292. How to get what you want
Persuasion isn't about being pushy, it's about helping people understand, connect with, and act on your ideas.
In this episode, I sit down with communications expert, TEDx speaker, and author of How to Get What You Want, Josh Bandoch, to explore the art and science of persuasion.
In this conversation, you'll learn:
Why great ideas often fail without great communication
The "Persuader's Mindset" and why persuasion starts with putting your audience first
The role emotional intelligence plays in influence
The surprising power of positivity in leadership and persuasion
The "Granny Test" for making complex ideas simple and memorable
Transcript
Hello. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to That Voice Podcast. The question of the episode is how to get what you want, what you want. I'm in such a Friday afternoon mood. That is the amount of singing you'll be getting for today, though, we are learning all about the science and art of persuasion with Josh Bandoch. Now, Josh is a comms expert. He's done a TEDx talk on Persuasion and is the author of the brand new book, How to Get What You Want. Persuasion is critical to having influence when you speak. It's critical to making your mark, leaving your voice print. That's the name of my book. It's critical for being remembered.
I'm running a free class called Speak to Be Remembered on Tuesday, June 2. So if you are listening to this episode, hot off the drop, and you're here before June 2, then head over to the show notes and make sure you are registered for this free class. I'll be teaching you how to make your voice memorable. I'll share a simple framework so you can get to the point and I will reveal the number one vocal habit that is killing your credibility. So hit pause and register for that. Then come back to learn more techniques for how to get what you want.
Sally:
Josh Bandoch, welcome to That Voice Podcast. Great to have you here.
Josh:
Sal, it is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.
Sally:
So what got you into studying the art and science of persuasion?
Josh:
Glass ceilings? I have seen so many super smart people first in academia. In my previous life, I was an academic and I saw so many high IQ people with fancy degrees from Ivy League schools teaching at really great schools, and they just weren't persuasive. That would bring all of their logic and their data and their reason to conversations. And somehow other super smart people would radically disagree with them. I was like, well, what's what's going on here? And then in my life as a fundraiser and a speech writer, and then as a policy advocate, I've seen so many people with great ideas who just cannot communicate them effectively. If you can have a great what, which so many people do, and if you can pair that with a great how, meaning how you talk about it, you can crash through your glass ceiling and do so much more, more professionally and personally than you ever thought possible. So this book helps people do that.
Sally:
How to get What You Want is such a good title.
Josh:
Yeah.
Sally:
You said you work in policy. What's been one of the hardest policies to get across the line?
Josh:
Well, I think one of the, the biggest barriers that folks in the policy space face is when they're talking to somebody who doesn't think like them. So somebody who's maybe on the other side of the political aisle. I think the barriers that you have to overcome are really framing things in your audience's terms. Because in the policy space, the reforms that happen most readily and are most durable, that means that they last over a long period of time are ones that have a little bit of buy-in from both sides so that the other side isn't looking as soon as they get into office to overturn that, which means you have to know how to work with people who don't think just like you politically. And if you can do that, you know, in America we've had some really great bipartisan reforms over the years and they've always had that bipartisan element. Whereas when something is radically partisan, the party who didn't support it comes into power and the first thing they wanna do is overturn it. And I think that's one of the most important things in policy advocacy is to get some buyin from people who don't think like you.
Sally:
Here in Brisbane, we had this thing called the "Millennium drought", and it was around the two thousands where there was just a big problem with not having enough rain. And so there was a lot of different water infrastructure put in place. And the reason I know this is because I, before I worked as a voice and communication advisor, what I do now, I was a spokesperson for the city's water and sewage company. And so a lot of that was around being, you know, persuasive about things people shouldn't, shouldn't flush and water conservation. And it was really interesting because as part of that infrastructure, they built this thing called the Western Corridor, but it was this big recycled water scheme and it's a really great way for water sustainability. Huge millions of dollars spent on this project. And why couldn't we get it across the line? We couldn't win in the court of public opinion.
Josh:
Yeah.
Sally:
It wasn't communicator. Right. And there's a city near me called Toowoomba, and there was a big headline on the newspaper called "Poo Womba". From that moment, people were just not interested in the idea of recycled water. We didn't persuade.
Josh:
Yeah. And so it's like, that happens all the time, right? Really great ideas. It's, I mean, water is an enormous issue all around the world. And it's like, Wow, okay, that's, that's a great example. And so you have to really think about who are your audience and audiences are and what their values are and frame things in terms of their values and in politics, left versus right. It's a little bit tricky. So you have to know how to kind of frame things in ways that appeal to both sides without being aversive to either side. And then you have to tell stories. All these tactics I talk about in the book, that it's like this package of things, it is an only good policy. You have to layer on top of that persuasion.
Sally:
In the book, you write about the Persuaders Mindset. Tell us what that is.
Josh:
Persuasion starts by having the right mindset. It's about them, not you, which means that you have to put them first. A couple summers ago I had an intern, his name was John, nice kid, smart kid. He goes to a good school and John thought that the way to showcase how excellent he was was to wave his hand, talk a lot, say, Hey, hey, call on me and even interrupt people, interrupt me sometimes. And a couple weeks in, I had to kinda explain to him that No, no, like interrupting me and other people not so good. And that he had to flip his perspective and not showcase how great he was, but rather to put the team first and to put other people first. And the great thing about this was that over the course of the summer, John transformed and he literally understood that the best way to succeed was to understand, put our need first. He did that and by the end of the summer, he was outperforming all of the other interns we kept him on, gave him a promotion because he learned to put them, the team first. The trouble is that we're wired to think and talk about ourselves. It generates the same sensations in our brain as sex and money, and it helps us survive. It's just that it's out when I make it all about me when I'm talking to you, how does that make you feel?
Sally:
This is similar to public speaking. I often say get off Me, me Island. So it's not all about you. It's, you know, you can't be nervous if you stand in service. So you're in the mindset, you're putting the audience first. What is the next step? What else can we do to be persuasive?
Josh:
One of the things I do in the book is I dive into just a lot of neuroscience, psychology and just our cognitive wiring. And if we can just make some shifts and understand and make some shifts, persuasion is gonna be so much easier. So the first one, wired to think about ourselves, you gotta put them first, the next one. And this is the one that anybody who is intellectually oriented that makes him really uncomfortable, a lot of 'em just hate it. This is what all neuroscience says. We are wired to feel first, which means that persuasion starts with feelings. It doesn't end there. Logic is still important. What it means though is that if you can take your IQ and layer on top of that high emotional intelligence, oh my goodness, you are so much more persuasive. Then the next one is, well, what kinds of feelings?
Josh:
We are wired to be negative. We are wired with something called negativity bias. We pay attention to negative things way more than we do positive things. And it's a survival mechanism. Negative things are threats and we have to be careful. The trouble is that negative feelings aren't persuasive. And I always ask people who the most persuasive Americans of the 20th century were, and they always say the same people. They say JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, they were all positive, happy warriors. What's the best way to generate persuasive feelings? Appeal to your audience's values, even if they aren't your values and what is the best way to appeal their values? It's not with logic, it's with a story because we are wired to be story processors. That's the quick version of all of our cognitive wiring, if we can just understand that, navigate it. Kind of switch things around a little bit. Your chance of persuading are so much higher.
Sally:
Oh, love that. It's not what we want the audience to know. It's how you want to make them feel as this quote I've heard that people always decide on emotion and justify with logic. Why do politicians always tend to go negative in campaigns?
Josh:
I think the impulse to be negative for politicians is probably even stronger. There are good reasons and bad reasons for it. The good reason is that oftentimes people get into politics because they look at status quo and they say, I don't like something about that. Right. Something motivates them. And then the news, right. Really follows negative information. The old phrase, if it bleeds, it leads well, okay. Tiktok in particular is programs to just feed on negative things. I would ask the question though, are you simply there to be negative and get people fired up if you instead have long-term goals that you wanna really make a difference? When you think about in America, JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Ronald Reagan, they were positive. JFK said, ask not. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, and Ronald Reagan saw America as a shining city. And we think about them 30, 40, 50, 60 years later as these phenomenal leaders. So if you have a vision and you want people to follow you over the long term, then positivity is what you need, not negativity.
Sally:
Oh, so well said. Those examples you shared, they're persuasive to the audiences in the moment and they continue to persuade many, many years after.
Josh:
Absolutely.
Sally:
And that's a real example of, of the art and the power of persuasion as legacy. Well beyond the audience in front of you, you write about the Granny test. It's another one of my favorite parts of the book. What is the Granny test? How can we use that?
Josh:
When I was a graduate student, I did the whole PhD thing. I attended a seminar and there was a guy there in his field. It was, he went to the, the number one program and there was a professor in the room, really well respected professor, and this kid gave a presentation 15 minutes and he was speaking English, but I didn't understand a word he was saying and I felt so stupid. And then this professor raises his hand and he says, I didn't understand anything you just said. Ooh. By contrast, the same professor. I saw him at another seminar. He started off the presentation and he said, My superpower is that I make really complicated things simple and clear. Huh, okay. I thought that's really arrogant. And an hour later was like, No, no, no, that is your superpower. Okay, here's a Granny test. Would your Granny understand what you're saying?
Josh:
The grad student from the really school, I didn't understand it and Granny would've been super confused by contrast, my Granny could have followed every word that this famous professor said. Even though he was talking about really complicated things, he made them so clear and so simple. So if you are really smart, you got all these great ideas and people don't understand you, it doesn't matter. It's your fault and it's your problem. In fact, moreover, people default to sophisticated language because they think it makes them sound smarter. The research shows actually that when people do that, the audience judges them as less intelligent. So if you can simplify and clarify what you're saying such that your granny would understand it, anybody's gonna understand you. And that crystal clarity is so powerful.
Sally:
Yeah 'cause clarity creates connection and a whole lot of jargon just creates distance. This is why I do the work I do as well because there are so many brilliant people out there walking the walk every day. But if you can't also talk the talk, you can't convey that message. What is the point of having all that great information? And in newsroom, speaking of the, "If it bleeds, it leads". Another one we used to have was they are 10. And it was a way to remind us the reading age of the audience, when we were putting together the stories. And it wasn't to do with intelligence. It wasn't saying, oh, people have the, you know, the intelligence of a 10-year-old. It was more like the attention span. It was about how do we make things clearer and easier.
Josh:
It actually takes a lot of hard work to make things simple and clear. It's a superpower. You just come up there and everything is lucid. People follow what you're saying. And that shows so much care for your audience because you put in the hard work, the time to convey things them to them in a way that they can easily understand. Like, what's the alternative? That it's really effortful to understand what you're saying. That's no good. That doesn't help anybody. It doesn't even help you.
Sally:
Yeah. And would you say that's your number one tip for being persuasive? If there was one tip, would you say make things simple and easy to understand?
Josh:
Well, hmm. Number one tip I would say is start with emotional intelligence. So emotional intelligence is putting them first. It's starting with feelings. It's generating persuasive positive feelings. It's appealing to their values and it's telling stories. And if you do all of those things in the bundle of other things I talk about in the book, it is so much easier to get what you want. So start with emotional intelligence. Put that first.
Sally:
And buy a book. Tell us about it, How to Get What You Want.
Josh:
It is a book that helps you master the art and the science of persuasion. The science is the neuroscience and the psychology about our cognitive wiring, about how our brains work. And the art of it is that even if you know those things, you have to still navigate individuals and everybody's different. So talking to Sal is different than talking to Josh is different than talking to anybody else. And you have to navigate each situation carefully. So it's,
Sally:
Oh, I love that. Is there any plans for an Australian book launch?
Josh:
Hopefully. You know, so it's an English language book. It would be delighted if there are other, any opportunities to come down to Australia. It's in fact the number one place. I'm on my list of places to visit. I've heard so many amazing things about Australia, so hopefully.
Sally:
Well, I'm in Brisbane home of the 2032 Olympics. We'd love to have you here. Josh Bandoch. Was there anything else you'd like to add?
Josh:
Last little tip for your audience since you're a voice coach, is to focus on things like likability and tone and body language, because these are some of the stealthy things that are really important for how persuasive you are. And it's not just about the words that you say, I know you're voice coach. So it's not only about words, but really think about all this bundle of other things because persuasion is really a package of how people experience you.
Sally:
Mm, yes. I can't believe we left right till the end to speak about the delivery because yes, it's so important. Even the where the resonance sits in your body and the air flow and your articulation and your intonation and all the things you'll hear.
Josh:
Exactly all that stuff. Hundred percent. So as a voice coach, you know, tone is so important.
Sally:
So when you get Josh's book, How to Get what you Want, you can put it right next to Voice, Print my book, and that will be between two of them. You'll be a persuasive powerhouse. Josh Bandoch, thank you so much for joining us on That Voice Podcast.
Josh:
Sal, thank you so much. Really appreciate the opportunity.
