by Roger Ailes
I said, “I have two concerns. One, the close that the president has prepared is too long. It won’t fit in the time allotted.”
“It’s too late to change it,” Deaver said. “The president’s working on it. He’s got it.”
I offered a second close, which was much shorter. Deaver rejected it. Then I asked, “Has anybody talked to the president about the age issue?”
Deaver replied, “We don’t want to introduce anything new.”
I took that to mean that they’d already discussed it, that it was none of my business, and that they didn’t want me to get into that sensitive area with the president.
On the way to the president’s residence, Deaver and I met up with Robert McFarlane, who was then national security advisor, and we all went upstairs to join the president. He came in carrying his yellow pad and looking relaxed in casual slacks, loafers, and a polo shirt.
The four of us discussed several issues and the president read through his closing statement. Then, as we were walking out toward the security elevator, I realized that no one had discussed the age question. Although I had been warned not to bring up anything new, I was sure some reporter would ask the question. So I said, “Mr. President, what are you going to do when they say you’re too old for the job?”
He stopped cold and blinked. Silence.
“It’s critical that you get by that issue successfully,” I said.
He thought for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “Well, there’s an old line I’ve used before about …” and he told me what he planned to say.
“Fine,” I said. “That’s a good answer. But whatever happens, say that and nothing else. Don’t get drawn into the age question at all. Just say your line and stand there.”
“I got it,” he said. We left.
On Sunday, in Kansas City, I met with the president in his hotel suite just before the debate. He led me into a back bedroom where there was one chair and a bed. I expected him to take the chair, but he took off his jacket, bounced up on the bed, and said, “Okay, coach, what do we do?”
We ran through the strategy one more time—how to go on offense, when to move, what to hit on. He had it down pretty well. Then I gave him a pep talk and asked him if he was ready.
“Let’s go get ’em,” he said.
ONE FOR THE GIPPER
During the debate, I sat in a room under the stage watching the monitor. Sure enough, someone asked the age question. Everybody around me groaned. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Here comes a home run.” Up on stage, Reagan was saying that, of course, he felt up to the job, and then he let Mondale have it: “… and I want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” It was not just the president’s words. It was his timing, inflection, facial expression, and body language which made the moment powerful.
As far as I was concerned, the debate was over. The news media had their lead quote for the next day, and everybody had a laugh. I watched Mondale’s face. Even he broke into a smile, but I could see in his eyes that he knew it was over, too. I could almost hear him thinking, “Son of a gun, the old man got away with it! He got a laugh on that line, and I can’t top it.” The public had the reassurance they were looking for, and Reagan had the election won.
THE COMPOSITE YOU
This story wraps up everything I’ve ever learned about successful communication. It says, “You are the message.” What does that mean, exactly? It means that when you communicate with someone, it’s not just the words you choose to send to the other person that make up the message. You’re also sending signals about what kind of person you are—by your eyes, your facial expression, your body movement, your vocal pitch, tone, volume, and intensity, your commitment to your message, your sense of humor, and many other factors.
The receiving person is bombarded with symbols and signals from you. Everything you do in relation to other people causes them to make judgments about what you stand for and what your message is. “You are the message” comes down to the fact that unless you identify yourself as a walking, talking message, you miss that critical point.
The words themselves are meaningless unless the rest of you is in synchronization. The total you affects how others feel about you and respond to you. In the case of the Reagan-Mondale debate, the audience really had just one thing on its mind: Is the president too old to serve another term? Reagan was very popular with the majority of voters. But was he physically capable of handling a second presidential term? The president could have insisted in words that he was feeling fit and able. And he certainly did that. But that was only a small part of the message.
In the first debate, the president had seemed tired and nervous and even confused at times. He now needed to demonstrate that he was still the same Ronald Reagan the voters had elected in 1980. My role in coaching him was to remind him that his objective in the debates was to communicate that composite personality which the voters liked so much. My advice to the president was simple: “You are the message.”
ARE YOU A WINNER?
What does all this mean to you in terms of getting what you want by being who you are? What it means is that your composite message determines whether you’re going to be successful in whatever career you’ve chosen, whether you’re going to move up in the management of your company, whether you’re going to be a winner or a loser, whether you’re going to succeed in negotiating situations, whether you’re going to become a superstar or just another droning voice who eventually gets a wristwatch at retirement. The stakes are that high. It’s that important for you to accept that you (the whole you) are the message—and that message determines whether or not you’ll get what you want in this life.
Over the past twenty-five years, I’ve worked with literally thousands of business and political leaders, show business personalities, and men and women who just want to be successful. I’ve helped many of them learn to communicate more effectively, control communication environments, make persuasive presentations, field hostile questions from journalists or irate corporate shareholders, and generally handle the ever-changing communication situations we all find ourselves in every day. The secret of that training has always been “You are the message.” If you are uncomfortable with who you are, it will make others uncomfortable, too. But if you can identify and use your good qualities as a person, others will want to be with you and cooperate with you.
A PERSONAL INVENTORY
Take a piece of paper and list personal assets that help you communicate. Consider your physical appearance, energy, rate of speech, pitch and tone of voice, animation and gestures, expressiveness of eyes, and ability to hold the interest of people who listen to you. Perhaps you can add other qualities. These assets form the best part of the composite you. Study the list to see which areas you wish to improve. Those categories you feel less confident of are also part of your total message. In this book, we’ll show you, as the old song says, how to “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.”
“You are the message” is a new way of looking at yourself and others. Sometimes we can make mistakes about others if, as we view them, we segment them and only get a partial picture. This person has good-looking hair; that person has no hair. This person should lose weight; that one should gain weight. We look at all these parts of people, but then we quickly perceive the person in totality. You can have the greatest head of hair in the world, or the greatest smile, or the greatest voice, or whatever, but after two minutes you’re going to be looked at as a whole person. All of those impressions of your various parts will have been blended into one complete composite picture, and the other person will have a feeling about you based on that total impression. Enough of that image has to be working in your favor for you to be liked, accepted, and given what you want.
THE UNFORGETTABLE BENNETT
Bennett Cerf, former chairman of Random House Publishing, was a man who never gave i
n to the pressure of growing up completely. He was an incorrigible punster. He would make a joke about anything and always seemed to be in good humor. He had a tremendous interest in other people. This quality alone made him one of the most sought-after friends and hosts in the world. He wasn’t great-looking, he didn’t have a great voice, he wasn’t even a great speaker, and yet he became well known on national television, where publishing house executives usually aren’t public figures. The reason? People liked Bennett!
They always had the feeling he cared about them and was interested in what they were doing—and he truly was. He was interested in everyone he met. After meeting Bennett and spending ten minutes with him, you would find yourself engrossed in a deep conversation about yourself. Bennett was probing, interested, caring. He never hesitated to offer advice or ideas. He never held back because he thought he might lose some of himself if he gave it to others.
I had enormous respect for Bennett. I only knew him well for a few months, but I knew him well enough to understand why people were drawn to him. At the most serious moments, the little boy in Bennett would surface, he would say something funny, and everyone would start to giggle. I’ve seen many other people who careened from crisis to crisis, but I always had the feeling that Bennett Cerf was laughing from crisis to crisis and enjoying the trip. Bennett Cerf built a publishing empire and was a successful businessman, yet he gave the overall impression that life was a lark.
MAKING SENSE OF YOUR SENSES
For the next week, whenever you meet someone, quickly form an overall impression. Do I like this person or not? Am I comfortable or not comfortable? As soon as the overall impression is formed, try to identify as many particulars as you can about the person. Look at eyes, face, attitude, style, and voice. This exercise will sharpen your instincts about people. It will enable you to better “read between the lines” with others. You’ll quickly spot if people mean what they’re saying. You’ll more readily discern nuances from others—for example, if they’re tired, depressed, bored, or anxious, or if their interest has suddenly been piqued (reading other people accurately is essential if you want to succeed in any sales or negotiating situation).
Practice by writing down everything your senses tell you about each person you meet. If you cannot list at least twelve impressions or observations, you need some concentrated work in this area. This exercise will sharpen your instincts about people.
The fact is, our senses are always working, although we’ve trained ourselves to ignore them at times by tuning out. The goal of opening up your senses and practicing this exercise is to expand the sensory radar that all of us have but that only the most astute communicators tap into. Have you ever noticed that some people—maybe a boss, a teacher, or a friend—seem to be able to read your mind at times? The gift some people have is that they have trained their sensory radar better than you have. You can become more like these master communicators by opening up your senses instead of shutting them down.
The fact that most of us only use a small percentage of our sensory potential is demonstrated by the heightened sensing abilities developed by certain handicapped people. For example, the blind often hear, touch, and smell with great perception and subtlety. It’s not that their other senses are better or different than those of sighted people—they’re just more acutely used.
THE MORNING SHOW
When I was in college, I cohosted an early morning radio program called “Yawn Patrol” with another student, Don Matthews. Don was a better broadcaster than I was. He had a terrific voice, a good sense of humor, and a natural radio style.
Don was blind. During our program, we sat close together at a table with a microphone hanging between us. Each day, Don made a list, in Braille, of the records he wanted to play for the following morning’s show. My job was to read the news and to banter with him. If I was going to speak, I would cue Don by tapping his hand so that we wouldn’t run over each other. We were extraordinarily successful together. Eventually we became so sensitized to each other’s breathing and speech patterns that we were able to give up the “tap” system.
Because our show was the first broadcast of the day, I used to arrive about fifteen minutes before airtime, open up the radio station, and turn on the lights and the transmitter. That required throwing about three switches, then going to the control room, cueing up the national anthem, opening the microphones, and signing on the station. Once Don took his place at the table, we would start the show.
One morning, there was a power failure in town and my alarm clock didn’t go off. I woke up with a start, jumped into my clothes, and raced to the station, knowing that I was late. As I arrived, I heard the national anthem playing. I went directly to the studio. Don was there and we went through the program. I assumed that someone else, perhaps an engineer, had shown up early and turned on the equipment.
After the program, I asked Don who had turned on the transmitter. He said, “I did.”
I was stunned. “How could you have turned it on?”
Don explained, “I used to follow you around when you turned everything on in the morning, so I knew basically where everything was. But about a week ago, when we were in the transmitter room, I noticed that there was a slight breeze coming from the right side of the room, which told me that there had to be a window open. When I arrived at the studio and you weren’t here, I realized you must have overslept. So I went around to the back of the building, lifted the iron grate to the bottom window, lowered myself to the sill, lifted the window, and got into the transmitter room. Once inside, it was pretty easy to find the buttons by feel, since I’d heard you snap them on every day.” He chuckled and went on, “It didn’t matter that it was dark. It’s always dark to me. So I got to the control room. I knew where you kept the national anthem record, so I cued it up and decided to start the show myself.”
He said it all matter-of-factly, but I realized how keen his senses had to be to go through a series of fairly complicated steps without having the gift of sight.
TEST YOUR SENSES
You can begin to heighten the powers of your senses right now. Close your eyes. Focus on listening as intently as you can. Even if you’re in a quiet room, you may hear the hum of the fluorescent lights or the rustle of the trees outside—sounds you filtered out just a moment ago.
Next, focus on sight without sound. Look out the window at moving objects or at people and study them closely. If you’re near a TV, turn it on without the sound and just watch. Try to mentally list five different characteristics of each object or person you observe.
Finally, close your eyes again and try to picture streets where you often walk. Either in your mind or on a piece of paper, catalog every building and landscaped area you can recall in the greatest possible detail. Later, walk those streets and make a note of anything you missed in your inventory. We often look at but fail to observe people, places, and things.
OBSERVE OR DIE
One of my clients was a combat infantry officer in Vietnam. He says that he survived the war, in part, because he realized the importance of keen observation. “I could walk into a thicket of jungle and tell you if someone—or something—had passed through recently. I’d look for freshly broken twigs and grass that hadn’t sprung up again—things a casual passerby might never see.
“Today, as I walk city streets or ride subways, I’m aware of exits, blind spots, dead ends, and places of vulnerability—all sorts of things we were sensitive to in ’Nam. During my tour, I learned to speak a little Vietnamese. But even if I didn’t understand each word, I could always read the person’s face. Even today, I can spot in someone else the quickest flicker of fear, apprehension, anger, or hostility.”
“DON’T CHANGE ME”
Many clients I work with come in and say, “I don’t want you to change me.” Well, I can’t change anyone. All I can do is help them identify and bring out their best qualities, the ones that communicate a positive message. I’ll often sit down with someone who’s
quite good at communicating on a one-to-one level—someone who’s friendly, warm, and articulate. We’ll have a good conversation. Then I’ll turn on the video camera and ask the person to stand up at the lectern and answer a few questions. Suddenly, that person, who is basically a good communicator, changes into someone entirely different. He becomes self-conscious, wooden, dull, uninteresting, tongue-tied, and cold. That person has changed himself, and then my job becomes one of trying to get him to change back into that warm, comfortable person he was when we were just sitting and chatting.
So when I say that you can get what you want by being who you are, I mean that you don’t have to make any dramatic changes in your personality. You don’t have to assume a phony posture. You just have to be yourself at your best. The truth is you already have the magic of good communications within you, because nobody can play you as well as you can.
REMEMBER BACK
Take a piece of paper and list three times in your life when you know you’ve communicated successfully. Think about those times. What made them work? I’m sure of a few things: You were committed to what you were saying, you knew what you were talking about, and you were so wrapped up in the moment you lost all feelings of self-consciousness.
Another critical point: Once you reach a comfortable, successful level of communications, you never have to change it, no matter what the situation or circumstances or the size of the audience. I define an audience as anyone other than yourself.