80. Magic Words: Change What You Say to Inspire and Influence Others

words matter leveraging language can help us achieve our communication goals join me as we take a deep dive into wording my name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business welcome to think fast talk smart the podcast [Music] today I am really excited to speak with Jonah Berger Jonah is no stranger to Stanford in the GSB he was an undergrad here and then went on to the GSB to earn his PhD he studied with one of our previous guests chip Keith Jonah is now a professor at Wharton a consultant

speaker and author of several incredibly educational and fun books including contagious why things catch on the Catalyst how to change anyone's mind an invisible influence the hidden forces that shape Behavior I look forward to discussing Jonah's research his writings and his new book magic words welcome Jonah and thanks for being here thanks so much for having me yeah I'm super excited for our conversation let's Jump Right In persuasion and influence are topics that our listeners are thirsty to learn more about in your book contagious why things catch on you talk about what makes ideas products

and services become popular can you distill down a few of the key tools and tactics we can deploy in our communication to help our ideas catch on yeah so I think one of the the main takeaways from that book is the power of word of mouth and and how to use it so whether we're making a presentation whether we're selling a product we often want people to support what we're doing and sure what we do matters what we say in that presentation or as marketers what we say in an advertisement might have an impact but

we can have a much larger impact if we can get other people talking about our stuff if we can turn customers into Advocates if we can turn listeners and colleagues into supporters if we can get them to share a message not only will have more reach we reach a broader set of people with that message but we'll have much more impact and so contagious is all about yes we're mouth has power but how do we get it and so I spent a long time studying the science of Word of Mouth why people talk and why

people share about some things rather than others we've looked at thousands of pieces of online content tens of thousands of Brands millions of purchases around the United States and around the world again and again we saw the same six factors come up so in contagious I talk about those factors that drive word of mouth and drive consumer behavior and more importantly how we can leverage them to craft contagious content how we can leverage them to build messages and ideas and products and presentations that will spread and catch on certainly word of mouth is powerful I

I find myself looking for things to watch and listen to based on what my friends tell me and products to buy what's one or two techniques that can help Word of Mouth develop sure the first big principle I talk about is something called social currency and the very simple idea there is the better something makes us look the more likely we are to talk about it and share it so I talk about a story of a bar for example sample hidden in a hot dog restaurant like you walk down a flight of stairs there's this

hot dog restaurant but in the corner of the room is a phone booth and if you go into the phone booth and you dial a number someone will pick up the other line they'll ask you to have a reservation if you're lucky you have one the back of that phone booth opens and you get let into a secret bar called please don't tell and what I love about that story is first of all you know everyone everyone can understand that story that sort of hidden information really cool stuff this place is hugely popular though never

advertised no sign on the street no sign inside the restaurant how did they get so much attention and they did something really really simple they made themselves a secret and if you think about it there's a little secret about Secrets if you think about the last time someone told you something and they told you not to tell anybody else what's the first thing you probably did with that information yeah I told somebody you told somebody because having access to information makes you look good makes you look smart makes you look in the know and so

the idea of social currency it's not just about Secrets but but it's about we're more likely to share things that make us look good then make us look bad if I'm the first person to adopt a new product or service if I have information that not everyone else has access to if something really good or cool or exciting happens to me that makes me look smart I'm more likely to share it we talk about frequent flyer status because it makes us look good to our peers we talk about a new album coming out because it

shows we're ahead of the curve and so the key insight there is as Communications professionals as individuals who want to get the word out we often spend a lot of time thinking about us our message our idea we spend a lot less time thinking about how the audience will look if they tell people about it when I'm selling a product maybe I make a perfect advertisement and I want to make sure that everyone will love the ad but I don't think as much about okay well someone sees that how are they going to look if

they tell their friends about it because the better that's going to make them look the more likely they'll be to talk about it and share it wow I love that Insight I want to know where that bar is and I have to tell you that we often speak on this podcast about knowing your audience and taking time to understand what they need and you're adding an additional layer to that which is it's not only what they need but how does your message impact them and how they feel how they look and that can lead you

to Greater success and and I have to tell you you use that technique on me as in preparation for this interview you sent me a copy an advanced copy of your new book magic words I read it I told lots of people I know that it's a great book and that they should pre-order it as a result of having that information and I have to share with you some of my colleagues think I'm smarter because of what I shared from your book so you help make me look good and you help me become an evangelist

so thank you for that and and I'd like to turn our attention to your new book in that book magic words you explore language in its impact on behavior in fact I have a quote here you write words suggest who's in charge who's to blame and what it means to engage in a particular action consequently slight changes in the words we use can have a big impact so my question to you Jonah is what kind of impact are you talking about and can you provide one or two examples that demonstrate that quote sure yeah so

what I find fascinating is we use words all the time how we convince others hold attention even to connect with our loved ones we use words yet while we think a lot about the general ideas we want to communicate so maybe we get up in front of an audience and our goal is to sell them on a certain project we talk a lot about how great the project is we think a lot about the topic or the what we want to communicate but we don't think a lot about the how we communicate it the specific

words we use when sharing ideas and unfortunately that's a mistake because it turns out that subtle shifts in language can have a huge impact on everything from convincing clients and holding attention to connecting with loved ones in our lives and so by understanding the science of language the power of language how it works and these types of magic words we can increase our own impact whether that means being more creative being more invasive and holding attention and captivating audiences in almost every area of life we can use language to be more effective you've got me

sold on that I I have often told people that words matter we really have to think about the language we use and we need to make sure that that language is appropriate for our audience and serves a purpose for them and for us do you have some examples you can share about language use and how it can help us achieve our communication goals sure the book has six main types of words I like Frameworks so I put them in a framework called the speak framework that s p e a c c because I couldn't come

up with something that had a K in it but that stands for words that evoke similarity posing questions is the p e is for emotion A is for agency and identity one of the C's is concreteness and one of the C's is is confidence and so I'll pick just one example from posing questions I find questions really fascinating because they do a lot of work we often think about questions as collecting information right getting us an answer but they also have a big impact on how people perceive Us and how we see the world and

perceive others there's some nice research for example on asking for advice and often we think we shouldn't ask for advice why well first of all we don't want to bother someone right so if we're at the office and we've got a problem that we're stuck on we could ask a colleague we could ask our boss but we don't want to bother them they may not know the answer and even worse or where they'll think less of us they'll go well why why are you asking me why couldn't you figure it out yourself and so we

often don't ask for advice and not only is that bad because we don't get the benefit of others thoughts and advice and collect that information but it's also bad because we're missing out on a big opportunity because when research examined asking for advice and in a variety of experiments and situations that looked at how people were perceived when they asked for advice versus dip not only didn't they find that asking for advice hurt made us look you know less smart less knowledgeable have less expertise in the space it actually had the exact opposite effect asking

for advice made people look better not worse it made others think they were more competent smarter and more knowledgeable and the reason why very simply is it takes advantage of people's egocentrism everyone thinks they have great advice most of us like ourselves we like our own advice we think we're pretty good right and so when someone asks us for advice we go oh that person must be really smart because they're smart enough for ask me for my opinion and so asking for advice makes us look better not worse and you could say well hold on

is that really a type of words that's asking questions in general but there's also research on the types of questions to ask we often in conversation do sort of introductory questions at the beginning of this conversation you probably said something like how are you and I probably said something back like fine how are you right and those are good questions they're not bad they're polite but when researchers looked at a variety of different types of conversations hundreds of different types of conversations they found that a particular type of question was particularly impactful quite useful in

shaping how others perceive us it wasn't these introductory three questions and it wasn't kind of mimicry questions when someone asked what are you having for lunch blah blah blah what are you having instead it's a type of questions called follow-up questions and what follow-up questions are is when someone says something I enjoy this presentation rather than saying oh I did as well saying something like neat oh what part did you like when someone says I had a really tough day not just saying oh I'm so sorry to hear that but oh what made it so

difficult tell me more there are questions that follow up on whatever someone said and show that you're interested in collecting more information because follow-up questions do a few things first they show you're paying attention being polite is easy but they don't really signal that you're paying attention but if you took the time to listen to what someone said and follow up with what they said it showed you pay attention and you care you're interested in learning more and not only does that allow us to collect information but it leaves people like us more we show

that we care about them and what's going on with their lives and so they like us more as a result and so even something as simple as the questions we ask and how we ask them can have an important impact on how we're perceived I really like this notion of seeking advice and the benefits of doing so because you as a teacher as a teacher myself we often tell our students seek feedback seek advice and many of them are shy to do that because as you said they're afraid it demonstrates weakness or lowering their status

and I love the fact that research suggests it actually bolsters it and clearly the types of questions you're giving examples to not only can help you getting input that you're seeking but it demonstrates that you're listening and interested in what the other person says which is a great way as you said a building trust in in connecting I'd love to ask you about one other category of your speak framework and we talk a lot on this podcast about confidence confidence and communication any guidance around language use and confidence you can share yeah I think all

of us in our own lives can think about someone that just exudes confidence right that they have so much Charisma whenever they speak other people listen we can all think about someone in our own lives like that and if you look whether you look at gurus you look at startup Founders you look at leaders that are often thought about charismatic they often have something quite in common they often do the same thing which is they speak with a great deal of certainty and what do I mean by that well if you look at what some

of these leaders do you know things aren't just going to happen they're definitely going to happen a course of action isn't just a potentially good course of action it's clearly the right course of action everyone agrees this is unambiguous this is essential it's irrefutable it's guaranteed they use a lot of what some people called definites they speak with a great deal of certainty and not surprisingly when someone speaks a certainty when someone is so clearly certain about what's true it's hard not to listen to them because they seem so convinced and I talk about five

or six different types of language links to certainty but I'll pick one in particular here and that's a set of words and phrases called Hedges and if you look at academics I'm I'm guilty of this as much as anybody else we often do a lot of hedging we say I think this is the case this might be true this should work it's a good possibility this will probably happen the Hedge our language we don't say this is the best solution we say this might be the best solution we indicate uncertainty in our language and again

sometimes we want to indicate uncertain sometimes we want to be clear that it's not certain what's going to happen but unfortunately we often use Hedges because they're a simple verbal take it's easy to hedge and we often unconsciously undermine our impact as a result because if we're sitting there saying I think such and such or this might be true or this should happen or might happen the audience is sitting there going well if you're not even sure it's going to happen yourself why should I go along right if you're not even sure this is a

good solution if you're not even sure this is going to work if you're not even sure this is the best course of action I'm much less likely to be persuaded as a result and indeed many experiments a colleague and I conducted in this space as well as analysis we did a field data shows that the more Hedges we use the less persuaded other people are and so I think this has a clear implications ditch the hedges if we want to persuade others ditch the hedges that that doesn't mean we can't be circumspect in our language

that doesn't mean we can't shrink the world of things we're talking about but it's better to be certain about a smaller set of things than uncertain often about a larger set of things well I sort of kind of think that what you've said is really maybe a little important I absolutely agree hedging language can really undermine what you're trying to do yet there are as you point out times where I might purposely want to lower my status to invite others to speak imagine a boss who says we should do this what do you think versus

I think we should do this what do you think very very different so when it comes down to confidence it sounds like what's most important is certainty and that's really really helpful because nervous speakers people who are new to positions and roles often will use hedging language that can be working against them definitely I'll give you one more simple approach which is the idea of turning past into presence and I don't mean uh holiday presence here so you know often when we talk about something we use the past tense oh I liked their food or

they had good food at a restaurant I thought the job candidate did a very good job I thought the resume was impressive we're using the past tense that resume was impressive notice in that situation we could also use present tense I think their resume is impressive I think the food is good I think this destination is a lot of fun and it turns out that when we use present tense people think we're much more confident or certain in what we're saying and are more likely to be persuaded as a result because past tense often suggest

something was true for a particular person at a particular point in time their resume was impressive suggests that when I looked at it last week I thought it was impressive that doesn't mean it's still impressive that doesn't mean you will find it impressive but it suggests it was impressive to me whereas if I say hey that resume is impressive I'm making an assertion Not only was it true when I looked at it but it's going to be true for all people for all time and because you're willing to make that assertion people think you're much

more certain about what you're saying and they're much more likely to be persuaded as a result and so sure hedging you know is one strategy so is turning past into presence but I talk about two or three others and it's all about using language to convey certainty I love turning pasts into present I think that's really fascinating and in fact it's going to change how I ask my next question originally I was going to say I often say but now I'm simply going to say I say that attention is the most precious commodity we have

in the world today yet gaining others attention is often not enough to be successful in our communication we need to be engaging which I Define is sustaining people's attention I know along with some of your colleagues you recently published research that looks into how language particularly emotional language can help us be engaging what did your research find and how can we leverage your findings to be more engaging in our communication yeah so I love the way you teed up that question and we've done some work as to what gets attention so things like looking at

social media posts for example and looking at what drives engagement what leads people to click on something or titles or headlines ways to use email subject lines to get people to open them often words like you for example can be quite powerful because they act as a stop sign they say hey stop what you're doing this is specific to you second person pronouns like you suggest some things personally around relevant and so we're more likely to pay attention but as you noted for most of us we're not just trying to get people to open an

email trying to get people to read it we're not just trying to get people to stop scrolling on social media and see our posts we're hoping they'll read it we're not just hoping that someone begins to pay attention to our presentation we're hoping they stay tuned for the rest of it and so one thing we wondered is well how can we hold attention more effectively how can we use language in particular to hold attention and I think this is an interesting question because I think some of us think holding attention is all about the topic

if I'm talking about celebrity gossip people are going to pay attention if I'm talking about some new technology or Hollywood Blockbuster people pay attention but if I'm talking about climate change if I'm talking about tax reform if I'm talking about school budgeting it's going to be hard to get people's attention not only get their attention but hold it and so what we're interested in is hey can we hold people's attention even for these topics that might not seem as engaging and so what we did to do this actually is we looked at tens of thousands

of online articles and we looked not only at whether people looked at them read them opened them look how far down they read did they keep reading this content where did they stop did they read a sentence and then opt out and do something else and we found a few things that are quite interesting so first style can make up for Content sure content's important sure enough there are certain topics that people tended to topics held their attention more than others but even controlling for that certain language could hold attention for any topic and so

it's not just about what you're talking about it's how you're talking about it and second there were two main buckets that we found one was types of language that make it just easier to keep paying attention concrete language was one of these things I can touch a table I can see a painting I can imagine a cherry red convertible the word beautiful is harder to see the word strategy is harder to imagine concrete language because it's easier to think about is easier to process and holds our attention better same with familiar language the more familiar

words we use or even easier to process language encourages attention but even controlling for that as you noted we also found emotional language was quite impactful emotional language did a great job of holding attention and it wasn't just that any emotion worked or that positive emotion helped maybe a negative emotion hurt it was really the Tendencies or association with particular motion some emotions for example tend to be relatively certain other emotions tend to be more uncertain an emotion like hope for example suggests you know I hope that something will happen but I'm not sure an

emotion like anxiety and anxious language says we don't know what's going to happen and so what we found is that the language associated with uncertainty whether due to emotional reasons or otherwise was more likely to encourage people to keep paying attention you know if you don't know what's going to happen you stay tuned to figure it out you keep reading to figure out what's going to happen and thinking about this I think of you mentioned chip Heath and his great book made to stick they talk about opening a curiosity Gap yes where you you point

out you know something but you don't know everything and to me that's a lot of what uncertain motions is doing and saying hey stay tuned to figure out the answer and as a result it's holding your attention you know many of us use language in a way to try to demonstrate our competence so we'll use big words complex sentences remove emotion and what I hear you saying is a lot of that actually works against us when we're trying to be engaged and compel people to still listen to us and so the advice to be concrete

to build curiosity I think is is really really helpful and I challenge everybody to think about when you're speaking what do you do with your language to engage people because it sounds to me like many of us are actually subverting our own goal of keeping people paying attention what I found fascinating about working on this book is there's just so many subtle things we can do in almost every area of our life to increase our impact if we're trying to solve a problem for example rather than think about what we should do think about what

we could do literally switching one word from should to could help think more broadly and come up with more Creative Solutions even we don't end up doing one of the things we thought we could do helps us think about a broader set of ideas and makes us more creative and better at solving problems if we're trying to get someone to help us out rather than asking them for help asking them to be a helper makes them more likely to agree to help us similarly when we're trying to get someone to vote asking to be a

voter rather than asking to vote makes them more likely to go along and put both of these ideas under a strategy called Turning actions into identities sure voting is a nice thing sure helping is a nice thing but what all of us really want is to see ourselves positively as smart as efficacious as competent and so we engage in behaviors that allow us to claim desired identities and so if suddenly voting becomes an opportunity to show that we're a voter well now we're more likely to do it if helping is an opportunity to show I'm

a helper much more likely to do it the same is true on the opposite side losing is bad but being a loser well that's even worse cheating is bad but being a cheater is even worse research shows that if you ask students rather than saying don't cheat you tell them don't be a cheater they're much less likely to cheat because now cheating would show that they're claiming this undesired identity and so when we want to motivate others you know turn actions into identities even when describing ourselves and peers if you think about it often we

describe ourselves using an adjective or again a verb we say I am hard working well that's good but let me say imagine I told you about two people someone who runs and someone who is a runner if you had to guess which of those two people runs more often the person who runs or who is a runner well I would say based on what you've said is a runner yeah right being a runner suggests a stable trait it's not just something that happens once in a while it's who you are and so rather than talking

about yourself as hard working talk about yourself as a hard worker rather than talking about yourself as creative you're a Creator or someone else as a Creator rather than being Innovative you're an innovator by claiming these identities either describing ourselves that way or others that we want to be perceived favorably it encourages them to see those things as more stable traits and have people think they're more like I can persist as a result so it sounds like to me putting ourselves in the role as a runner as uh somebody who is a helper really helps

our audience see us as more engaged and to be somebody who's more involved with that I can imagine before we end I'd like to ask you the same three questions I ask everyone who joins me are you up for that sounds great excellent if you were to capture the best communication advice you have ever received as a five to seven word presentation slide title what would it be I'll go with three words understand your audience aha yes so I'm in marketing so I get to cheat a little bit so you know I've been at Wharton

now for I think over 15 years and at a certain point once you get tenure they ask you to teach the marketing core and the main take home from that course is be customer Centric great marketing doesn't end with the customer you don't make a product and figure out how to sell it it starts by understanding what products the customers want or services and designing those products same thing as a communicator the better you understand your audience whoever that audience is the more effective you're going to be that is a theme that has echoed many

times on this podcast and thank you for adding to that chorus question two who is a communicator that you admire and why I don't think I have a specific person in mind but I'm always amazed when people can take complex topics and ideas and make them simple so I was at the doctor recently and I was dealing with particular Doctor Who just made the simplest things complex I had no idea what they were talking about and then similarly that same weekend I was at a local Museum talking to someone about butterflies and I know nothing

about butterflies our son is uh almost six years old loves butterflies and they were able to take the most complex things about butterflies and make them simple and so I think anyone that can take a complex topic and make it simple as a great communicator I agree I call it accessibility we have to take these complex topics and make them accessible to lots of people and it is a true gift in art even though there are are some very specific tactics we can use question number three what are the first three ingredients that go into

a successful communication recipe I think going back to what we talked about already you've got to start by understanding your audience second you've got to figure out a way to communicate it simply but then I think third you have to at the end of it drive them to action I talk a lot about in my last book The Catalyst whenever we're trying to change someone's mind too often we start by pushing by trying to add more information persuade them facts figures it's much better to identify the barriers to change and mitigate them and really think

about how can we help people get to where we wanted them to get to in the first place on their own asking the right questions that lead them down a path rather than forcing them down that way and so I think great communicators are good at not just telling their audiences what to do but helping their audiences see that the best way for the audience to reach what they wanted to do is to do with the Communicator was interested in having them do in the first place I love that I love that pull them in

your direction well Jonah thank you so much we all benefit from what you have been able to teach us or should I say thank you for being a great teacher it's been wonderful to learn from you and and to have a chance to chat with you and I wish you well on your book magic words it is truly magical I've learned a lot and as everybody listening in today is heard it's changed my behavior immediately thank you so much thanks so much for having me thanks for joining us for another episode of think fast talk

smart the podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business this episode was produced by Jenny Luna Ryan Campos and me Matt Abrahams our music was provided by Floyd Wonder for more information and episodes find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts thank you and please make sure to subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn [Music] thank you