Wyzga On Words

Q&A Tuesday: What Else Does Story Do? Navigate Life's Complex Social Problems.

Q:     How do stories make us human?  And what does this mean for the decision-maker?

A:    Plotlines can help change the brain when "a person is curious, is predicting what will happen next and is emotionally engaged."  What David Eagleman wrote in quotes I've been saying for decades.

You might agree that the way to take anything seriously is to care about it.  Likewise, to get the listener to care about your client’s case you must endow the story with importance by treating it as an emotional experience.

Well crafted story.  How do you do that?  You take the time to produce a well-crafted story that will serve as the premium communication device to focus decision-maker attention and judgment on certain key ideas or behaviors, as well as understand the significance of that behavior.

Virtual journey.  Why is this notion critical to success?  When decision-makers follow a story, they journey - virtually - with you into a different world, an imagined reality, another mental location where the story actually exists while never having left their physical state.  The process of transition from physical world to virtual world is active with the decision-maker energetically conniving and conspiring with the attorney all the time to actually will the virtual world into existence. Why? Because the decision-maker is curious about what is going on, wants to believe the story and that they can do something which matters.

Legal to local. Does this really happen?  You have witnessed this yourself in the courtroom.  Every day decision-makers are torn away from routines, placed in unfamiliar settings and asked to make profound decisions after being handed complex legal terminology that is supposed to help them address conflicting versions of the same facts.   They hear legal judgment - the series of formal justice procedures we call case law, opinions, rules of evidence for resolving disputes in our society.

Sort and organize.  How do they decide?  By formulating a story that explains the alleged activities in familiar terms using key messages or themes that define the case from their point of view.

Parallel judgment.  Your jurors organize and sort out complex legal information, especially conflicting information, into meaningful structures that make sense to create a parallel form of social judgment that anchors legal questions in everyday understanding.

Cooperative enterprise.  In the grip of a heartfelt story artfully told, their minds are fully engaged.  When fully engaged, your jurors are working with you in a cooperative enterprise, connected and considering options, possibilities and outcomes.

Persuasion.  Storytelling persuades when the decision-maker can place herself inside the story with ease, listen deductively, absorb a story that explains the conflict early on, articulate the story in her own terms, and filter the evidence selectively to be consistent with her personal story, world experience and understanding of the world order.

David Eagleman's NYTimes Book Review of Jonathan Gottschall's work, "The Storytelling Animal," reinforces the ways in which story and the telling of stories are not mere entertainment for housebound children on a rainy afternoon.  Excerpt.

"Remember, in “Star Wars,” when Luke Skywalker precisely aims his proton torpedoes into the vent shaft of the Death Star? Of course you do. It’s memorable because it’s the climax of a grand story about good triumphing over evil. (You’d be less likely to recall a moment in which a protagonist files her nails while discussing her day.) More important, Luke’s scene provides a good analogy: It’s not easy to infect the brain of another person with an idea; it can be accomplished only by hitting the small exposed hole in the system. For the brain, that hole is story-shaped. As anyone who teaches realizes, most information bounces off with little impression and no recollection. Good professors and statesmen know the indispensable po­tency of story.

This is not a new observation, but nowadays we have a better understanding of why it’s true. Changing the brain requires the correct neurotransmitters, and those are especially in attendance when a person is curious, is predicting what will happen next and is emotionally engaged. Hence successful religious texts are not written as nonfiction arguments or bulleted lists of claims. They are stories. Stories about burning bushes, whales, sons, lovers, betrayals and rivalries.

Story not only sticks, it mesmerizes. This is why WWE wrestling thrives on fake but exciting plotlines, why there are so many hours poured into prefight boxing hype, and why there are stirring back stories included in all the profiles of Olympic athletes. But not all stories are created equal. Gottschall points out that for a story to work, it has to possess a particular morality. To capture and influence, it can’t be plagued with moral repugnance — involving, say, a sexual love story between a mother and her son, or a good guy who becomes crippled and a bad guy who profits handsomely. If the narrative doesn’t contain the suitable kind of virtue, brains don’t absorb it. The story torpedo misses the exposed brain vent. (There are exceptions, Gottschall allows, but they only prove the rule.)

This leads to the suggestion that story’s role is “intensely moralistic.” Stories serve the biological function of encouraging pro-social behavior. Across cultures, stories instruct a version of the following: If we are honest and play by the social rules, we reap the rewards of the protagonist; if we break the rules, we earn the punishment accorded to the bad guy. The theory is that this urge to produce and consume moralistic stories is hard-wired into us, and this helps bind society together. It’s a group-level adaptation. As such, stories are as important as genes. They’re not time wasters; they’re evolutionary innovations."

TIP:    Use stories to help your decision-makers navigate lilfe's complex social problems.  "As such, stories are as important as genes. They’re not time wasters; they’re evolutionary innovations."

Fear Or Compassion? Which Motivates Action?

I've been reluctant to kick the hornet's nest on this one.  Folks seem pretty divided on The Reptile Theory.  Like Paris - you either love it or you hate it.

The notion that we should regard jurors as reptiles to get some huge verdict out of them by playing to their fears has always struck me as cold-blooded, and not a little inhuman.  How we regard people and things becomes how we treat them.  I felt so strongly about this I co-wrote an article with Stephanie West Allen and Jeffrey Schwartz for The Jury Expert entitled "Atticus Finch Would Not Approve."  [Click AllenSchwartzWyzgaTJEMay2010 to read.]  My position has only strengthened.

I used to work with a beekeeper who insisted on calling the honeybees "really angry" when they reacted to us opening the hive boxes.  He treated them as if they were somehow "really angry."  He over-smoked them.  He was tense, jumpy and afraid.  His physical actions conveyed fear.  At the end of the day working with him I was a wreck.

And yet, there was nothing to fear.  We were suited up for the job.  We would get head-bonked by some of the guard bees; but that was normal behavior.  No bees chased us or swarmed us.  A honeybee has to be truly threatened to sting; when she does she rips out her guts and dies.  Not an action to be taken lightly. 

When I was trained as a beekeeper I was told to remember, "No jerks in the beeyard." While I have not yet gotten to the stage where I will work my hives wearing only a veil, I know that to bee Zen keeps everyone - beekeepers and honeybees - calm.

It works with people, too.  The Science of Compassion by the social scientist David DeSteno writing for the NYTimes shares the results of scientific research that shows empathy with the suffering of others is alive and well.  Excerpt:

"As a social psychologist interested in the emotions, I long wondered whether this spiritual understanding of compassion was also scientifically accurate. Empirically speaking, does the experience of compassion toward one person measurably affect our actions and attitudes toward other people? If so, are there practical steps we can take to further cultivate this feeling? Recently, my colleagues and I conducted experiments that answered yes to both questions.

In one experiment, designed with the psychologist Paul Condon and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, we recruited people to take part in a study that was ostensibly about the relation of mathematical ability to taste perception — but that in actuality was a study of how the experience of compassion affects your behavior.

In another study, published in the journal Emotion, the psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I conducted an experiment ostensibly about music perception — but that actually investigated how feelings of compassion might be increased.

Our hunch was that compassion is easiest to feel when you have a sense of commonality with someone else."

And what did the scientists find?  Excerpt:

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly.

What does this mean for cultivating compassion in society? It means that effortful adherence to religious or philosophical dictums (often requiring meditation, prayer or moral education), though clearly valuable and capable of producing results, is not the only way to go. There is nothing special about tapping in synchrony; any such commonality will do. Increased compassion for one’s neighbor, for instance, can come from something as easy as encouraging yourself to think of him as (say) a fan of the same local restaurant instead of as a member of a different ethnicity.

Simply learning to mentally recategorize one another in terms of commonalities would generate greater empathy among all of us — and foster social harmony in a fairly effortless way."

I am not Pollyanna enough to believe that I can buy someone a Coke and the world will live in perfect harmony.  

I agree that there is fear in the world.  Look at everything from video games to the nightly news to the most recent midnight movie massacre in Aurora, CO.  You will get more than your share of a diet of human suffering. 

But fear does nothing to improve the situation - fear causes us to hide, bar the doors, become complacent.  Ironically, when we feel an empathy, a compassion for the situation we will act - whether for gun control, mental health, local food, a jury verdict, whatever.  How does it work this way?

"What these results suggest is that the compassion we feel for others is not solely a function of what befalls them: if our minds draw an association between a victim and ourselves — even a relatively trivial one — the compassion we feel for his or her suffering is amplified greatly."

Like my friend the angry beekeeper, you get what you name.  Whether or not the honeybees were "really angry," he perceived them as such and treated them that way.  It was how he perceived them that created the expectation of harm. 

I've had enough of fear.  I prefer to be on the side of those who encourage a deep compassion for human suffering and from that place articulate for action to lessen the plight of others.

Q&A Tuesday: How Does Storytelling Help Me As Well As My Client?

Q:    How does storytelling help me as well as my client?

A:    Stories are the stuff of daily life.  When we commit to becoming part and parcel of the story we need to tell on behalf of another, the commitment expands our awareness of our humanity.  From this place we become increasingly empathetic, compassionate, and relatable to other human beings, more authentic, believable and better at persuading, too.

Some years back I wrote an article with San Diego attorney Jim Parziale entitled, "Once Upon A Client - The Power of Persuasive Legal Storytelling."  [Click on the title to access the pdf.]  It's a treasure trove of information, thoughts and ideas gained over decades of my storytelling work which became translated into the litigation arena.  I bet you will recognize in these words much of what I have been speaking, teaching and writing about for almost 15 years.

I trust that this work will be of help to you and your clients.  If you intend to use it, please remember the integrity of attribution.

Q&A Tuesday: Why Invest In Focus Group Research?

Q:   Why should I invest in focus group research?

A:    Reconnaissance.

I am often asked what is the worth of investing in focus group research.  The answers are as many and as varied as the lawsuit you have filed or are considering filing:

1. learn attitudes
2. learn opinions
3. learn biases
4. learn notions
5. get ideas for discovery
6. get ideas for strategy
7. test the legal story
8. test the experts
9. test the experts' opinions
10. test the other side's story(ies)
11. test the visuals, demonstratives
12. test your own platform skills
13. ferret out the landmines
14. learn all the ways you can (or might) lose your case
15. learn whether you should even file a lawsuit
16. value of the case
17. whether alternative dispute resolution is feasible
18. ideas for direct and cross examination
19. witness preparation
20. whether and how to go to battle
21. and so on.

Still, lawyers are not convinced that they should invest a reasonable amount of money to learn what is bad and worse about their cases, their clients, and their own strategy.

So I am forced to go to a movie to plead my case.  The other night I was watching Steven Spielberg's Academy Award nominated production, "War Horse" based on the novel of the same name.

Early on in the movie, British cavalry officers listen to a report from their scouts about the location of enemy German soldiers.  The Brits learn the number of German troops, number of mounts, artillary, best positions of attack, strategy for attack, risks of loss of men, and so on. 

As the Brits prepare to attack the German soldiers, the officer in charge tells the scout, "Time spent on reconnaissance is time well spent."   

And then they went to battle. 

Billy Wilder Knew How To Look Through A Lens To Get The Story.

 

Billy Wilder abandoned the idea of becoming a lawyer for the life of a reporter on a Viennese newspaper. He eventually came to this country in the 1930s and broke into American films creating some of Hollywood's classic and Oscar winning works as a screenwriter, director and producer.

He once gave the order, "Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award."

A few trademarks: His movies frequently started with narration.  His films feature a sharp wit and characters who frequently try to change their identity, as well as dangerous and manipulative women.

Billy Wilder, who said, "An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation." left a legacy for filmmakers and storytellers alike:  You gotta have a plot.  If you don't got a plot how you gonna make the story come to life? 

TIP:    The plot of your story goes like this:  Who * Did What * To Whom * Under What Circumstances (remember what I wrote about context on Q&A Tuesday?) * Toward What Ends * and, With What Means.

TIP:     Lay out the pieces and listen to how it sounds.

TIP:     If the situation doesn't ring true for you, do it over.

Q&A Tuesday: How Does A Story Change By Revising The Context?

Q:    What changes when you change the context of a story?

A:     You can change the meaning.  The meaning can better suit your purpose. 

For decades now I have taught that a story in its simplest terms can be reduced to a formula: Content + Context + Value = Emotionally Meaningful Story. 

The content is all the facts, evidence, characters, relationships, and the like.

The context is the circumstances within which those facts took place, the characters came to be and how they related among and between themselves.

The value gives us the emotional juice so we can relate to the story whether it is about the Hobbit, a coach on trial for alleged sexual abuse or environmental changes.

It's all a story - and not just a story.

Apple is back in the news.  Not because it is launching another iThing but because its wages and payroll practices are pretty abysmal, "Apples Stores' Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay."  How would Steve Jobs change the context of that story?

Here's an example of how he created a "high ground maneuver" that set a new PR bar, as excerpted from the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. 

The iPhone 4 was dropping calls like crazy.  The reason was attributed to a glitch in the steel rim of the phone. If you held the phone a particular way or covered up the tiny gap that was part of the antenna mechanism, there could be some signal loss.  And it was a problem known to Jobs and the Apple engineers before the launch.

Media being what it is created "Antennagate" and Consumer Reports declined to recommend the phone after rigorous testing.

What's a CEO to do?

Jobs held a press conference.  He did not accept the advice of board members to show a little humility, damp down the pride a bit, offer an apology.  He changed the context of the story, "saying all cell phones had problems."  In a remarkably straightforward and neutral tone he said, "We are not perfect.  Phones are not perfect.  We all know that.  But we want to make our users happy."  Jobs denied the problem, dismissed the criticism, and spread the blame across the board of all smartphone manufacturers

And that was pretty much the end of that.

You could return your phone, but only a marginal few users did.

"Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon strip Dilbert, was also increduloous but far more admiring....Apple's response to the iPhone 4 problem didn't follow the public relations playbook, because Jobs deccided to rewrite the playbook," Adams wrote.  "If you want to know what genius looks like, study Jobs' words"  By proclaiming up front that phones are not perfect, Jobs changed the context of the argument with an indisputable assertion.  "If Jobs had not changed the context from the iPhon 4 to all smartphones in general, I could make you a hilarious comic strip about a product so poorly made that it won't work if it comes in contact with a human hand.  But as soon as the context is changed to all smartphones have problems,' the humor opportunity is gone.  Nothing kills humor like a general and boring truth." [page 523]

TIP:     Develop the context of your story to suit the purpose of your persuasion.

TIP:     Developing the accurate and appropriate context for your story is not lying; it owning the genius to persuade your listener or decision-maker.

TIP:    Lessons are everywhere we look. 

Q&A Tuesday: Why Should Lawyers Care About Marriage?

Q:    Why should lawyers care about the institution of marriage?

A:    As the institution itself seems to declining, the legal definition of marriage is up for grabs.

As reported by Aja Gabel in the current issue of The University of Virginia magazine, The Marriage Crisis, marriage has declined over the past 50 years and continues to decline.  Excerpt.

"Only about half of Americans are married now, down from 72 percent in 1960, according to census data. The age at which one first gets married has risen by six years since 1960, and now only 20 percent of Americans get married before the age of 30. The number of new marriages each year is declining at a slow but steady rate. Put simply, if you are an unmarried adult today, you face a lower chance of ever getting married, a longer wait and higher divorce rates if you do get married. The Pew Research Center recently found that about 40 percent of unmarried adults believe that marriage is becoming obsolete.

While marriage is in decline, unmarried cohabitation is on the rise. Fifteen times the number of couples today live together outside of marriage than in 1960. Almost half of cohabiting households include children.

Why should we care about what may be a failing institution? Brad Wilcox, U.Va. sociology professor and director of the National Marriage Project, argues that the institution of marriage still symbolizes core values important to intimate relationships.

“Marriage conveys a sense of meaning, purpose, direction and stability that tends to benefit adults and especially children. People who get married have an expectation of sexual fidelity, and that fidelity tends to engender a sense of trust and security,” Wilcox says. “There is no kind of similar solemn ritual marking the beginning of cohabitation.”

Allison Pugh, also a U.Va. sociology professor, has a slightly different take on it. She says that it isn’t so much the institution of marriage that is important, but rather how well a family cares for children, regardless of its structure. Children need stability, nurturing and love, but both married and unmarried parents can provide those things, Pugh says.

Is America having a “marriage crisis?” Certainly, the institution of marriage is changing and it’s worth taking a look at why and where it might end up. It’s a question that a number of researchers at U.Va. are trying to answer by exploring the role of women in the workforce, emotional expectations for partnership and marriage’s benefits or costs to individuals and families."

In an nutshell, what has changed?  Women became "liberated."  We obtained college educations and entered the workforce.  While discrepances in equal pay and opportunity continue to exist, women have more choices available to them while society seems ready, albeit resigned, to let us have them.  Personal fulfillment is a goal rather than a tantalizing dream. Divorce is more acceptable than shameful.  Birth control translatesinto higher economic brackets for both partners as women take control of their fertility and their earnings.

Ultimately, marriage in America has changed because Americans have changed:

"Marriage has changed because America has changed. We can’t return to the model of marriage from the mid-20th century because we no longer live in the culture or the economy that created it. And some would argue that we wouldn’t want to return to it even if we could. Both men and women have greater choice than they did 50 years ago not only in regard to whom they marry, but also if they do and what kind of family they want to build. And, if the experts agree on one thing, it is that these choices are some of the most important we make for our own happiness."

Click here to read more about the changing legal definition of marriage. 

Which brings me to where things stand with the Prop (H)8 Trial.  No one was more surprised than I to learn that the good - albeit sometimes whacko - folks in my adopted state of California swigged, chugged and guzzled the Kool-aid before adopting Prop(H)8 banning same-sex marriage.  Surely, we are at least as liberal as Vermont, as smart as New York, as socially savvy as Massachusetts.  But no.

Do you want to know where things stand with the Prop 8 trial?  Click here to read an exceptionally nuanced 5-part series exploring the future of Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the Prop 8 trial and marriage equality.

What is particularly broad-minded about the series is the author's willingness to step beyond the two cases (DOMA and Prop 8) to reflect upon the more global topic of the future of marriage equality in the United States.  Excerpt.

"A vision of the future of marriage equality in the United States

Yesterday, I argued that the DOMA case should be decided before Prop 8 because it fundamentally changes the arguments to be made against California’s marriage ban, and other bans like it across the nation.  Today, I want to take that a step farther and look past the two cases to the future of marriage equality in general.

Marriage equality currently stands at a tipping point in the United States, will polling beginning to shift to the majority in our favor, DOMA and Prop 8 at play before the Supreme Court, and marriage referenda in three states in November.  While the legislative and judicial tracks are currently moving in parallel and do effect each other, I believe that the legislative track will eventually (and within the next few years) be exhausted, and further victories will have to come through the courts.  A Supreme Court ruling on DOMA this year, rather than Prop 8, puts the marriage movement on more solid footing for the future."

Folks, the times they are a changin.

What was it that Aaron Sorkin said in his commencement address to the graduates of Syracuse University?

MR. SORKIN “You’re too good for schadenfreude, you’re too good for gossip and snark, you’re too good for intolerance — and since you’re walking into the middle of a presidential election, it’s worth mentioning that you’re too good to think people who disagree with you are your enemy.”

Advice To Graduates: Life Will Be Hard; Make Mistakes; Fix The World; Be True To Yourself; And So On.

Elliott Richardson gave the commencement address to my college graduating class.  I don't remember what he said so much as what he had done: as attorney general he stood up to then-President Richard M. Nixon and refused to fire the Special Prosecutor investigating Watergate.  His moral stand and subsequent resignation hearkens back to a much earlier time, one that Maureen Dowd longs for in her editorial, "Moral Dystopia."  Excerpt.

"EVERYONE is good, until we’re tested.

We hope we would be Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” who dismisses his daughter’s pleas to compromise his ideals and save his life, saying: “When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.”

But with formerly hallowed institutions and icons sinking into a moral dystopia all around us, has our sense of right and wrong grown more malleable? What if we’re not Thomas More but Mike McQueary?"

Richardson was tested.  His actions are his legacy.

It would be too easy to say that in the years since I stood alone and applauded Richardson's address I became a lawyer and stood up to wrongdoers to model his role.  My mother would just tell you that I was always a head-strong independent soul rooting for the underdog while marching to a distant drummer.

What I do want to know is what today's graduates will take from the plethora of commencement speeches given by the notables and quotables whose earnest, funny, somber and encouraging words come to us in snippets in todays NYTimes, "Familiar Faces Offering Advice, Idealism and Humor."  Excerpt.

"But uplift and idealism still ruled. Graduates were exhorted to do great things, look out for others and maybe, just maybe, put aside their electronic devices for a few minutes. The nearest to universal advice was that graduates should chase what they love, and heal what ails humanity."

Here are a few of my favorites:

NEIL GAIMAN, AUTHOR

University of the Arts

“Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either.” “Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. I.R.S. on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil, or it’s all been done before? Make good art.”

LAWRENCE LESSIG, LEGAL SCHOLAR

John Marshall Law School in Atlanta

“There is no one in the criminal justice system who believes that system works well. There is no one in housing law who believes this is what law was meant to be. ... The law of real people doesn’t work, even if the law of corporations does. ... The law has convinced most Americans that the law is for the rich, except that part of the law that involves the prisons. We, all of us, have a duty to fix this. To repair this. To make it better.”

CORY A. BOOKER, MAYOR OF NEWARK

Bard College

“Go out there and swear to this world your oath, not with your words, but with what you do. Not with your hand over your heart, but with your hand outstretched to a world that desperately needs your hand, your help, your insights, your creativity, your honor, your courage. It needs you.”  “My dad would always tease me: ‘Boy, don’t you walk around here like you hit a triple. You were born on third base, boy.’ ... I drink deeply from wells of freedom and liberty that I did not dig. I eat lavishly from banquet tables prepared for me by my ancestors. I sit under the shade of trees that were planted and cultivated and cared for by those who I will never know.”

AARON SORKIN, WRITER AND PRODUCER

Syracuse University

“To get where you’re going, you have to be good, and to be good where you’re going, you have to be damned good. Every once in a while, you’ll succeed. Most of the time you’ll fail, and most of the time the circumstances will be well beyond your control.”  “You’re too good for schadenfreude, you’re too good for gossip and snark, you’re too good for intolerance — and since you’re walking into the middle of a presidential election, it’s worth mentioning that you’re too good to think people who disagree with you are your enemy.”

To those of you setting out, every good wish for health, prosperity and joy.  For those of us still on the road take a moment to thank and learn from the ones on our (aging) heels.

Murphy's Laws Of Songwriting Can Apply To Lawyers.

Clearly at the top of the Hit Parade of Programs at the recent American Society of Trial Consultants' Annual Conference in New Orleans was the presentation delivered by trial lawyer and songwriter, E. Thomas McCarthy: What Lawyers Can Learn From Songwriters.

Among many points McCarthy made in his jam-packed 60 minute program, this one remains with me: if a songwriter can tell a story from start to finish - with a repeating chorus or refrain - in three minutes, how can a trial attorney do the same with her case story?  Perhaps three minutes is a bit truncated for an opening statement, but the appeal of brevity is a practical and formidable tip lawyers can use to ratchet down their case story to its clear, concise and cogently memorable points.

TIP:    One storytelling exercise I use with my clients is to practice telling their case as a 45-30-15 second story.  Believe it or not, you can tell your story in seconds.  The exercise proves when you know the true case story well.

TIP:    McCarthy suggested we pick up a copy of Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting by Ralph Murphy.  "In easy to grasp terms, Ralph talks about helping arm the songwriter for success by demystifying the process and opening the door to serious professional songwriting." You can listen to the entire Nashville Public Televisions program with Murphy as the featured guest by clicking here: http://wnpt.org/productions/wow/podcast/4006_RalphMurphy.mp3

TIP:     Click here to read Murphy's Law of Songwriting to learn from the master how to take the music of your spoken word from drab to dynamite.  If you can do that, then as McCarthy would say, "You hooked it!" 

 

 

 

Q&A Tuesday: A Technique For The Client To Create Their Own Confidence.

Q:    How do you give a client confidence before testifying?

A:     You don't.  A client must create it for herself.

As a litigation and communications consultant I am often involved in helping prepare people to testify.  I find that the process is like being part of an archaeological dig with the client to discover that particular truth or icon she will adopt for herself to become grounded in confident, authentic testimony.

I always ask the client +to recall childhood stories with a good character and an evil one. There is a certainty - an "Ah Ha! moment - when the client uncovers the precise character and steps into the persona of the good or heroic one.

Next I ask the client to draw a picture of that heroic character for their eyes only.  I don't want to see it. I am satisfied knowing that the client has aligned herself with a character she chose to create the confidence she needs to testify with clear, concise and cogent authenticity.

TIP:     As my friend Ed says, "When we ask for courage we are given opportunities to be brave."  Our job is to help the client discover those opportunities which she will use to create her own confidence.