Triggering the Yes Response

Imagine the immense delight you would feel to have an audience break into spontaneous applause after youd made a significant point. You can appreciate, cant you, that a reaction like that signals an audience going for you and your ideas in a very big and tangible way.

Consider, too, speaking in front of a group of people and triggering silent ahuh or yes responses all the way through your presentation. The air would be electric with positive energy, wouldnt it? Now, what if you could create tactical sentences that excite those responses at will? You may say to yourself now, that can be something really worth learning, cant it?

Review your experience of reading the paragraphs above. Can you remember the number of times that you felt physically in alignment with its propositions? Maybe you felt a few ahuh-ahuh-ahuhs as you quickly absorbed the points, or maybe the sensations of agreement and approval were a little stronger than that, providing more than enough reason for you to remain interested and continue reading.

The internal sensations you experience from a mild ahuh to a wanton go-for-it impulse feel good. Consider the value of these positive feelings being associated with you and your content as you deliver your message. If people associate pleasure and stimulation with you and your message, three things happen. 1) People will remember more of your content, 2) People will be much more likely to embrace your message, and 3) People will come back for more.

The sensations associated with Yes! and go-for-it responses are an important consideration in the relationships Charismatic communicators establish with audiences. They are particularly gifted in the assessment and management of emotion in those they seek to persuade. They take constant readings and actively engage in regulating the emotional mercury as circumstance demands. This gift can be seen as a combination of self-appraisal, the capacity to read and manage an audiences emotional state, and the ability to fashion words in such a way as to make them irresistible.

Having felt the power of Yes! and understanding the value of incorporating yes triggers into your speaking style, your next step is to learn some of the patterns and sequences charismatic communicators use to evoke those responses. In this article we will review what you will come to know as tactical negation, or in simple words using the word not to trigger positive reactions in your audience.

THE YES NOT

The word not and its derivatives exist only in language. This is to say that nots are a mental construct and generally do not mirror the way your brain works. They are tough on your unconscious mind and that is why, for example, you cant not think of evoking yes responses when instructed not to think about them, without thinking about them first and then attempting to stamp a not on them. As you can see, its not all that hard to tie your mind up in nots, is it not?

Some nots, however, are better than others. You may not have begun to wonder where this is all taking you, until now. And as you begin to consider the immense possibilities of this simple word, you can appreciate, can you not, how a few cleverly placed nots can bring about a strong sense of the opposite? O.K., enough is enough!

The nots you are going to find relatively easy to integrate into your language style are connected to what are called tag questions. Some tag questions, such as right?, O.K.?, You know? and others that are part of powerless language can reduce your effectiveness as a speaker. However, appropriately inserted tag questions containing a not can have the effect of producing silent affirmation in your listeners, thus significantly increasing your effectiveness. It would be useful to be able to use a linguistic device like not and have your audience nodding in agreement as you go along, wouldnt it?

During the important phases of building an argument it can be extremely useful to evoke your listeners silent agreement on the points you introduce, to encourage them to feel a yes coming on at various stages during the delivery of your argument.

A series of tag questions have been inserted at crucial points in this article to illustrate the usefulness of tag questions containing a not. Perhaps youd like to scan what youve read so far to discover for yourself how a negative like not can induce internal sensations of agreement.

Having completed your scan, begin to think about how you can insert similar tag questions into your speaking style. Try a few out on occasions and notice the physical symptoms of agreement they evoke.

In future articles, I will cover a range of linguistic and rhetorical devices that, if used intelligently, can increase immensely your power as a communicator and public speaker.

(c) Desmond Guilfoyle 2004 - 2006