by Jerry Weissman

During his campaign to become the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney has taken many lumps for being rich. His opponents and the media have exploited the contrast between his personal wealth and the economic struggles of much of the electorate. Mr. Romney hasn’t helped his cause by making several awkward statements about the subject. Yesterday, the day before today’s critical Michigan and Arizona primaries, the ABC News OTUS site ran a twelve-page post titled, “Is Mitt Romney out of touch?” which included the following assertions:

• He likes firing people
  
• He  “isn’t concerned about the very poor”
• The $370,000 he earned in speaking fees is “not very much”
• He offered to bet Rick Perry ten thousand dollars during their debate

The latest gaffe came last Friday in a speech Mr. Romney gave in Detroit, during which he said, “I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck,’’ but then went on to say, “Ann drives, a couple of Cadillacs, actually.’’ The statement wound up on the first page of the ABC News post.

On Sunday, however, Mr. Romney reversed gears by turning the gaffe into an asset. During an interview on Fox News, Chris Wallace asked, “Governor, could you understand why some voters could be put off by those things?”

(video clip requires Microsoft Windows Media Player)

Mr. Romney replied:

I can't be perfect, I just am who I am and I can tell you this with regards to the cars that was talked about last September and people ask us what vehicles we own. We have a car in California; we have a car in Boston. And so that's the way it is. If people think that there is something wrong for being successful in America, they should vote for the other guy. I have been successful.

Mr. Romney didn’t equivocate or evade as so many politicians so often do. In the parlance of the middle America he is trying to win over, he “told it like it is;” in the parlance of effective communication, he was being open and direct. But being even more effective, he added one more sentence to his answer:

And I want to use that success to help the American people.

That single sentence represents both a benefit to the electorate and a declaration of his qualifications to provide that benefit. This is a technique called Topspin; taken from the tennis term for a power stroke, it adds power to answers. You can read more about Topspin in my book, In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions—and can get a FREE Kindle copy now on Amazon.

History Repeats

by Jerry Weissman

Going into last night’s debate among the four candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination, Rick Santorum had the wind at his back. Having swept the contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado two weeks ago, he surged to the head of the polls for next week’s primary election in Michigan—the home state of Mitt Romney, the presumptive favorite—a potential bump in the latter’s road to the nomination. CNN moved Mr. Santorum to center stage for the debate, a promotion from his wing position in the previous 19 televised debates. However, being the front runner also means being in the cross-hairs of the other candidates and, as expected, Mr. Romney, Ron Paul, and John King, the CNN moderator, as any moderator would, went after Mr. Santorum.

KING: We take a question now from cnnpolitics.com. You can see it up on the screen here: “Since birth control is the latest hot topic, which candidate believes in birth control and if not, why?”

SANTORUM: As Congressman Paul knows, I opposed Title X funding. [Title X Family Planning program, was enacted in 1970 as part of the Public Health Service Act.] I've always opposed Title X funding, but it's included in a large appropriation bill that includes a whole host of other things, including the funding for the National Institutes of [entity display="Health" type="section" active="true" key="/health"]Health[/entity], the funding for [entity display="Health" type="section" active="false" key="/health"]Health[/entity] and Human Services and a whole bunch of other departments. It's a multi-billion-dollar bill… So while, yes, I -- I admit I voted for large appropriation bills and there were things in there I didn't like, things in there I did…

KERRY: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

Now flash forward to the current campaign and Mr. Santorum’s repeated accusations of Mr. Romney’s flip-flopping. As philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” After last night’s debate, NBC News/Marist released a new poll that showed Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum “locked in a statistical tie” in Michigan.

This post also appears on Forbes.com

“I” versus “You”

by Jerry Weissman

There’s an old joke about the opera diva who receives an adoring fan in her dressing room after a performance. The diva goes on and on about how magnificently she sang every one of her arias, about her dramatic acting, her expressive gestures, and her fabulous costumes. After about half an hour, the diva says to the fan, “But enough about me, what did you think of my performance?”

Joe Dator, a cartoonist for New Yorker magazine, did a variation on the diva joke. In his sketch, a man is speaking to a woman seated across a table. The caption reads, “Enough about me, but nothing about you just yet.”

This is no laughing matter in most other walks of life where self-centeredness is an obstacle to communication. In presentations, self-centeredness is manifested by a lack of relevance to the audience, and in sales by the lack of benefits for the customer. But to fully understand the negative impact of such one-way communications, let’s take a more universal view by focusing on self-centeredness in conversations, a social phenomenon otherwise known as “Having a ’versation.”

We’ve all been trapped by party bores who emulate the opera diva by delivering monologues all about themselves. One of the early indications that the one-way street is heading for a dead end is the ratio of declarative statements to questions. Bores speak with no question marks on their verbal keyboard.

Another indicator is the ratio of how frequently bores say “I” to how infrequently they say “you.” That simple metric serves as an early warning for you to excuse yourself to head for the bar and refresh your drink. But the role of pronouns in communication extends beyond chit chat into interpersonal relationships.James W. Pennebaker, a University of Texas at Austin psychologist, studies the connections between the frequency of words and feelings. In his book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, he writes:

Pronouns (such as I, you, we, and they)…broadcast the kind of people we are…By looking more carefully at the ways people convey their thoughts in language, we can begin to get a sense of their personalities, emotions, and connections with others.

Mr. Pennebaker conducted a variety of research projects ranging from Craigslist ads to Twitter messages to prove his point. One of the most revealing was a study on speed-dating which, according to a report in the New York Times, “found that couples who used similar levels of personal pronouns, prepositions and even articles were three times as likely to want to date each other compared with those whose language styles didn’t match.”

This post is not meant to help you improve your results at speed-dating, but to urge you to match closely with your listeners, to focus on the “co-” in communications, to have a conversation, not a ‘versation.

When you present, be mindful of your audience by offering them benefits; when you converse, be mindful of the other person by balancing your “I” to “you” ratio. When in doubt, err on the side of the latter.

Note: Mr. Pennebaker offers an opportunity to assess your compatibility with a friend by tracking your word usage in this online exercise: secretlifeofpronouns.com/exercise/synch.

The Pause that Refreshes

by Jerry Weissman