In this email, we’ll show you a simple technique you can start using immediately to increase the quality of your interactions—either with your audiences, or frankly, with anyone you speak to…
Where did we learn this technique?
We’re a huge fan of Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator and potentially THE world’s leading expert on negotiation.
We highly recommend his book, Never Split The Difference, to anyone interested in taking their communication and negotiation skills to the next level.
In this email, we want to look briefly at just ONE of Chris’s techniques.
He calls this technique ‘mirroring’.
The actual technique is very simple:
Just repeat back the last three words someone said to you.
Why is this so powerful?
Here’s what Chris says about it, in his own words:
“Mirroring. The hostage negotiator’s mirroring. It’s just the simple repetition of one to three words, one two three-ish words. Typically it’s the last one to three words of what somebody said. But when you get good at mirroring, you could pick one to three words from anywhere in the conversation. The other person feels listened to. It tends to connect their thoughts in their head.
Part of the message it sends to the other person is I heard every word you said word for word, and I’m proving it because I just repeated it back to you. But it’s not enough. I still don’t get it. And when people go on with a further explanation, they’re going to add more words. They’re going to change their terms.”
Try this—and see what the results are.
Once again, Chris’s book is a great resource for more of this stuff.
Another place to go, if you want to get more training on this topic, is our Daily Magician Tapes product.
The Daily Magician Tapes are our collection of exclusive interviews with some of the world’s best magicians and performers.
In one of the tapes, we ask magician John Guastaferro, who is also a CEO and keynote speaker, for his best advice on public speaking and clear communication to audiences.
In this discussion, John discussed:
- How he uses magic in keynote speeches and why it’s such a powerful tool.
- The power of being on stage (and why you should assume that everyone is ready to be inspired)
- The exact 4 sentence ‘mantra’ John recites before every performance
- How to be a great public speaker (John’s top tips)
- Why being an ‘expert’ does not necessarily make you a good speaker (and why speaking is about so much more than reciting facts)
- Why John Guastaferro believes that knowledge is in fact NOT power (and what real power is)
- The three things John believes you need to be successful in business
- The power of smiling (and why you should do it constantly)
- Why calling your performance an ‘act’ is an incomplete definition (and how you should think about it instead)
Listen here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/1HSygt8B2GX-eXDxjSmO2TDvQd31H02sp
Your friends,
Benji and Jacob
The Daily Magician
Helping Magicians Think Differently