TheEmotionalContagionThe Secret To Making An Impact

A Scottish Centre of NLP Ebookwww.scottishcentreofnlp.com©Scottish Centre of NLP 2013 Steven Burns

A Scottish Centre of NLP Ebookby

Steven Burns

©Scottish Centre of NLP 2013

For more informaiton on our range of courses and trainings, go to www.scottishcentreofnlp.com

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“...And the next day the dog died”

This is probably the last time a line out of a book made me cry...

It’s from the book ‘I am Legend’ by Richard Matheson (the book is way better than the Will Smith film). It centres on Robert Neville, the last man alive, following a virus outbreak that’s turned the world’s population into vampires. The disease has claimed his wife and daughter and he was forced to kill his wife after she became a vampire and attacked him.

After several bouts of near suicidal depression and alcoholism Robert, being a scientist, decides to research and try and find a cure for the vampirism. About half way through the story he comes across what he believes to be an ‘uninfected dog’. It’s an incredible moment as it’s the first living, breathing contact he’s had for years. The first thing that’s moved that hasn’t tried to suck the blood out of his veins.

He spends several wonderful days with the dog until he eventually finds out that it too has the disease, it just wasn’t showing signs at first.

Then...the next day the dog died...

I’m not exactly sure why this line had such a powerful effect on me when I read it. I started welling up uncontrollably. It was really difficult to describe. The strange thing was, while it made me feel sad, I really enjoyed it. I was totally engaged. It made me feel alive.

The great film director Stanley Kubrick once said that a story is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

It’s true and the line had a powerful emotional effect on me.

Emotions are engaging. When it comes to social communication the absence of emotional intensity and variety can be a killer. If

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you’ve wondered why you don’t capture peoples’ attention as much as you’d like then there’s a high chance you need to ramp your intensity up a bit. You don’t even have to be positive and bubbly all the time you just need to have a bit of an emotional edge.

When you watch a film or read a book, not all of the emotions you experience are positive. The film usually takes you through a whole range of emotions. Some positive some negative as you go on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish.

Successful and engaging human interaction is like this. Life is like this! Emotion is the vehicle that drives us to do the things we do. It’s what captures our attention and makes us feel alive. When I read the line about the dog dying my neurology lit up. I wasn’t happy about it but I was totally engaged. My neurology was vibrating in a way that felt good but sad at the same time and its drama most definitely helped make the book one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve ever had.

Lack of emotion --- The biggest Social Killer...

Some people say that negativity is the biggest social killer. It’s not. The biggest social killer is boredom. The easiest and quickest way to make people run the other direction is to bore them into it. Boredom is born through lack of engagement and lack of engagement is created by an absence of emotional intensity and variety.

If you’ve ever watched the UK version of X-Factor you’ll most likely remember Portuguese contestant Wagner Carrilho (He was unforgettable!). He came up for a lot of criticism but it was impossible to deny his charisma.

It was a breathtaking watch as he managed to get to the eighth week of the show without being able to sing, move or even speak that well. The guy really was a human emotional rollercoaster. He even publicly lost his incapacity benefits because of his dynamic attempts at dancing on stage. It didn’t stop the nation being gripped and mesmerized by his progress though. It merely

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fuelled the flames of the enigmatic package that was Wagner.

Now I’m not saying you should purposely be crap just to be engaging. My point is, just don’t be boring. Learn to feel comfortable expressing your emotions a bit more.

There seems to be a desire for some (certainly more relevant with men than with women) to suppress our emotions, especially the negative ones, for fear of showing weakness or vulnerability. It’s a shame because it’s those very emotions that make us interesting. I don’t mean you should spend your day divulging intricate details of your most intimate pain, anguish and torment, just don’t be afraid to let your emotions out a bit. You’ll add more colour and depth to your character.

Certainly don’t ever think that you have to be an emotionless robot that never shows any of the bad stuff. Can you imagine going to a movie and it only contained happy, positive emotions? No struggle, transformation or redemption? How dull would that be? It’s the contrast that makes it interesting, the variety that keeps you hooked.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling and expressing a whole range of emotions. It’s obviously a problem if you become stuck in a bad place and can’t get out but there’s nothing wrong with going there from time to time. It’s what makes you human and helps you relate and connect. No-one’s perfect after all so why should you be?!

One of the most popular self help books of recent times is a book by Personal Development Guru Tony Robbins called ‘Awaken the Giant within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny’.

It’s a really good book actually but it does reflect the sometimes toxic need people have for control.

Complete control is something you think you want when your life isn’t working out but it’s not really what you need. It’s an unobtainable illusion. You can’t get it so stop trying. By all means

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work towards resolving your problems but if your end goal is complete control then its time to re-evaluate it.

There’s a phenomenon in the personal development world my business partner and I like to talk about called ‘All smile and no soul’. If you’re into self help then it’s a trap you can fall into quite easily. I fell into it myself when I was a bit younger.

It’s where you become so ‘hooked’ on self improvement that you forget to be human. Your pursuit of becoming better and better as each day goes by turns into an obsession for perfection. You’re seduced into striving for complete control and utter dominance of your inner and outer world. A noble goal you might think but one that has some pretty weird by-products.

Of course you don’t have to be a self help addict to fall into the ‘emotionless zombie’ trap. For a variety of reasons some of us ‘switch off our emotional switch’. Perhaps you’ve been hurt in the past and subconsciously decided to suppress your emotions. Maybe you’ve been teased in the play ground or at work for showing emotion and bought into the myth that it’s a sign of weakness or perhaps it’s something you learned from your parents (Heterosexual Men tend to be more susceptible to this as power and strength are so strongly linked to their chances of sexual selection).

I can totally relate to all those things as I’ve been there. Stepping out of the shadows comes with its hazards but the huge benefits to the colour and shape of your character totally outweigh the negatives. You’ll become infinitely more engaging, interesting and more comfortable with yourself. The ones who criticise? Well I guess they’ll just have to get over it.

A Guide to Becoming more engaging – The power of emotional contagion...

There’s a lovely story i heard about an American Platoon during the Vietnam War. They were situated down in some rice paddies, in the heat of a fire fight with the Vietcong. All of a sudden a line of six monks started walking in between the gun fire. They didn’t

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look right or left towards either of the soldiers they just kept walking calmly and peacefully across the battle field. Interestingly enough not one person from either side fired a shot at them.

One of the American soldiers recalled the incident as one of the most bizarre experiences of his life as, after they walked past, suddenly all the fight was out of him. He said that, all of a sudden he just didn’t feel like he wanted to fight anymore, at least certainly not that day. It must have also been the same way for the Vietcong because they too just stopped fighting.

On a less dramatic level we all regularly experience this strange yet powerful emotional transfer when we are around other people.

When we meet someone who is so enthusiastic and passionate about what they do it’s almost impossible for some of it to not rub off on us and change the way we feel. On the flip it can be equally mesmerizing when someone is strongly negative. It’s the intensity that pulls us in, the high drama that captures our attention and leads our imagination.

We like to think of ourselves as logical, rational beings but in reality we’re not.

We tend to make most of our decisions through feelings and emotion then back them up afterwards through logic and reason.

The monk’s ability to pacify the soldiers in the heat of the battle is probably one of the more dramatic examples of how contagious emotions can be. On a more subtle level though, emotional exchange occurs in practically every conversation and interaction we’re involved in. So it goes without saying that learning how to manage this exchange is incredibly important.

In 1994 Elaine Hatfield, John T Caciocco and Richard L Rapson wrote a book called ‘Emotional Contagion’ that focused on this phenomenon of emotional transfer. What they found was that in any social interaction there is a tendency for some of the participants to naturally mimic another person’s expressions,

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vocalizations, movements and postures and consequently become infected by that persons’ emotional state.

They also found that, if its large group of people and the infection reaches critical mass, the intensity experienced by those infected increases significantly. This goes a long way to understanding how Martin Luther King managed to spread a feeling of love and self worth amongst most of the black community or how Barack Obama became President by filling people full of optimism and hope for the future.

To flip to the darker side for a moment, it also points to how Hitler managed to whip up such a power fuelled hate frenzy in Natzi Germany. Emotions are contagious. They mesmerize. They draw people in.

Again, like I’ve said, you don’t have to be all happy, happy, high energy and positive around people every minute of the day to be compelling.

In fact, from experience if being happy, positive and full of energy is all you’re about then it can eventually have a negative effect with a lot of people. It’s what I like to call the Club 18-30 syndrome.

If you don’t already know, Club 18-30 is a British holiday company who pride themselves in their upbeat, high energy, positive approach to holidaying.

If you’ve ever been to one of these holidays you’ll know that the holiday rep spends pretty much every minute of their time whipping you up into a positive emotional frenzy and then plying you full of as much alcohol as possible. This, of course, may appeal to you but I’m sure there’s only so much of this kind of thing you can take.

People do tend to be attracted to those who are positive, happy and upbeat but if that’s all you’re about then it can become tediously familiar and sometimes irritatingly condescending.

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What I am suggesting is that you have a bit more depth. I’m suggesting that you develop the ability of having a range of emotions you can go into, express and lead people through while still maintaining a positive, happy base. Incidentally enough it’s actually the basis of most charismatic leaders - The ability to make people feel good about themselves and the future while leading them through a whole range of emotions both positive and sometime negative. They know how to motivate and inspire while touching your soul with tragedy and adversity.

It really is like watching a great movie. The most enjoyable movies are the ones that touch you deep inside and move you in ways that you can’t quite describe verbally but know that you feel within. I cried when I watched Will smith succeed in ‘The pursuit of happiness’ but it wasn’t just because he succeeded. It was because he triumphed over adversity. It was because of the pain and struggle he and his son had to endure to get there.

By developing the ability to lead people through a wide range of emotions you impact them at a level that most people don’t and leave an impression that stays with them long after you leave.

Becoming more emotionally engaging...

Tip one -- Going There First

The first way to be more emotionally engaging is actually a pre-requisite to all of them and that is…you must go there first…

No matter how hard you try you’ll never manage to give someone something you do not yourself possess.

Similarly if you can’t go into an emotion yourself, even just a little, you’ll find it very difficult to infect someone else with it.

The emotions you radiate from the inside out is what some people often call your vibe. It’s what makes an impact on people before you even say a word.

If you want someone to feel passionate around you, you have to

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feel passionate yourself.

If you want people to feel comfortable around you, you’ve got to feel a certain level of comfort yourself. If you want people to feel sexually aroused around you, you have to be able to go into a sexual state yourself.

If you can go into an emotional state and hold it at a certain level of intensity then people will usually follow to some degree. Generally speaking when two people interact and are in rapport with each other, the direction of emotional transfer from one to another is decided by who is most certain, forceful and intense about their emotional state.

As said by Hatfield, Caciocco and Rapson, “in any social interaction there is a tendency for some of the participants to naturally mimic another person’s expressions, vocalizations, movements and postures and consequently become infected by that persons’ emotional state.”

That if you deliberately go into an emotional state of reasonable intensity while you are around people, it’ll be reflected in the way you move, gesture and speak and result in many of them coming with you into the emotion.

Putting it into Practice: Going there first

Here’s a fun little exercise you can do to practice going there first. A lot of people think you have little influence over how you feel but that’s simply not the case. The exercise will help you1. How would you like to move people? What emotions would you like to add to your range so you can become more engaging? Fun, excitement, fascination, power, strength, scepticism or something else?

2. Take a minute just to go inside and remember a time when you felt that emotion. If you can’t think of any time then ask yourself, “What it would be like if I could feel that emotion?

3. As you think about this memory see what you saw, hear

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what you heard until you begin to feel the feelings of that particular emotion.

4. Re-adjust your physiology in a way that signifies this emotion.

5. Continue to remind yourself of this memory or what it could be like to feel this emotion and allow the feeling to build only as far as is appropriate for the situation at hand.

6. Practice this technique regularly. You can even practice speaking from this emotional place and notice how it changes the vibe you give off (this is one of the techniques actors use to become more engaging and convincing by the way).

Tip 2 – The Power of Reminiscing...

A wonderful way to make your interactions more emotional and engaging is to use the power of reminisce. Encouraging a person to reminisce is to gentle remind them of a past memory where they felt some kind of emotion.

Any time we go back and remember a pleasurable time in our past, we begin to recover some of the feelings that we got back then. Generally speaking, the more you think about a past pleasant memory, the more vivid it becomes and the more the feeling builds.

We actually do this all the time. If you’ve ever been in a conversation and someone says “do you remember when we did this.....” and then go one to re-live a past story involving the both of you, you are both entering the process of reminiscing.

Reminiscing can be done through talking about shared experiences or gently guiding a person into one of their own emotional memories.

For example you could say something like - “Hey you know what I was thinking about the other day? Remember that time 6 months ago when you were voted

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employee of the month?”

“That must have been amazing, what did it feel like right at the time they told you that you had won?”

By asking them to tell you about the time you are encouraging them to go inside and remember what it was like. What makes this so powerful is that it is a very natural way to engage a person’s feelings. We love to talk about our own experiences especially if they are positive and make us feel good.

While this works really well with people you know and have had shared experiences with, it also works well with people you’ve just met.

In the early exchanges of a conversation there is usually a fair amount of probing and questioning in an attempt to find some common ground and areas of mutual interest. This is a good time to keep an eye out for the person’s passions and the things that really get them going in life. Keeping a mental note of these areas is useful as they can act as pathways into a more emotional conversation.

Tip 3 -- Being Random...The lure of the unexpected…

Being random is an excellent way to making an impact on people emotionally, especially with a touch of humour. The human brain loves to make things easier for itself and as such is constantly looking to generalise and fit things into categories and this includes people.

The three questions that most people ask early on in a conversation are:

What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do?

There are a few reasons people ask these questions but most of the time it’s to find some kind of common ground and, probably

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more accurately, to fit you into some category in their minds.

We all run through patterns like this and that’s why being random in a humorous way has such a powerful effect. It interrupts these patterns and stops people from just fitting you into some box or category in their minds.

People feel safe and comfortable with the familiar but learn from and are attracted to what’s different.

By saying something unexpected like this from a place of humour you are injecting an element of difference while maintaining a certain level of comfort. This is tremendously attractive to people and, as long as you don’t completely violate some social rules and push it too far, it can add an extra dimension to your communication and help make a lasting impression. For example just imagine you asked someone what they did for a living and they looked at you with a straight face and said, “Well actually I’m a stripper, Can’t you tell” then smiled after they said it…Unless you took yourself immensely serious it would be difficult not to have some kind of emotional reaction and the interaction would certainly be memorable. Doing what’s not expected is tremendously powerful…

Almost even saying something that probably shouldn’t be said…

It’s more of a high risk strategy but if it’s said in a humorous way with a smile after you say it and not distasteful then it more often than not creates a sudden powerful impact.

We all have social faces that we present to people and most of us deep down feel inhibited with having to adhere to social rules and norms.

Being random and doing or saying something unexpected breaches those social norms and, as such, ignites people neurology in a wonderfully refreshing way.

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Of course there will be situations where it’s not appropriate to be random and unexpected (ahem funerals?!). Just use your judgement and experience taking a few risks along the way and you’ll reap the benefits.

Closing comments...

There are lots of ways to make an impact on people. The main key is to avoid the biggest social killer, boredom, and to add some emotional variety into your interactions.

When you incorporate this skill set into your everyday communication you’ll be amazed at how it can positively affect your results in a big way.

When I taught the basics of this to my client Ben it was the missing piece to his way of interacting with his work colleagues and clients. When he then attended one of our NLP Training courses he learned a whole host of new skills to add to those basic principles that elevated him way beyond what he thought was possible.

He went from being on the verge of the sack to picking up an award for being among the top 10 salesman in the UK within one year.

The beauty of it is they are principles that can be easily learned by anyone.

Enjoy playing about them and feel free to let me know how things go at info@scottishcentreofnlp.com.

If you’d like to attend one of our NLP Trainings in Glasgow whether that be one of our intro days or our certification programmes drop us an email and we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.

Take CareSteven Burns

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