244 Magic Words to Unleash the Power of Effective Leadership and Positive Influence with Best Selling Author and Wharton School Professor Jonah Berger | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

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[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Jonah Berger, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:00:04] Jonah Berger: Thanks so much for having.

[00:00:06] Mahan Tavakoli: I'm really excited having read your books. Contagious Catalyst Invisible Influence, and now Magic Words. Can't wait to talk about magic words.

Before we do though, Jonah would love to know whereabout you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become.

[00:00:22] Jonah Berger: Sure. I grew up in Washington, DC or I should say right outside of Washington. DC was born in Washington, DC but grew up right side of Washington, DC went to a high school that focused on math, science and computer science. So like a magnet high school. Thought I wanted to be an environmental engineer. Either that or design sneakers or 1 of the other. Went to college at Stanford to study something called Science, Technology and Society, which is the intersection of science technology and society.

Ended up reading a piece in my first class there. It was about how we build buildings and how that shapes how we raise our children. So the idea was you build small houses kids can play in the street cuz you can see your kids play. But once we build these big buildings, now we're less comfortable letting our kids outside cuz we can't see them play. And that shapes how they grow up, right? They're less likely to have friends in the neighborhood and so on. And I thought this was really neat the intersection of the two and I said, Hey, are there any other you might recommend. And they said, oh, you should check out social psychology.

And so that kind of started a journey for me. I took all the social psychology related courses that Stanford had. I also took a lot of sociology courses of social networks and things along those lines. Started taking some marketing courses. Read a book called The Tipping Point as many people have. That led me to design a major, combining a few different things. And then a guy by the name of Chip Heath joined Stanford in the business school. And I started doing research with him on why people remember things and why they share things and the rest is kind of history.

Got interested in academic research. Started doing work on what makes things viral, why people share things, and that led me to Wharton and the work I do today. .

[00:01:51] Mahan Tavakoli: Jonah, I love that background and the fact that I see you have married your engineering mindset with influence over the past 10 or so years in writing different books, talking about in the books, the influence that environment also has on us.

So there's a lot that you have pulled together. Now you also talk about influence and the mindsets that positive influence takes. So what is the mindset that you believe is important? Before we talk about the specifics that you also go into in this book, with respect to magic words.

[00:02:27] Jonah Berger: I think the challenge, is people say, oh, influence. Isn't that a bad thing? We don't wanna be manipulating people. People don't like to be influenced and so on, and I agree manipulating people is bad. I agree that people don't wanna be influenced. The challenge is that we're influenced all the time. If the weather's nice outside, we'll probably end up being happier as a result. If salad is put at the beginning of a buffet line, rather at the end, we're probably more likely to pick more vegetables. And so even if no one's trying to influence us our environment and the others around us are influencing us all the time. And so to me, influence is neither positive nor negative.

If I told you I'm gonna use influence to help people save the environment, make better decisions and live happier lives, you'd say, fantastic. Go ahead and do it. If on the other hand I said, Hey, I'm gonna use influence to, help people buy things they don't need and be unhealthy and be mean to their friends, you'd say no influence is bad.

And so in some sense, influence is like a hammer, a hammer can be used to build something. It can also be used to hurt someone. Influence is neither good nor bad. The tools are neither good nor bad. It's how we use them. And so to go back to your question about a mindset, I think we really need to step back and say, what am I using influence for? As a leader, am I using influence to help move my organization in a good direction, help consumers and clients make better decisions, help people live happier lives? Or am I using influence more negatively? And I can't tell you how you are using influence as an individual, but what I can say is, please use those tools for good

[00:03:53] Mahan Tavakoli: when we think about the most powerful leaders throughout history or organizational leaders, people that have done great things, have used influence as well as people that have done not so great things. Yes. So it is a tool that can be used. Now in this book. You go specifically into the power of words. So what impact do words have in influencing others?

[00:04:17] Jonah Berger: So I think it's important to step back for a second, anytime we're trying to influence others we are often using language in one way, shape, or form.

Whether we want to influence a customer or client, we're probably making a phone call, writing an email, making a presentation. When we're trying to influence employees or an organization, we send out a note, we call a meeting, we pass around a memo. We use language all the time. Now you and I are talking through language. We use language to convince clients. We use language to hold attention. We use language to connect with our loved ones, language is how leaders lead. It's how doctors connect with patients. It's how politicians get votes and connect with their audience. And even our private thoughts rely on language.

Almost everything we do relies on language. And so the question then is how can we use it better? And I agree that many of us think about language somewhat, when I'm making a presentation, I think about what are the ideas that I want to get across. We think a lot about the high level concepts of what we wanna talk about, we think a lot less about how we should talk about it. The specific words we should use to talk about it. Because we don't think they matter, we're focused on the what, and less the how, and that's a big mistake. Because as I talk about in the book, there are six types of magic words. And magic words can have a huge influence on our impact. Saying I recommend something. Versus I like something can make people a third more likely to listen to your advice. A simple word like, because can increase your influence by 50%.

There are a variety of different things. We can use Everything from individual words to phrases and ways of suggesting language that can increase our impact in every domain of life.

And so the book is really encouraging us to pay attention to language and how we use it and help us think about how to use it more effectively.

[00:05:54] Mahan Tavakoli: In using it more effectively, I saw a lot of relevance to leaders of organizations. The first set of words that you talk about is in activating identity and the importance of identity.

How can we think about identity in the words that we use to communicate?

[00:06:12] Jonah Berger: So I'll start with a simple example and maybe we can talk about a couple from this chapter whatever works for you. But the idea at a high level, as you noted is words don't just tell people what we want or suggest what we want to do or provide information.

Words suggest things about identity and agency. They suggest what it means to engage in a particular action. They suggest who's in charge and who's to blame. And so we want to use those words, this type of words. Thoughtfully. I'll give you one example. So often as leaders we ask people for help.

We might say, Hey, can you help me with this in particular? Or we ask for help in other ways. We often use verbs. The word help is a verb, right? To help. And so we ask someone, can you help us? Or if you are working at a nonprofit, for example, that's trying to get out the vote, You might send people a letter saying, Hey, please go vote.

 Vote being an action a verb, something that you can do. But it turns out a subtle shift in our language there can have an important impact on how influential we are and how likely people are to follow our advice.

So there's a great study that was done at Stanford University a number of years ago where they went to a local elementary school and they asked students there's a big mess on the floor of the elementary school. Lots of blocks lying around, lots of crayons that needed to be cleaned up. And for some of the students, they said, Hey, can you help out? Can you help clean up? And, some students did, but for a second set of students, it's an experiment here. So like an AB test for a second set of students, they said, Hey, can you be a helper and clean up? Now I wanna focus on the differences there cuz they're very subtle. The word help and the word helper are only two letters different. In both cases, the letters, H E L P are there. In one case you're just adding an ER at the end. But it led to a third increase in the percentage of people that helped.

And you might say, that's just kids clean up a classroom. What does that have to do with being a leader? Does it actually matter for adults? There was another study done recently published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where they actually sent letters to people's houses trying to get them to vote.

This is part of a Get Out the Vote initiative. And for some people they got a letter that said, please vote. And for other people they got a letter saying, please be a voter. Now again, vote and Voter are very similar, even more similar than the help and helper. Cause voter already has the E, so it's only adding an R one letter difference. Yet it led to a 15% increase in the percentage of people that voted. And so you might be sitting there going why? Why does voter or helper lead to more helping or voting than help and helper? And it turns out it's all about turning actions into identities.

So let me give you an example. Imagine I told you about two people. I have one friend who runs, and I have another friend who is a runner. If you had to guess, which of them do you think runs more often? They're runner. What do you think? Runner. Runner, right? You'd say, oh, it sounds like that's who they are. If I told you someone is they love dogs, so they're a dog lover, you'd say the dog lover loves dogs more.

Same thing if I told you about it. Two people, right? Someone leads and someone is a leader. You'd say, oh, the person who's a leader, leads more often. It's a stable trait. It's part of who they are. And so now suggest identity leader, runner, dog lover suggest identity and that has some important implications.

If we want people to do something, don't just talk about that thing as an action. Talk about it as an identity. Helping is fine. Voting is fine, but getting an opportunity to be a helper, getting an opportunity to see ourselves as a voter that's really desirable. I wanna see myself as a good person, and so I'm more likely to engage in the actions to claim those desired identities.

Note, by the way, though, that same thing happens on the opposite. if I want people saying losing is bad, being a loser is worse, cheating is bad. Being a cheater is worse. And so research shows that if you want to get people not to cheat in the classroom, tell them not to be a cheater.

Makes them less likely to do it because it's a negative identity. And so people avoid the behavior to avoid grabbing the identity. And so first, again, if we wanna get people to do something or not doing something, turn actions into identities.

But second, we can use this to shape how both we as leaders and others are perceived. If on a resume, if someone says, I'm hardworking, suggest you're hardworking. Sometimes if it, if they say, I'm a hard worker. . Suddenly now it's an identity that seems more stable. Being creative. That's nice. Being a creator suggests it's more stable. An influencer suggests it's a full-time job. It's something that you do. And so whether we're describing ourselves, whether we're describing peers, the language we use can have a big impact on how they're perceived. And so that's just one example of the language of identity and agency. I talk about three more in the book, but the language you use shapes how people are seen and the roles they engage in.

[00:10:42] Mahan Tavakoli: It is so powerful as I was thinking about this, Jonah, whether it is, as you mentioned, when we are talking to ourselves, the identities that we associate with ourselves and how we speak to ourselves or when it's talking to people in our team and organizations, identity is a big part of it.

And lot of times, I know LinkedIn has a way based on people's interactions, to figure out when they are more likely to leave a job or not. And I imagine identity is a big part of people associating with an organization or wanting to disassociate with an organization

as well.

[00:11:19] Jonah Berger: Yeah. There's some great research I talk about in the book, and it's one of my I would say one of my favorite language papers recently where they look at the language we use in email, right? And we don't think much about the language we use in email, but they mine the email language over a number of months, hundreds of people in a medium size company, and they look at whether that language predicts future actions and they find something really interesting.

They find that language, just the language you use in your email can predict whether you're gonna be promoted or fired and even whether you're gonna leave the company to do something different in the future. How does that work? They look at the beginning and they say, okay, what's the language you use and what's the language that the people in your company use?

And not surprising when you join a company you're not part of the organization yet. You don't know the language that people use. And so at the beginning it's pretty different. . But what they find is that people who end up doing well in the company, their language becomes more similar to the organization over time.

Yes, they start off as different, but eventually they become closer. They in some sense, acclimate or enculturate to the company. Whereas people that never acclimate, never enculturate, that's an indication they're not doing so well, and those folks are actually more likely to be fired. But what is also interesting is it's not just, hey, can you enculturate or not?

And that's good news by the way, cuz you might think, oh, you're either a good member of the company or it's about whether you change over time it is possible to change. But then they look at the people who already fit in, they've already been able to match the company's language and they look at what happens next.

And I think this part is really powerful. Some people keep behaving similarly to others in the company, others diverge again. It's not that they couldn't be similar. They can be similar. They became similar, but then they stopped being similar. And what happens to those folks? Those folks end up leaving the company.

Not cuz they got fired because they found a better job elsewhere. And so language not only tells us, Hey can you fit in? Are you gonna be promoted or fired? But also, are you less interested in what's going on at the company anymore and more likely to leave for greener pastures.

And so this is in the chapter on the language of similarity and difference. And so it's not just about identity and agency, which is powerful, but another type of language is how similar or different the words we use are to others or the words, different things are to one another. And so that language can also provide insight as well.

[00:13:28] Mahan Tavakoli: You mentioned it helps explain everything from who gets promoted or becomes friends to who gets fired or goes on to get a second date.

So that language of similarity plays a huge role. Now, one of the other things you mentioned, one of the other types of words to increase impact is conveying confidence. And one of the things that I talk about Jonah is humble confidence in some of the leaders that repeatedly mentioned as great examples come across with humility.

You use the example not to get into politics of it, of Trump coming across extremely confident. So where is the balance with respect to leadership communication where the confidence is something that is appealing and works, but not over done.

[00:14:14] Jonah Berger: Yeah. So let's step back for a second. Just at a high level, I talk about six types of language in the book, and I put them in a framework called the SPEACC framework.

It's S P E A C C. I wasn't clever enough to come up with a K, so that's why it's two Cs instead of a K . But that stands for the language of similarity and difference, as we've talked about a little bit already. The language of posing questions and the power of that type of language. The e is for the language of emotion. The A is for the language of agency and identity. The c is for the language of confidence is one of the Cs. And the second C is the language of concreteness. And so under each of these is a class of language that we can use more effectively. And there are three, four, maybe even five strategies underneath each.

The lack of confidence is, I think a really interesting one. And I'll start as you asked by talking about Trump a little bit. And then we'll talk about some different things. Cause I think the language of confidence is a little bit complicated. And whether you like Trump or don't like Trump I don't wanna get into politics here.

I know people have vastly different opinions. Some people love him, some people hate him. I'm not into fighting with your audience about whatever they believe. Whatever they believe is fine, . Whether you like him or not, though, you can't deny that he has done a great job of selling his ideas.

Whether you love those ideas or hate those ideas, he's done a great job of selling, right? His audience listens to him, they follow him. They believe what he has to say. If you look at, one of the speeches he made when he first came out, he said something like, I'm gonna build a wall.

I'm gonna build a great, amazing wall. And I'm gonna do it inexpensively because I'm a great leader. We don't do well anymore as a country. We're always losing. We're losing trade deals to China. I beat China all the time. If I'm elected, I'm gonna do this all the time without a question.

And when he made this speech, many people laughed at him, right? It was filled with things that didn't necessarily all fit together. It was a lot of bluster. It was overly simplistic. And a year later he was elected president. And so again, even if you hate him, which is everybody's entitled their opinion even if you hate him, he's doing something that is working.

So what is that? And if you actually look at the language he used, he's not unique, right? He's a unique per person. But many other people that we find charismatic, whether we like them or not, use similar language. You look at the language of startup founders whether you take someone like Steve Jobs or others look at the language of gurus folks that get a lot of tension.

Look at famous individuals who are seen as great speakers, they often do one thing in particular, which is they speak with a great deal of certainty. And what do I mean by a great deal of certainty? Something isn't just gonna happen. It's definitely gonna happen. An answer isn't just, maybe a good answer.

It's obviously the right course of action. Everyone believes something. It's clear. This is absolutely true without a question, they use a great deal of certainty in their language. And note, though, that's quite different from what most of us do, most of of the time, so I'm an academic I'm guilty of this more than anybody.

But academics often say things like I think this is true. This might be true. This probably will happen. You know what? Maybe this strategy could work, as a consultant, I often come into companies and they ask for help with particular things and I say, look, I think this is, probably a good course of action. To me, this seems like a good strategy, this might work and so on. All of those are hedges. I think, seems to me, might, could, probably. And hedges are not always bad, right? There are times when we wanna hedge and I'll get to that in a second. But the problem with hedging is we often use them without even thinking about it.

We often just do them cuz they're a verbal tick. And the problem is without intending to, it undermines our influence because research we conducted shows the more that communicators hedge, the less audiences are persuade. by what they have to say, they're less likely. They'll follow your suggestion, take your advice, buy a product or service, do what you suggested because they make you as a communicator, seem less confident about what you're saying,

if you say this will probably work, a listener's going you're not even sure it's gonna work. Why should we do it , right? If you are not even clear, why should we do it? Maybe we'll just go find something else. If a strategy might work if it might work, I'll go find another strategy.

And by the way, as a leader, if you seem so uncertain, maybe I'd be able to go find somebody else that is. And so a couple things here first I'm not saying never hedge. There are times when you wanna communicate uncertainty, but be aware of when we're hedging and be sure we want to do it.

There's so many people in my own life, I look that speak with such certainty even when they're wrong. And I sit there going, oh, but they're wrong. The problem is other people listen. . And so as leaders, if our goal is to get people to listen, we need to speak with more certainty.

Secondly, though, there's some hedges that are more effective than others. So take the difference between it seems like this is a good strategy versus seems to me like this is a good strategy or this might work versus I think that this might work in those cases, adding an I, to me, my opinion, all of them associate the uncertainty with the self.

And we actually find that increases persuasion relative to other hedges. So rather than, it seems like this strategy work, it seems to me like the strategy of work is more persuasive cuz it makes you, as a leader, as a communicator seem more certain. Yes, there's some uncertainty in the world, but you feel confident about what you're saying.

It seems to me that this is true. And so your confidence is affecting that judgment. And so what I would say is when you're going to hedge use some of those personal hedges. The last thing I would say is I certainly agree with you that it's not always good to be certain.

So there's some very nice work that shows when you're talking to someone who may be strongly disagrees with you or you wanna show that you're receptive to other opinions. Using Hedges sometimes shows that you're willing to consider other perspectives. When Trump speaks, it doesn't seem like he's willing to consider other perspectives. And so again, like we talked about before with tools, certainty is a tool. We need to understand how to use it. If our goal is persuasion, if our goal is to get people on board and they're already pretty close, speak with certainty. If on the other hand, we're talking to someone who we know is already gonna disagree with us and we know they don't think we're very receptive to their viewpoints, we wanna seem open-minded.

Then using a little bit of hedges, particularly those personal hedges, again, seeming confident, but open-minded can be helpful.

[00:20:12] Mahan Tavakoli: This is really important, Jonah, in that intellectual humility is important for leaders, especially at uncertain times which we live through. However, communicating in a way that seems uncertain doesn't add value.

So I've seen a lot of leaders in trying to come across as more engaging, more humble, communicating in a way that they seem uncertain of what they're communicating and that makes it less likely for others to buy it. Yeah. So there's a difference between intellectual humility and how we communicate.

[00:20:49] Jonah Berger: Yeah. And if I might say one more thing here, sometimes people say, oh what if there is some uncertainty? But you can also shrink the world, right? There's a difference between, I'm not sure what we should do and I'm sure we should focus on this area, but here are the two options that might be good.

Making clear what parts are certain and parts uncertain. Look, this is gonna be a really important strategy, not I'm not sure if this strategy's gonna work. I'm sure the strategy's gonna work, but to make it work, we need to make sure this part happens appropriately, right? You know what needs to happen. You are certain. And so rather than saying you're not certain, the strategy's gonna work saying, you're sure it's gonna work if we do this particular thing.

And so there are ways to be clear that not everything is gonna happen, but that we are certain about certain aspects of it.

[00:21:34] Mahan Tavakoli: It makes a huge difference in the way we communicate. Now, the other part of it is that the magic words are not just with respect to what we say. You mentioned the power of questions at a conversation with Warren Burger also, he has a couple of outstanding books on questions, but the types of questions we ask make a difference, so it's not just asking questions to ask.

[00:21:59] Jonah Berger: Yeah. As I've written more books and thought more about this space, I've learned more and more about questions, and they're so powerful.

We often think questions are about collecting information or gaining knowledge, but they're a lot more than that. Question, shape how people perceive us. They shape what other people give attention to. Question serves many different functions. And so I talk a lot about the power of questions, not only why we should ask them in general, but the types of questions we should ask and how to ask better questions.

And so I'll give you a couple of examples. The first is something as simple as just asking for advice. Most of us are wary asking for advice. Why? We don't wanna bother someone. We're not sure they'll know the right answer. And even worse, we're worried they might think less of us.

Particularly as a leader, when we think that our job is to have the right answer all the time, we don't wanna ask people for advice cuz we're worried they'll think we don't know what we're doing. We're incompetent, we're not sure of ourselves, we're uncertain as we talked about before.

And so maybe we don't ask for advice. And that's a mistake because some research looked at asking for advice and they had people have interactions with other people that asked for advice and other people that didn't ask for advice. And what they found was really insightful. So first asking for advice didn't make us seem worse.

Didn't make us seem less competent, less knowledgeable, or anything along those lines. Second, it actually had the exact opposite effect. Asking for advice may it us seem more competent, not less smarter and more intelligent, not less. And so you might say why is that? Why would asking for advice make it a seem like we know more Like we're smarter?

And the reason it's quite simple, which is that people basically everybody, loves feeling like they give good advice, right? Everyone is self-centered. Everyone thinks their advice is wonderful. I think my advice is fantastic. And so when you come along, whether you are a colleague of mine, whether you are an employee, whoever you are, if you ask me for my advice I go, I give great advice.

And so you're smart enough to ask me for my advice. You must be a pretty smart person, and so asking for advice takes advantage. Of the fact that communicators like feeling good about themselves and in an easy way to not only gain information and insight, which asking for advice does, but also to make ourselves look more positively as a result.

But asking for advice is just one type of questions and effective questions. Other research looks at, social interactions, what types of questions are particularly impactful? Sometimes we think question asking is about being polite.

So at the beginning of this interaction, you might have said something like, oh, hey Jonah, how are you? And I might've said, oh, great. How are you? That question is at the beginning of a conversation. It's a question to be polite, and it's also a reciprocal question. When someone asked us a question, we ask a similar question back, right? If somebody says, what are you having for lunch? I might say peanut butter and jelly. What are you having? And that's a question, but it doesn't really say much about me except that I'm a polite person. But there is a type of questions that does lead to better interactions, and those are called follow up questions. And what do I mean by that? So if someone says, man, I thought that was a really good meeting, not just saying, yeah, I did too, but saying, oh, interesting. Yeah. What did you find interesting about it? or if a spouse or a partner says, oh man, I had a tough day at work. Not just saying, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that saying, oh, what was so difficult about it? A son or daughter says, I had a really good day at school. Interesting, what'd you learn?

Those are questions that don't just say, Hey, I heard what you said, but I paid attention to what you said. I heard what you said, and I care enough to follow up. And that follow up shows that we're being responsive, shows that we care about the audience, and as a result leads them to like us more. And so whether we're looking at conversations through speed dating, whether we're looking at conversations at the office, asking follow up questions makes people like us more, cuz it shows that we're being responsive.

And so asking for advice and asking for follow ups are just two types of questions I talk about. In that chapter, I talk about questions that allow us to get to the root of problems and questions that allow us to fend off, inappropriate or information gathering requests that we don't want to answer, but there are lots of types of questions that can really increase our impact in a variety of different ways.

[00:25:55] Mahan Tavakoli: It's most important to have that genuine curiosity, mindset of curiosity but as you said, the most interesting people are typically people who can ask great questions. Another thing I would love to get your thoughts on Jonah is the power of storytelling.

In many instances, the leaders that I interact with understand the need for storytelling, but are not that great at storytelling. So what do you see both in this book and in previous books, you've talked about the need for emotion and storytelling as a vehicle. What do you see as essential element of storytelling, especially in a business leadership context.

[00:26:38] Jonah Berger: Yeah. There's so many great things about the power of stories. I talk a lot in contagious about the power of stories to carry ideas along for the ride, the notion of kind of Trojan horse stories and how they share morals or information. You tell your kids not to lie. They say, oh, okay, mom and dad, sure. You tell them the story of the boy who cried wolf. They pay attention cuz they want to figure out what happened to the boy. But along the way they also learn that lying is a bad idea. And so stories are great vessels for communicating information.

People sometimes talk about stories like flight simulators, they help people learn things that you want them to take away. But I think as leaders, storytelling is powerful. And there's also the stories we tell about ourselves, maybe you've just been appointed to a new role at a new organization. You're coming in, you're talking to the team for the first time, or maybe you're lucky enough to be the head o of that organization. You're coming in and talking to them, often I think too many leaders as we talked about before, sometimes can seem over confident. They talk about all the great things that are out there, which can be good, but it doesn't help their employees, their audience resonate with them as people, if this person's just been so successful it's hard for me to empathize with them, because maybe I don't see myself as successful. I don't see myself as the same as them.

Same often you hear companies famous companies, say, oh, we're doing so well and, we started our company last year and we worth a billion dollars. And it just seems like such a path to success that any entrepreneurs that aren't feeling like they're on that path just go, man, I can't see this company as similar to me. And that's a mistake cuz there's an opportunity to make a connection.

So if you look at one thing, great storytellers do, is they often make their stories not just like peaks of mountaintops, here's this thing we did and here's this thing we did. And they're all fantastic. And they're all wonderful. And I am just a wonderful person. The valleys often make the peaks more impactful. , if you hear about someone who had some success, maybe they went to a great college, but then they dropped out because they were having difficulty at home with their family, or they didn't have enough money.

But, then they worked through it and they ended up getting a job at this company and they did so well, but, then the company went bankrupt, and then they bounced around between jobs and finally they got this job where they did so well. Suddenly now you go that, that person's like me. Because we all have pitfalls in our lives. We all have situations where we didn't succeed, something didn't work out. We overcame some barriers. And so treating stories not just as a highlight reel a series of the best things that happened, whether we're talking about our company or ourselves, can make people resonate more with what we're saying.

If there're lots of ups and downs, suddenly people go, wow, that's more like my own. , that person overcame so much. Not only is it more powerful that they got to where they are today, but I can see that I can do the same thing. Wow. If my new boss, yeah, they're my boss, but they dealt with some of the same issues, I'm dealing with a lack of confidence or some health issues in the family or balancing work in life and seeing that they dealt with those same issues and this is how they resolve them.

Will make me feel like I can overcome those own issues and own challenges in my own life. And so I think treating stories a little bit more like roller coasters, adding downs before the ups can be a really powerful way to help the audience connect with what you're doing. There's a podcast I really love called How I Built This.

Which many of your listeners are probably familiar with guy Ross leads it and he talks to, startup founders and leaders about things they've overcome. And he does a great job of not only hitting the highlights, but hitting the ups and downs along the way. And social media can often feel like a highlight reel.

It makes it hard to connect with people if we're hoping to connect with our audiences. Showing the downs as well as the ups can be a great way.

[00:30:12] Mahan Tavakoli: Well, You have helped me connect with you and learn a lot from you over the years. Jonah, how can the audience find out more about you? The book Magic words.

[00:30:24] Jonah Berger: Oh, thank you. The book is available wherever books are sold, so Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you like to go. Independent book sales, wherever you like to go for books. They can learn more about me on my website, which is just jonah berger dot com. There's a lot of free resources there.

There's an overview of the framework of the book. There are some one page guides about how to use magic words more effectively in all areas of your life. And they can also connect with me either on Twitter at J one Burger or on LinkedIn there as well.

[00:30:52] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the book. It's one that I will reread Jonah because understanding it, intellectually is one thing.

Practicing it. Yeah. Using these words is very different. So it's not just to be read so you understand it. It's something that we can continually practice and I appreciate even at the end of every one of the chapters you resummarize. So we can reflect on an ongoing basis, am I actually using these or not?

Which can help us become more effective.

[00:31:24] Jonah Berger: Certainly, yeah definitely, my favorite books have bookmarks in them and page notes and other things. And I built the one pager that's on the website similarly to help us I put things like that up in front of my desk, so when I'm dealing with a difficult conversation, I look at it and reminds me as a guide.

And so I think practicing is often with these things quite important.

[00:31:42] Mahan Tavakoli: Jonah Berger, it's a joy speaking with you because leadership is a lot about positive influence, whether it's communicating strategy of the organization or getting the team energized to move toward that purpose and your work invisible influence, catalyst, contagious, and now magic words have helped me understand influence better and I'm sure will help the audience lead their teams and organizations more effectively. Thank you so much for joining me in this conversation.

[00:32:10] Jonah Berger: Thanks so much for having me.