Increase likeability with these 4 tips - How to get any to audience like you
Does likeability matter when you give a presentation? Let us try answering that with three simple questions.Question 1. What three subjects did you like the most in school?Question 2. What three teachers did you like the most in school?Question 3. By chance, were any or all of the three subjects you liked the most taught by the three teachers you also liked most?The answer to that third question is at the heart of this article. I share why being liked is important and also four simple tweaks you can make to your presentation to make you instantly more likeable to your audience and as a result, more successful in your presentation. Let us begin.
Why care about likeability in the first place?
There is an expression that goes – we buy from people we know like and trust. I think that is true. Perhaps even obvious. What is not obvious to many speakers is that they are not just speaking, they are also selling. They are selling ideas, concepts, knowledge and sometimes straight goods and services. And because many do not realize they are selling, they don’t think about how to come across as likeable to their audience even though it would make a big impact on their success.
But Wait! I don't care if they like me or not
You might ask – what is all this fuss about being liked? As a speaker, I have a job to do. I am there to pass on information and as long as I do that correctly, I have done my job. I am not there to make friends, I am there to speak!Perhaps you have heard or thought and said some version of this yourself. The problem with this thinking is that has an incomplete view of human nature as its basis. The full picture reveals that people will actively resist a message if they dislike the messenger. And the less familiar they are with the content, the more heavily they judge that content on the basis of its bearer. This is perhaps why students tend to favour subjects taught by their favourite teachers – likeable, charismatic teachers. It might also be why students, in general, abhor curriculum conveyed by curmudgeons.
Bottomline
All of this to say that although we as humans like to think we can be purely objective in assessing information, we are surprisingly bad at it. And the bearer of a message can have a bigger impact on how we receive information than we realize. We like hearing from people we like. Which is why we smile when we get a text from our loved ones and frown when we carelessly answer a phone call and then hear the words "Please be informed this call will be recorded for quality and training purposes"...
As far as human nature goes, true separation of message and messenger is an ego-massaging myth.
As far as human nature goes, true separation of message and messenger is an ego-massaging myth. And as a speaker, realizing this helps you get to work so that you can give your message the best chance at success. Now here are a few easy ways to do that.
1. Smile
There is an old saying that goes a smile costs nothing but it gives a lot. There is much truth to this. No one is going to send you an invoice for pulling up the corners of your mouth and showing a friendly flash of pearly whites. But the benefits to be derived from smiling have been shown to vary from increased attractiveness to longer lifespan! For our purposes, however, we focus on the power of smiles to convey 2 key messages – likeability and competence.
Smiling increases likeability
People don’t smile genuinely at people they hate, disdain or dislike. In general, only friends and people familiar to us warrant the squishing of our cheeks. Indeed, when we see a smiling face, our brain sends signals to our facial muscles and they, in turn, automatically begin to reconfigure so that we return the friendly facial expression. That is all a fancy way to say that smiles, like yawns, are contagious. Hopefully, your presentation inspires more of the former. But it is up to you to set the smiling ball rolling.
Smiles, like yawns, are contagious.
By smiling genuinely at your audience, you trigger a sense of friendliness that the audience instinctively wants to reciprocate. You create a connection; you send an unconscious message that you are a friend, that you mean well and that you have their best interest in mind. This does wonders for your likability since, as humans, we like people who we feel connected to and familiar with – people with whom we feel we share common goals. Signal this connection strongly, with a genuine smile and it will make you more likeable to your audience.
Smiling shows competence
When you smile, you not only look more relaxed, you actually begin to feel more relaxed. This calm demeanour conveys powerful unconscious messages to your audience that you know what you are doing. Otherwise, they think unconsciously to themsleves, why would you be so relaxed? This makes you seem more credible and trustworthy and underpins a motivation to like and to listen to you. As a result, the audience starts feeding you back positive energy which fuels more confidence leading to a positive and powerful cycle that benefits both you and your audience.
When smiling is not what you want
There are rare occasions when smiling is inappropriate and can be downright damaging. Examples are serious rhetorical situations like a Chief of Police addressing a shooting in a press conference. Or a president defending his stand on a military intervention. Closer to home for most of us, think about a CEO announcing cutbacks or layoffs. These are all circumstances where smiling is probably not the right facial expression at any point in the speech. Likeability still plays a role to be sure, but in a much more nuanced manner that is beyond the scope of this article.Suffice to say that these grave speaking contexts are rare. For most situations, a smile is welcome and most speakers, in most situations, would benefit from smiling more, not less.Having covered your face in smiles, let us now look at the rest of your body.
2. Use open gestures
In his interesting book, Winning Body Language, author Mark Bowden describes in detail the different ways our body language and other forms of non-verbal communication affect how we are perceived by others. Of particular interest for our purposes is his concept of TRUTHPLANE®According to the author, there is a sphere of truth that lies around the mid-section of the body. This area houses most of our vital biological organs – heart, lungs, stomach, spleen and genitals. Therefore, it is no surprise that when we feel threatened, our natural instinct is to “close-up” this area in an unconscious attempt to protect these precious organs. But Mark argues that you should get comfortable doing the exact opposite as closing up can make you less likeable. Let us look at this concept a little more.
Maul it over
Protecting precious organs is all well and good if you were being mauled by a cougar. But what is interesting is that our brains tend to interpret public-speaking as a threat and so we tend to treat it as such and close off our bodies in the same way as when faced by the threat of physical harm. This irrational misinterpretation is at the root of the fear of public-speaking and it is so important to understand the fear of public speaking and how it affects us that I wrote a special post covering what it is and how to overcome it. You can read that here.In the meantime, let us just say, that without conscious training and self-awareness, our tendency in public-speaking is to use closed body language or hide behind podiums (podia?). Think folded arms or clasped hands in front of the chest or groin. Postures like these send an unconscious message to our audience that we are holding something back or hiding something. It also communicates insecurity. None of these helps your likeability in the least. Closing off your body with your arms also hampers your breathing leading to a credibility crushing snowball effect as you may start to huff and puff in short, quick breaths to compensate for the hindered air flow and the resultant oxygen depletion. Not pretty.
Do this instead – open up and invite
Begin practising open body language when you speak. Stand tall and speak with your hands at your sides. When you gesture, make large motions with your palms facing upward and avoid hiding your hands at any point if you can. This open body language communicates, well, openness. It invites the audience into your world, and by implication, your message.
Open body language communicates openness and invites the audience into your world
People love being invited. You know this from back when you were not invited to the wedding of your cousin Betty. Sure, you were not going to go anyway, but it would have been nice to be asked. Similarly, your audience may not have come into your presentation ready to perform a mental 180-degree shift in their thinking - few audience members do - but hey, it's nice to be invited.On now to the 3rd easy tweak.
3. Dress to express
How you dress for a presentation can make or break. It is one of those details that few pay enough attention to but those who do know how powerful it can be.As far as getting your audience to like you more, one simple guideline applies – people like people like them. Therefore, it is advisable to dress similar, though slightly better, than your audience. For more details, check out my articles on the subject here and here.
As far as getting your audience to like you more, one simple guideline applies – people like people like them.
For this article, know that how you show up affects how you make out with your audience. They are more likely to like and listen to you if you don't look too different from them. Like all things related to people and perception, there is more to the story so I recommend reading this article for more insight.
4. Share personal stories where possible
The first three tweaks dealt in some way with delivery elements. But there is a powerful content element that few speakers use – personal stories. Most tell other people's stories or stick to cold sterile facts only as a rule. But personal stories can be very powerful likeability boosters when they relate to your message and flow smoothly into your presentation. (You can read this post on the mindsets of master storytellers to get you started.)Specifically, stories that show humanness and relatability to the audience can create a bond with the audience because, as mentioned earlier, people like people like them. Getting to know your audience ahead of time and figuring out similarities between you and them can enable you to develop your true stories that highlight these similarities. This tells the audience that you are one of them.I think this is a good point in this article to introduce an important caveat.
Caveat
Don't overdo this. Always recognize boundaries. If you are speaking to a highly specialized group – especially one with strong group identity, your attempts at similarity can be rejected. I know a professional speaker who got scathing comments in her feedback forms after her presentation at a conference because she had implied she shared professional commonalities with her highly academic and very accomplished audience. She meant well and her point was valid but it was ill-received. Maybe the audience members who wrote those remarks were just pompous jerks. But there is a lesson in her experience - be careful assuming likeness when speaking to a group bonded by rigour or suffering if you are not an initiated member of that specific group. You might have gone through rigours and trials by fire of your own to achieve what you have - my speaker friend and many speakers have - but the nature of non-inclusive groups is naturally to exclude others based on differences, not to embrace them based on commonalities.In these cases, you can still share personal stories to increase likeability, but zoom out to general human conditions. Bonding with the audience on general themes is not as powerful as specifics but it is better than nothing. And it is definitely better than offending the audience. No one wins that way.
Bonus Tips
The tweaks suggested in this article are strong starting (and enhancement) points. But there are also other ways to boost your likeability such as (but not limited to) using humour in your speeches and leveraging good voice quality. All these can go together to make a strong impression and improve your chances of persuading your audience. And, as the audience takes a liking to you, they will also be more open to liking and embracing your ideas.Until the next post, speak with skill.
