Episode 58: Magnetism — The Mirror Matrix | Elevated Communicator Series, Part 7

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When she came to me, she was already disgusted because of the amount of effort that she had put into her program. She was a phenomenal coach. She had a great setup for her workshop. As a matter of fact, she was using material that was top-notch. I mean, I've had the privilege of being a Dale Carnegie trainer for over a decade. And the material, I mean, who doesn't know it? Who doesn't know how to win friends, right? So that I know what it's like when you have good IP. And her IP was licensed, it was solid, and she was using that IP, uh, licensed, to have an amazing workshop. I looked over her notes and they were extremely detailed. I even had a chance to see some of the anecdotes that she had planned in each of the um different parts. But the problem was when she went to get people to buy they didn't, there was radio silence. She had practiced all of the different components of the workshop and she delivered all of it perfectly. But what was missing is what cost her the sales. And I would say it's what's missing in almost every executive leader's communication toolkit. The level that we're looking at today of the elevated communicator framework is one that I call magnetism. That's a word that we really start to need to bring back into common language, magnetism. You've heard that magnetic. Oh, that person's magnetic, they're electric. You might hear something like that. That that person, when they come into a workshop or when they jump on a Teams meeting, they are like, I feel like they are really present. Well, magnetism is that thing. It's that quality, that characteristic that can only be described as that person has it. It's like you don't know what it is until you know that it's missing. And then what ends up happening is you have someone who is good at speaking. Maybe they pause, maybe they're animated. Heck, maybe they're even using amazing illustrations and body language, but they're missing this component, a certain je ne sais quoi, as the French would say. And what they're missing is magnetism. Magnetism has everything to do with engaging the audience. It's engaging the audience. I'm not talking about audience focus. We talked about that already when we talked about the message and making sure that the message ties to them. We talked about that audience awareness, and we talked essentially about shaping your message based on their three clear needs. That's pillar number two. Because that is a lot of times where things get lost. And in order for us to understand how we bridge that gap, what I've done is I created something that I call the mirror matrix. It's essentially, and I know you're not able to see this on the screen, and I'm not even gonna put it on the screen because most people are listening to this or not watching it. It's essentially a quadrant. Think of four quadrants, four squares. And there are several different uh things listed in each quadrant. And I'm gonna diagnose the young lady who was coming to me for coaching about running that business seminar. But at the same time, I'm gonna explain to you how this quadrant is a good way for us to evaluate if we're even making the connection with our material. Because as I said, you could have the best material in the world. I've dealt with tons of different Dale Carnegie trainers who have been trained in curriculum that has worked well in every industry for 112 years. I mean, that is no small track record. But yet they have trouble when they get into the room and then they go, well, I don't understand. I covered this, I covered the magic formula, I covered all this in terms of disagree agreeably. They have all of the different Dale Carnegie frameworks, and they can't, they can't make the connection. And the reason why is they're missing this critical component of magnetism. And it's essentially something you have to realize that connection is not like curriculum. Connection isn't captured, connection isn't downloaded, connection is created. And it's created by intentionality. And it has to be done at the level of your own awareness first. Because if you're not aware that you're not connecting, your audience isn't gonna understand why they just think you're nice and they don't want to invite you back or they don't want to give you their credit card. So for leaders, this is especially important because this is what's gonna differentiate you as an executive leader from someone who runs a meeting and people are like, oh, you did a great job at the meeting. You did a great job at the meeting. Remember, refer to my previous uh idea that if you're signing somebody's paycheck, they are seldom going to tell you if you suck at speaking. It's very, very infrequent. You have to have a really thick-skinned right-hand person or somebody that's at your level that is going to tell you, hey, you kind of bombed. I mean, I don't I know that it's a couple months before my performance review. And I know that the company is really in threat because of income not coming in. But I just also wanted to let you know that you're a terrible communicator. So I hope that has no feeling and bearing on my raise whatsoever. Of course, that's a difficult ask to give to somebody that's working for you, to be that honest. So you have to rely on some of your own self-awareness to see if you're actually being magnetic with the people that you're leading. Because if you're not, then you might be falling into one of the areas of this quadrant that you shouldn't. So I'm gonna give you a couple things to think about. And this is awareness. And then I'm gonna give you some action for what happens when we lose that connection. So there's gonna be some awareness and then some action. So the quadrant, let's go to the quadrant. You wanna ask yourself, am I bringing energy and am I actually reading the room? Those are the two driving questions for magnetism, not just energy. I've seen tons of people who have amazing energy. They come in and they are so over the top with their energy, but they can't read the room. They're not even paying attention. It might as well not even be a room. It could just be a blank, empty space, and they are here for the sheer purpose of just spewing out information. So, am I bringing the energy? Am I actually staying up? Like we talked about with movement. We talked about that time and peak of you actually revving up the engine doll when we talked about momentum. Now we're gonna ask you, are you still consistently bringing that energy? That's the first question. And if that's a yes, then the question bears on magnetism is am I actually reading the room? I have the energy, I got the content, I got the skills, I'm killing it. But is the room reflecting that energy? Or am I just a voice into the void of non-attention? So there's four areas to the quadrant. We're gonna start bottom left, first square, bottom left is going to be what I call the flatliners. And that's uh incidentally also a movie from the 80s starring Julia Roberts, and I think Kevin Bacon was in it too. It's a sleeper hit, um, it's a horror movie, but flatline, that's the first one. This is people that are not reading the room, and this is people that are low in energy. All right, so that's what the two quadrants converge at. Low energy, not reading the room. Those are flat line. These are people that are just punching the clock. These are the people that they hate being there almost as much as you hate hearing them. And they don't have, they don't desire to connect. They're there to punch the clock, they're there to get this over with, and they want to be gone like a freight train the second the meeting is over. So they don't care. And these are the people that you and I, if we're on a Zoom call with these people, we stop listening at about minute two. We're like, this person doesn't care. And I said this before, I think I said it last week. Your audience is not going to have more enthusiasm about your subject than you will. So if you're not even having the energy and you're not reading the room, ugh, we got to talk, pal. I mean, call me, seriously. It's not going well for you. And most executives aren't going to be in that mode. They're not going to be the flatliners. I hope they're not. I mean, you have to be really, really high up there for somebody not to flag and go look your presentations or, you know, if this isn't going well, right? So the flatliners, low energy, not reading the room, um, going through the motions. I mentioned a couple weeks ago about the guy that came in with the big manual, and he was gonna read the manual to us for an entire eight-hour workshop. And I was looking to see if I could kill myself with a fire extinguisher. I'm like, can I smash my face? Like, is that just gonna cosmetically damage this van Gogh of a face? Or am I gonna, like, what's gonna happen? Like, that's how bad it was. And it was because he was completely flatlined. That's not what he was here for. He doesn't care. He's getting paid a couple hundred bucks or a thousand bucks or whatever it is to do this talk. He doesn't care. So why did I none of us cared? The other contractors that were in the room, they couldn't care less. So those are the flatliners. All right, next, we're going to go up to the next quadrant. These are people that are high in energy, but they are not reading the room. And these are the broadcasters. These are broadcasters. They are amazing at energy, amazing at getting your attention off the jump, but they are not good at talking or communing with people. So these are the people that often are great at monologuing and they have a dynamic tone to their voice. They might even be somewhat entertaining, but they're the people that you're like, uh, that person was kind of self-focused, or they said a lot of really interesting things and they were really high in energy. But I felt like they weren't talking to me. They are broadcasters, they care about their message, they know the mechanics to make it sound sellable. They don't know how to make the connection. So, because of that, they'll come into a room, and when they are speaking, they have no application to the people whatsoever. I would say that the lady that I opened this podcast with fell into this category. She was good at her stuff, she knew the material, she had expert training, she even had some groovy illustrations, because I peeped those, they were good. But she wasn't thinking at all about what the room needed or what was going on with them, or trying to make a connection. And so she had done the work, she wasn't lazy, she wasn't calling it in, she wasn't flatlining, but she was just broadcasting. She stood up, said her thing, finished the talk, and nobody bought. Nobody wanted to buy. That's broadcasters. Sometimes pastors are broadcasters, they're good, they're dynamic, and they've been speaking for a really long time. And you're there, but you're like, I don't know that they notice that I'm here. There's a uh a writer that has been my writing mentor. I told you I write thrillers. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. I write thrillers on the side of what I do. It's truly like a hobby. I'm I'm not famous for doing it, but I have like five thrillers that I've released. And this writing coach that I was trained by, one of the things he always says is the greatest sin of all writers, most writers, is that they forget that there are people on the other side of those little black dots on the typewritten page. There are people on the other side of the black dots of the typewritten page. They get so enraptured by their prose and their turns of phrase and their plot twists and even their character development and all of the things and the uh the mulligans, um, you know, the different story structures, the conflicts, and even the resolutions. But they forget that there's somebody there that's reading that might not be as impressed with that stuff because they don't feel like they've been considered as a reader. And I'm not saying that you write to a reader just to please a reader, but what he's saying is you want to write knowing that somebody is gonna read your stuff and you want to try to make them have the best time as possible. That's the same attitude you have to have as a communicator. You don't want to broadcast because there are people on the other side of those words coming out of the hole in your face, as Jackie Chan would say in the movie Rush Hour. There's more, there's more going on than just the words. There's more going on than just the energy. And if you're not aware of people being in that room and how to connect in that room, if you lose them, they will think you were great, but they will think you are forgettable. They might not even remember you. Like, yeah, that was, I think he did good. And I will say, of the sins I've committed, it will be this one. I never have a problem with the energy. I never have a problem with being, you know, there and trying to be dynamic. But sometimes I haven't thought about the room so much. Sometimes I'm just thinking about making sure that my presentational T's are crossed and the I's are dotted. And that's going to put you in broadcast category. Still better than most speakers, not memorable enough to book or to think about after you've left. We'll come down to the bottom right. The bottom right, so come right across from the flatliners. Now we're into people that are good at reading the room. So this is the quadrant of people that are reading the room, but they are low in energy. And these are reactive folks. These are reactive folks. These are people who are maybe reading the room a little bit too much. They sense the room's energy. And instead of trying to turn it up or down like it's a thermometer, they or like it's a thermostat, they become the thermometer of the room. And if people aren't buying, if people aren't picking up what they're putting down, they collapse into themselves. They'll hold back. They will withdraw. They will cut things short. They will downplay themselves, they'll apologize. They might even freeze up in a in a moment of presentation. Oh, I have so many examples, but I'll give you one that I was coaching a brilliant, brilliant Dale Carnegie trainer. Brilliant. And I was helping with her certification. And she and I were working together in a group where we were working with high school students. And when we were working with high school students, now just so you know, I'm old, I'm well out of high school. If you've never seen my face, you're gonna go, oh yeah, he's well out of high school. Okay, you know, so I'm in my close to mid-40s. I'm not quite in the mid-40s, but I'm there. And I at this time was in like in my late 30s or whatever. So we're out of the high school scene. So you're not cool. I mean, admittedly, you're not. There, you're not. Like you have to give that up. When I speak to the young adults in my church, and when I speak near the youth groups, I'm not, no one's inviting me to the party. That's not happening. So that ship has sailed. So admittedly, I just go in with like the energy that I want to help these kids and I want to try. And I just want to be real. They care that you're real. So I was coaching them and it was great. It was a good group. Well, when my co-trainer got up, she noticed that one of the kids, every time that any of us spoke, she would laugh. The one of the kids. And when we would call on her, she would laugh. Well, I picked up right off the bat from the first session. I knew it was a nervous thing. Because kids do weird, awkward, nervous things. You were a teenager at one point. You might be a teenager now. You're weird and awkward. I love you, but it's you're gonna grow out of it, or it's gonna become a permanent part of you, and then people are gonna know you as that. Well, that's that's out of my realm to control. I'm just kidding. But the the reactiveness. Okay, so coming back. So every time we would call on her, she would laugh. Well, when I noticed that the other trainer was facilitating, every time this young lady would laugh, the trainer would get super flustered, like kind of in her head, and she's second guessing what she's saying. She's skipping things. And I pulled her aside and I'm like, what are you, what's the matter? You killed it when we did the what's the matter? And she said, This she keeps laughing at me. She's laughing at me. I said, She's not laughing at you. She's not even thinking about you. She's what's she laughing at? Every time I talk to her, she's laughing. I said, She's laughing because she's nervous. It's her energy, it's it's her culture. It's she's that's the way she is. It has nothing to do with you. I said, Watch, watch what happens when I coach. And then I got up and I did the same thing here. She was giggling just as much, just as nervous. She was nervous. She was nervous. It wasn't she was laughing at you, like like, you know, like everyone's gonna laugh at you like Carrie's mom. They're all gonna laugh at you. Not that. But it was it was a nervous thing. And when I told her, I'm like, this is they're not, these people aren't thinking about us at all. They're thinking, are they gonna get through this class? What am I gonna make them do? Is this gonna be embarrassing? And so what had happened is this reactive magnetism, this or this reactive energy took over. And she became the thermos, uh, the thermometer of the room, reading the temperature and being guided by it instead of setting the temperature as a thermometer as a um, oh man, thermostat. I'll get those two things right at some point. But you know, that's the anecdote. As a leader, and especially if you're an executive, you have to realize that you are not a um thermometer. You're a thermostat. You are the one that is to go in and turn the temperature up. You're to bring the enthusiasm. You're not to feed off of. Now, you might say, well, wait, didn't you just say it's not being in the room and being in the moment? No, you can read the room, and sometimes you're gonna have to course correct and adjust the room to a different place. We're gonna talk about that when I talk about how to recover in a minute because sometimes things do go south. But as a leader, it is your job to be the thermostat. You are to make the temperature come up or you are to bring it down. It's your job. It's not, you don't go into a room and go, huh, that that my staff was just, they were all over the place today. And I don't know. It was just really bad. And I'm not saying you don't have an off day, but your job as a communicator is to be magnetic enough to say, I'm going in there and I'm going to infuse energy into this, and I'm not going to allow my reaction to be determined by what they're doing in terms of their morale. I'm going to be proactive about my reaction, if that makes sense. I'm going to be proactive and not reactive. So you don't want to be reactive. And this is, you know, if you are a reactive leader, if you're a reactive communicator, you are going to be so forgettable because you're just going to become like everybody else. You're going to be nervously laughing, you're going to be apologizing for everyone. I'm sorry, I messed that up. Oh man, every mistake is the end of the world. That's reactive. You have the read on the room, but you're reading it too much. You're asking the room to tell you how to bring energy, and it's not going to happen. So your energy dips and you are low when it comes to connection. All right. Finally, we'll get to the fourth quadrant, which is the moment we've been waiting for, which is the magnetic quadrant. Yes. That's the goal. That's four. That is equal reading of the room, and that is equal high energy. That is a person that is connecting. That is a person who understands what's happening in that room and is able to utilize knowing what's going on in that room to become even more impactful as a communicator. You bring the energy and you tune into the channel that the room is also. Tuned into. And then you adjust in real time. This is when you adjust in real time. Um, this is when somebody will pay you the greatest compliment. And I got this this morning. I I don't get these all the time. So you I'm I'm you know, I've been a pastor for a long time. So I I have spoken thousands of times, I've preached hundreds and hundreds of times, not exaggerating that. I've done hundreds of funerals, I've done hundreds of weddings. So when I say this, and of course, I'm not even counting my coaching stuff and my public speaking in that, that's just a separate thing. So when I tell you that I've done every wrong thing, I promise you there is nothing that you have done that I haven't done 10 times. I promise. But one of the greatest compliments that I am ever given is when somebody stops me and says, this whole time, I felt like you were speaking directly to me. Who I don't seek affirmation. I don't. I'm not one of those people like I need accolades. I don't. But when somebody says that, I'm like, ooh, I'm cooking with gas. Because I know that I'm reading, like I'm genuinely thinking about the audience and I'm firing in the energy. Because if you're reading the room and you're not firing in energy, you're just reactive, right? Like I'm just like everybody else. But that means that I'm I'm locked in enough to catch how I can make an impact on those people. And that is presentation gold. And if you're a leader and you do that, holy macaroni. You just, but it requires you to be flexible. If you're super type A, this is probably going to be one of the most difficult things for you to master. Because you want that, you want those notes that you prepared in advance to dictate what you're doing. And the idea that I'm like, hey, you might have to kind of bulldoze that last point and just talk to them to they're like, no, I'm not, but what are you crazy? It's like, why don't you tell me to go out in a lightning storm and play a game of golf too while you're at it, right? Like the idea is incomprehensible to you, but that's where the money is. That's where the action is, is that magnetism because people can see that you are thinking about them and that you're speaking directly to them and they're gonna think this person genuinely cares about me. And when somebody says that, you are on the right track. I'm not saying that make that your end all be all when it comes to your communication development. But if you can get there, you're doing a great job. When I'm coaching and I one of my clients says, like, I've never thought about this before, and I feel like you're in my head, I'm like, oh yeah, I love that. Because that means that I've forgotten myself enough and my agenda enough to truly get in there and make a difference and do the work. That's it, dude. That's where you want to land. So be magnetic. That means you're reading the room, but you're also caring enough about um your energy that you're bringing the best of yourself. So uh yeah. So that's that's where you want to be when it comes to the matrix, the the mirror matrix, the magnetism matrix, whatever you want to call it, workshop the title, do whatever you gotta do. Um now, I want to just talk briefly, and I've done similar things to this before. So this isn't gonna be like new, but it's gonna kind of be a refresher of essentially what do you do if you have become reactive in the room, if the room has kind of sucked the life out of you, if it's knocked the wind out of you. I I've talked about what happens, and it's probably worth a listen if you go back and talk about if somebody in your meeting is hostile. And I'm not talking about somebody that kind of has a difference of opinion. I'm talking about somebody that genuinely like hates your face and doesn't want you to be doing what you're doing. And it's not a great place when you are speaking to people and you know they feel that way. And again, thousands of sermons, hundreds of weddings. There's been times when I go into a room and I'm like, a lot of these people don't like you. And it's you just gotta suck it up like your medicine. You throw some sugar in it and stir it up and you deal with it. But I'm gonna give you something that I uh keep in my back pocket as a recovery if the room is not hospitable to you. Okay. This is my three-step hostile recovery protocol. All right. The first thing is you want to absorb. So, what do I mean by that? You kind of want to acknowledge in some way either what that person said or the tension if it's a room that has a lot of tension. I uh spoke to someone that had to lay off a significant amount of their staff. I'm hearing more and more of this because of AI, because people are becoming overly cautious or maybe rightfully cautious. I don't know. I'm not a guru, but I know a lot of workplace uncertainty has crept into mindset. So you don't want to walk into that room. And if people are already feeling uncomfortable, disillusioned, and discouraged, you don't want to not acknowledge that. So you have to kind of absorb that and acknowledge it. If somebody differs from opinions of you, you want to absorb it and acknowledge it in a way where you're showing them that you're there, but you're not, again, going to allow yourself to be the thermometer. You have to change the direction in the second part where you become the thermostat, which is you want to redirect. So this is where you are essentially looking for common ground. This is where you can get a point of agreement. This is where you make what the bitter thing is as neutral as possible. Think about adding water to vinegar. Think about cutting, um, you know, cutting uh concentrated tea with iced tea that's already been frozen. I don't know. Use whatever kind of liquid mixture you want to make this illustration make sense. You want to dilute that dissension in some way. And there are tactics, again, I devoted a whole episode to what do you do when you're disagreeing with someone and how are you in there? But essentially, you want to try to get that ship out of choppy waters and get it back to where you can actually keep yourself at the helm. And then the last thing is you want to re-it reset. And what I mean by this is you want to take control by either telling something as a story, like giving an anecdote, a personal one, or re-engaging with some sort of a question that everyone can participate in. You want to keep control of that because otherwise you're letting control go to your team and you're letting them dictate instead of you dictate. So this is really, really important to uh do to help. So I'll I'll give you a super clear uh example to the best that I can. Um when we uh decided to open our church after uh COVID had closed it. We had a small staff. There was only four of us on the team. This was a really big meeting because none of us wanted to do it, but we knew it was the right time. And the pastor, the senior pastor, he was really for us opening as early as we could. Now we were doing everything legal, but the government was only permitting us to do certain things. And some of us, myself included, on staff, we kind of felt like, you know, maybe we're kind of rushing this. And most of the staff felt like that. But the senior pastor, this was this was it. So at the end of that meeting, the senior pastor said, Look, I know that you probably don't agree with this. Okay, that was absorb. He walked into it and said it pretended like it wasn't a big deal. I know that this seems uncertain to you, but I felt very seen and very heard. He said, However, he said, We can do this. I need your help. We want to project hope to the church. We want to be people who are faithful enough to say, we trust the Lord that he's gonna protect our lives and we're gonna do safe, we're gonna do this safely, even if we put ourselves at some sort of risk, we know that this is what God wants. That's the redirect. None of us were like, I actually don't hang on, I actually don't want to do what God wants and care about the church. Like nobody said that. There was not one person, okay? And then he kind of asked a question. And the question he asked was so pointed. This is that reset. He said, Are you willing to jump in with me and do this? And all of us said yes. And I was there and I we made it happen. And we opened one of the first ones to open, and God was good to us, and you know, through his leadership and through his redirect, we were all on the same page. We were completely united. That's what you have to do as a leader. Even when it sucks, you gotta be like, I gotta get in here and do some, we gotta do some internal work here. That's reading the room. That's not just saying, hey, we're gonna open up, it's great, and it's gonna be fun, and everybody loves it, and you might die, but it's worth it. And that nope, nope, not at all. That redirect, that absorption, that reset gave us the opportunity to really buy into the vision. And as a leader, you have to be willing to put yourself out there to do this, or else people are gonna think that you're broadcasting to them and they will not respect that leadership. They won't respect your communication. And if you're gonna be an elevated communicator, you want to make sure that the communication level that you rise to involves caring about what's going on in that room. So ask yourself what quadrant you're in. Ask yourself, are you in the magnetic quadrant? So next week, next time we talk, we are going to look at how to sustain doing all this and the final level that again, these get harder and harder and they're progressive. Almost no leader does. I do it because I train myself to do it. And we're to talk about what to do to actually stay at the top of your game as an elevated communicator. In the meantime, let me coach you. I can help you really quickly, give you some wins. Podcast at SamuelLinton.com. You could go onto my website, samuellinton.com slash audit, and see how you're faring as a communicator and see where your confidence level is. And let me help you because I know that you have the capacity to be a communicator that others will die to listen to and die to partner with. But you have to be willing to get out of your own way and elevate your game. So thank you for tuning into the Sam Linton show. Find your voice, fix your mindset, change your world. We'll see you next week.