, so true. Well, richard, I want us to get to our last question. It's been a ton of great information, love, storytelling, asking questions, connecting all that stuff is so important public speaking. But I'm curious what is the message that you would share? If you could only share one message for the rest of your life, what would that message be?

Richard Newman: 45:37

Yeah, so for me, I think this is about seeing someone's greatness, and what I mean by this. I think it's so powerful as a gift that you can give to people around you to create a ripple effect that you'll never even know how far it goes is that when I was just before I started my business, I was sitting in my hair salon and getting my hair cut and I was working as an out of work sort of actor and I was interested in body language and communication and so on. I had these different aspects I was keen on. My hairdresser said to me hey, richard, what do you do? What do you do for a living? What are you interested in? And I talked to him about what I've studied acting. I taught English to monks across in India. I'm reading these books on body language. And he said how about I give you a free haircut and you come and teach my my hairdressers? And I said to him I can't do that. I don't know how to do that. I've never done that before. And he said no, you'll figure it out.

Richard Newman: 46:30

I see this is something that you could really do, and what was amazing about it is that a week I think it was about a week or two weeks before that, I'd gone to a recruitment company to try and find work, because I wasn't getting work as an actor. And they said to me the only thing you're qualified for is lifting furniture. That's the only thing carrying heavy furniture into a van. I said, come on, there must be something else, like a sales job, a marketing job. I've got skills, I've got charisma. And they said you don't have the qualifications for that lifting furniture, is it? And so there I was. Just, you know, few days later, in this hair salon, this hairdresser said to me I see you doing this. I'm going to give you a free haircut, you're going to come back in and you're going to teach them for a couple of hours. And at first I left there thinking, oh my God, that's so stressful, I can't imagine doing that. And then I thought I really appreciate the fact that he's seen this in me, something that I couldn't imagine doing myself. And so I went back in there and I delivered it, and I was terrified from the start to the finish. But I got to the end of it and they liked it. And they said can you come back and do some more? And so I went back and did some more, and one thing led to another, through sort of word of mouth, that then led me to building this company now, which where we've trained over 120,000 people, as you mentioned people all the way around the world. And I bumped into my hairdresser.

Richard Newman: 47:42

Many years later, maybe like 10 years later, I was at the airport and I took a picture with him, underneath the sign that sort of shows all the different destinations and when the flight's going to take off, and I said to him I want to take a picture with you here, because I said, if you look at that sign, I've been to virtually every destination that's on that board there Because of you, because you saw something in me I didn't know I had.

Richard Newman: 48:03

Now, clients all over Europe, all over the world, have booked me to go and work in those destinations. Because you saw something in me I didn't know I had, and that was such a gift to me. And so I would encourage people, particularly as business leaders, as entrepreneurs, who may be listening to this, if you can do that for somebody, whether it's a member of your family or somebody that works for you, or even a client in a conversation, if you see something in them that they don't know they have. It's such a gift to give them that you will never know years later how much that meant to them and how much they were able to go on and then achieve in the legacy that comes after that. So I'd say you know, as far as you can, in every situation, aim to see someone's greatness.

Philip Sessions: 48:44

I love that and I completely agree with that message. I've definitely been blessed by people that saw something in me and have given to me, and I do that where I can and plan to continue to do that as well as myself. I love that message and, richard, if people want to follow you, where's the best place for them to follow you, to be able to see more of what you're putting out there? Sure.

Richard Newman: 49:07

So probably the best place to go to is people go to liftyourimpactcom forward slash the book. So that's the name of my new book Lift your Impact. So liftyourimpactcom forward slash the book and if you go down that page it tells you about the book, but at the bottom you can get the first 25 pages of the book for free If you just sort of fill in the form and that sort of starts you on the journey of some of the techniques that I teach to clients. So that's a great place to go. People can also go if they're interested more about you know the wider work that me and my team do. They can go to ukbodytalkcom and then I'm available on LinkedIn Richard Newman from Body Talk and I also put out lots of content on Instagram at Richard Newman Speaks.

Philip Sessions: 49:49

Awesome. Well, Richard, thank you so much for coming on and sharing so much valuable information. We appreciate it.

Richard Newman: 49:55

Yeah, thanks so much. I really enjoyed the conversation, thanks.