I hope you had a great week!
Over the past few weeks, we have talked Supporting our Grieving Friends, Friendships, and Talking with our Doctor. This week, we talk and learn about TRUST – an absolutely imperative element of communication. Trust me!
(You can skim this short email or dive in to the many links to learn more!)
? PODCAST #21:
TRUST with Per Se Brand Experience president Baron Manett
Trust is imperative. When we don’t have trust, we have nothing. That goes for our work colleagues, personal relationships, our news sources, and the brands we buy. You need to listen to this podcast – TRUST ME. ?
In this week’s podcast, marketing expert Baron Manett (president of Per Se Brand Experience, co-founder of Ensemble and professor at Seneca College) shares his insights about trust, including his story about the car rental company that lost his trust, how “a brand is a promise,” and how “everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten”!!!
Amongst other things you will learn in this podcast:
Trust is asymmetrical.
- It takes a lot of work to establish trust, and even more to build it back after it has been violated.
- Baron Manett on brand transgressions:
- Trust is “one of those things where it takes it takes a long time to build it, it takes a nanosecond to lose it. And it’s a lot more expensive to have to rebuild it.”
- Baron reminds us to use our manners: please and thank you and when there’s a transgression, real apologies.
A brand is a promise. Just like your personal reputation.
- A brand’s actions (it’s quality, performance, it’s corporate partnerships and affiliations) and brand stories are the proof points that support the promise.
- Similarly, your personal brand, your reputation, is also a promise, right? Your actions (what you say, what you do, the friends you keep) all comprise your personal brand.
Thank you, Baron!
BODY LANGUAGE & TRUST
Have you ever had a sneaking feeling that you should NOT trust someone? Well, it could be something that they are communicating implicitly through their body language. Here are 3 things we should keep in mind to appear more trustworthy:
- Sit up straight.
- Take up lots of space.
- Do not cross your arms – it makes you appear defensive or as if you are hiding something.
- Do lean in towards the other person and mirror them.
- Keep your hands visible. We trust people more when we can see their hands!
- If you are standing, keep your hands out of your pockets.
- If you are seated at a table, rest your hands on the table.
- The eyes are critical. Remember: eye contact; real smiles; and eyebrows.
- Maintain eye contact. If you’re looking around, you appear disinterested (or worse – shifty).
- Real smiles are more than just grins. When we really smile, we can see and feel it in our eyes. So “smile with your eyes,” or SMIZE. Right Tyra?!?
- Watch the eyebrows. People raise their eyebrows when they feel surprise, worry, or fear. There’s always something going on when the eyebrows are raised.
??♂️ ✋ ?
3 Q&As ABOUT TRUST
- What is the history of “fake news“?
- Is there a registry of “scams” for us consumers?
- How can I optimize my “media hygiene“?
? FAKE NEWS –
This seems like an over-used cliche now. But the concept has been around forever, also known as:
- junk news
- pseudo-news
- yellow journalism
- propaganda
- disinformation
- hoaxes
Who said “fake news” first? Trump might take the credit, but according to the BBC, in 2016, a city in Macedonia called Veles hosted >140 “news” websites that attracted thousands(+) of Facebook followers — and revenue for the teens who created the headlines!!! Don’t believe everything you read, people!
?SCAMS
Recently a friend of mine told me she donated a few hundred dollars to a family she read about online. I asked her if she checked first whether it was a scam. Her eyes widened, “oh NO!”
Nowadays, fraudsters are getting more and more sophisticated. Here is a short list of just a few things you should consider if you’re suspicious about a potential scam:
- Google it! Simply enter: “is ____ a scam?”
- Do not click on links in emails! Instead of clicking on links in emails, go directly into the relevant website by typing it in instead. Just like counterfeit money can look real, so too can counterfeit emails. Fraudsters can easily make an email look as if it came from a friend or a legitimate company.
- Double check phone numbers before you call! If you get a letter in the mail (from a bank, a telecom, a credit card company…) asking you to call them, double check the phone number. Look for the legitimate phone number on one of your bills, on the website or on the back of your card.
- Do not call back! Did you ever receive a call from an unknown number on your cell phone? It happens to all of us. Do you ever call them back? DON’T! If it was important, they would leave a message, right?
- Lists of common scams:
? MEDIA HYGIENE
Media hygiene means actively seeking balanced media sources. Dr. Joshua Tepper talked about this in last week’s podcast. The two factors that we should consider when we are consuming “the news” are BIAS and FACTS. Recently I have seen several graphs that depict media hygiene across these two factors. Ideally, we should be consuming media from news sources that are at the top (factual) and in the middle (balanced reporting). Or, if we consume news on one side of the graph, we should also look at something on the other side. Check out the graph below, that plots many news sources. Adfontesmedia explains in this article how the scales for “Overall Quality” (factfulness) and “Partisan Bias” are created. Where do your favourite news sources show up?
(click on the image to zoom in)
ANDREA’s TRUSTED QUOTES
You can always trust me to find a few great quotes, right? ?
I hope this week’s podcast on
TRUST helps you communicate and interpret trust more effectively!
How do you know whether to trust someone? How do you communicate that you are trustworthy? You will learn answers to these questions and more in this week’s podcast.
If you have other suggestions for us on how to communicate TRUST (or maybe when you fell victim to a scam?), please email me or post them on one of the Talk About Talk social media pages.
That reminds me – I will be at Baron’s Ensemble conference this week, focused on “The Future of Cities.” I’m so excited! I will post photos and learnings for you on social media!
Assuming you trust me… I encourage you to forward this email or send this link to your friends and colleagues who may also be interested in learning about how to become a more confident communicator. THANK YOU very much!
Have a great week.
TALK soon,
Dr. Andrea Wojnicki
Founder & Chief Talker – Talk About Talk Inc.
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