Whenever i’m on Youtube recently i’m barraged by ads by a company, Riseguide (screenshot of their site below), that provides articulation training.
The standard ad sounds something like this:
Guy walking into an elevator and sees a colleague. He says to the person “How are you today?” And then the narrator goes on to explain how you never want to ask this question because it makes you look weak. And all high powered executives don’t say this, but rather say some other thing.
It always makes me want to bust out laughing when i see these ads because I think it is so BS based on my experience.
What actually matters is neurology in my view, and not this articulation stuff.
And today I want to explain why I view it that way.
First some context on the old me
Up until my mid-30’s I was a self-improvement freak.
I would have absolutely loved this course I mention above and I probably would have invested tons of hours into it, thinking it was going to change my effect on people.
You see back then I read lots of self-help books and took numerous courses to try to help me move up the career ladder.
My problem, I realized, was that my communication and its effect on people was one of my biggest weaknesses. In part because my voice often felt weak/thin, but also I think I just came off relatively weak/boring.
As a result my career didn’t move as fast as I’d hoped it would. And this despite the fact that I do think i had the intelligence, structure/organization, and work ethic to outperform most of the people I saw above me.
So back then I tried anything and everything to get past what felt like a glass ceiling.
All of this effort did nothing for me
I remember being in a corporate job in Visa Inc. back around 2009 and being extremely frustrated.
It was my first corporate job after seven years in strategy consulting and I was hoping that I’d rocket up.
So I worked really hard, prepped for all my meetings, worked on as many projects as I could, and still… many of my colleagues seemed like they didn’t take me seriously.
They’d show up to meetings late. Forget to do the things they’d promised they’d do for me. etc etc.
I just didn’t seem to be made of leadership material to them.
For awhile I made myself the excuse that I was an expat in a Moscow office and so it was because I was a foreigner and operating in a second language.
But then later on an American lady came who spoke almost no Russian at all and yet seemed to have a very powerful effect on everybody.
But it wasn’t her intelligence… as she didn’t seem very smart to me at all.
Rather it was her personality. She had a commanding way that naturally got people to take her very seriously.
You see it was never about what I was saying…. it was about the person they perceived me to be. And that perception came mostly from my neurology/personality and not from the words I used.
At the time I kind of considered this some God-given ‘aura’ that I just didn’t have and could not train for.
Now I don’t think that at all.
It was neurology, plain and simple.
And neurology is, in my view, a direct function of biomechanics.
Neurology is what allows you to communicate effectively
What i’ve learned the past decade is just how tightly intertwined neurology is with communication.
You see it is not the words you speak, rather it is the person that is saying it.
How confident they look
The tone and voice quality they have
Their non-verbal communication (eg. posture, energy, etc)
And note that there is absolutely nothing new to what i’m saying here. Communication experts were talking about this stuff back when i was graduating college thirty years ago.
But what they didn’t teach you is how this stuff is (at least in my view) ~90% a function of biomechanics.
And therefore it is not training and courses on ‘articulation’ that make you better at this stuff. Nor is it some genetic God-given ability.
Rather it is improving your biomechanics, and thus neurology, that truly moves the needle in my experience.
These days I pay no attention to my articulation
These days I almost never get frustrated when communicating with others.
Whether it be my team, my friends, my family, etc.
And it is not because I am saying exactly the right words. Or because i practiced.
Actually it is the opposite. I generally have the view that I never prepare for any meeting or call anymore.
Even if I think it will be viewed by many people my mantra is pretty much always “let’s wing it!” haha
And typically it comes off smooth. The fact that i never practiced for it makes it feel even more natural and less scripted.
Why this change?
Well because I know that my neurology is pretty healthy these days and so I will come off just fine:
I’ll think of the right words to use.
I’ll use the appropriate tone and emotion without thinking about it.
I’ll listen to the person so I can also digest what they are saying and react to it in a natural way.
So in essence…. I do exactly what I was wishing I could do many years earlier in my career. The thing that I was jealous of the lady at Visa that I referred to above.
And the change happened with no special effort.
I notice the same thing in others for a long time already
I’ve understood how this works for some years already and so I like to test my hypothesis while observing others around me.
Based on these observations I can honestly say that what I am talking about above almost always holds true.
The best business people, actors, comedians, etc. They all have solid neurology.
They’re not spending lots of hours taking courses on articulation. They’re almost always winging it!
For example I love watching a young Dave Chappelle.
The guy is probably one of the best standup comics ever and yet he never seemed to have any list or notes or anything.
Nothing was ever tightly scripted and his delivery always felt very natural. Plus when something unplanned happened, he always seemed to have a gift for responding in a funny, natural way.
The foundation to this was very solid neurology.
He wasn’t in his head stressed about what words to use. He was probably just enjoying himself and staying in the moment. Which ends up sounding so much better.
Closing thoughts
Gone are the days when I read all of the self help books. That was almost a complete waste of time and money.
Now I view things like ‘articulation’ training to be a complete facade.
Frustrated people are going to invest in it and despite all of their practice, they are barely going to move the needle on the impact they’re having on others.
Rather what they should be doing is improving their neurology by improving their biomechanics.
And if they do that I think they will perhaps come to the same conclusion I have one day.
That the true power of these biomechanics is not the fact that it will improve your health and how you look (though it should do those things too).
Rather the true power is in using this stuff to achieve what you want in life. And slowly becoming the person that can make that happen.