Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. There’s a whole bunch of onomatopoeia going on with that too. You know, there’s a real reason it’s huya as opposed to like hoorah. Erudite. The call is not erudite.

Mark Divine :
Right.

Michael Hoeppner:
It’s huya.

Mark Divine :
Now, it’s funny, you specific reasons why you exactly said. I actually have critiqued. The army’s version is huah. And hua is actually kind of diminishes you, as you say. Yeah. And the Marine version is ooh ra, which is also kind of a weak. Because you can’t project the ooh.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
So the seals are wise, they’re warriors. So it’s more like if you think about a karate ki who. Who comes from the belly.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
And then ya is like an arrow.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Divine :
You can pierce someone with that.

Michael Hoeppner:
There’s a bunch of things happening with your mouth and your breath too, to achieve those sounds that makes your call better than the other two, even the ya, because it forces your mouth to open much more on that extended syllable, that voiced vowel, ya. Like. So, like all of that is opening, expanding the body and forcing more breath and more voice out of you as opposed to. I mean, if we go really far. Like I used erudite because it’s such a tight little sound, but even theirs are a little bit worse than the call that you all do.

Mark Divine :
Right.

Michael Hoeppner:
So whether you landed on that instinctually or how it developed but is good.

Mark Divine :
Yeah.

Michael Hoeppner:
It’s not that you need my validation on that.

Mark Divine :
I don’t think it’s a good call. No way to trace the roots. It’s just lost in history of the seals. Part of it was just wanting to be different.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Right. You know, we’re not going to do what the Marines are going to do or what the army does.

Michael Hoeppner:
Right, right.

Mark Divine :
The SEALs are relatively new organization and relatively speaking, 63. They were formed.

Michael Hoeppner:
Wow.

Mark Divine :
By John F. Kennedy and. But because it was such a small unit and the guys were so creative that they came up with a lot of the cultural stuff was new. Right. So they developed it and they needed to develop a culture that was distinct from the big Navy because what they were doing was very, very unique.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
And so this idea. But a lot of the guys attracted were, you know, were warriors. Like they’re martial artists and you know.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Wrestlers. So they understood this notion of power projection and the. And how energy gets stored in the belly. And so like, that’s why the who comes.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Deep from the belly, from the power source. And then like you said, the.

Michael Hoeppner:
Ya.

Mark Divine :
I’ve noticed with my clientele that it does need to be practiced. So first introduce it. I get a lot of like, hoo ya. Of course. They trap the energy up here. Oo yah.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
So we have to then get into breathing exercises, which then opens up the airway, gives them that. Yeah, we’ll even use this. Michael, by the way, we’re recording this is part of the podcast.

Michael Hoeppner:
Great.

Mark Divine :
So we’ll combine the sound with movement. So like a squat, drop down, inhale, stand up. Hoo ya. And so now we’ve got the movement. So I think there’s probably a lot of overlap with some of the exercises that you do.

Michael Hoeppner:
A ton.

Mark Divine :
Yeah. What’s the. I’m sure there’s several, but can you tell us what, like the biggest mistake that people make with communication.

Michael Hoeppner:
It’s related to what I hope is the biggest aha moment people have from this book and for you specifically, the.

Mark Divine :
Biggest hoo ya moment.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. And I hope for you even that communication is completely tied to every single thing that you’re most interested in, in the work that you do. And here’s why. People have this tremendous misconception of what communication actually is. We have this idea that if I think smart thoughts, I’m going to magically say smart thoughts, almost like I am a PDF. I’m going to share a piece of thought leadership with you. And it completely misses the point that communication is a physical act.

Michael Hoeppner:
It’s almost a physical discipline. It’s closer to a sport or a dance or yes, a martial art or fighting discipline than it is just thinking because we take air into our bodies. In order for that to happen, the diaphragm has to drop down, the rib cage has to expand to allow the lungs to have room to fill with air. You expel that air, it flows over your vocal cords and that’s where it picks up sound. And then the sound gets amplified and altered coming out of your mouth with this miraculous act of enunciation we all do all day long and never think about it.

Mark Divine :
Yeah, Michael. I’m just marveling over the complexity of formulating a sentence.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes, yes.

Mark Divine :
It’s crazy, right? To think that the air vibrating on the vocal cords and then kind of contorted by our tongue and our lips and our face. And also the way we’re modulating the air coming out. This is pretty extraordinary when you really pay attention to it, like, how much.

Michael Hoeppner:
Is involved in it.

Mark Divine :
Yeah.

Michael Hoeppner:
I call speaking an everyday miracle because it is. You’re right. The phenomenal act of coordination that is unlocked as we do this. It’s incredible. And the mixture of large muscle groups and tiny, small muscle groups, the precision of enunciation, what our tongue and our lips and our jaw and our soft palate all have to do to form words. It’s incredible. But people don’t know that.

Mark Divine :
They just think of it as big is just to take it for granted.

Michael Hoeppner:
Well, the biggest mistake is to remain only in the cognitive. So essentially, you perform badly, and then what you do is you beat yourself up and say, like, God, I’ve got to study my stuff better next time. I really have to. I have to anticipate that question. How could I not thought of that? Or, oh, I’ve got to make sure I say this thing, remember that thing? And we retreat into this whole, like, cognitive obsessive place. And if we performed badly, what I see a lot is people even dip into some kind of shame cycle and self critique. It’s not.

Mark Divine :
And we know that’s not very helpful.

Michael Hoeppner:
Not helpful at all. No. And it’s a physical activity. It’s closer to exercising. So as opposed to that whole silly shame loop, instead, learn physical practices to communicate much, much better. Practice them. And like an athlete, train and you’ll be better in 3 months, 6 months.

Mark Divine :
I agree with that. I want to really dig into a lot of these exercises, but just kind of my own experience with speeches, you know, I used to use PowerPoints. I think, you know, everyone expected them. Right. A little bit of eye candy. And at least I was smart enough not to read the PowerPoint slides, to use it as a guide. But at the same time, it really constrained me. Right.

Mark Divine :
I felt like I had to, like, then kind of contract myself into, like this actual square presentation. And then. And my voice kind of went through the presentation to the crowd, and so it disconnected me from the audience.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
So I stopped using them and also started telling stories. That’s the other thing. It’s really hard to tell. Effective. Do effective storytelling when you’re using a prop like a PowerPoint, because, again, you’re engaging with the concept as opposed to the embodiment of the story. So I stopped using PowerPoints and I started to do exactly what you’re saying is, like, tell the story with my body, right? So, like, if I say, oh, yeah, you know, I was on day one of Bud’s training, and the instructor said, hit the surf. And I’m on stage, I’m like, going. I turn around and I start running, right.

Mark Divine :
So they get this visceral image, like, I’m running toward the surf, and then I stop and I look back looking for my friend, like, where are you, Bill? And Bill’s running to ring the bell, Right. And this is all leading into a story about, like, why did he quit and why was I having fun at that very same moment? Same moment, same stimulus, different response, mentally and emotionally. Anyways, what I found is my speech is just dramatically improved, like, not incrementally, but exponentially. And that the audience. Because the movement and the dynamic nature of the storytelling, the audience couldn’t take their eyes off me.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
So they became really engaged.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
I’m like, okay, I think we’re onto something. So that’s like my. One of my most important takeaways was. Is exactly what you just started with this whole conversation is that speaking, communicating, is a body art.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes.

Mark Divine :
Yes, it’s a body art.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right.

Mark Divine :
And you just related it to, like, dance or tai chi or qigong.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s cool. And just like all those same things, the better, the more economically, efficiently, fluidly, that you use the physical communication instrument that is your body, the better your communication. So it’s a different way of approaching this that helps people realize, oh, my gosh, I can train in this. I can get better with a little bit of dedicated work. I can dramatically, to your point, to your experience, I can exponentially improve and I can get out of. If I have some sort of negative tape in my head that I’ve been playing for 30 years, I talk too fast, I go on too long, I bore people. Whatever this thing is, you can get out of it like that if you do the right approach to training, which, of course, that’s the entire point of this book, is to give people tangible things that they can do differently. Your story is an amazing one for a variety of reasons.

Michael Hoeppner:
I want to push back on a couple little concepts, though. Yes, PowerPoint is deadly boring. Yes. But it doesn’t have to be right. So when you say PowerPoint, probably what that means is the slides had some verbiage on there, some words, some charts, that kind of stuff. No one says, though, that the PowerPoint could not be a picture of you in a cold bath after 90 minutes or a image or a video. It is another way to stimulate people’s senses. But we use it in dreadfully boring ways all the time.

Michael Hoeppner:
Now, trust me, I know this because I coach in legal and finance and pharma, and trust me, those slides.

Mark Divine :
Yeah. Put yourself to sleep slides.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, for sure.

Mark Divine :
No, I totally agree with that. So if I do use slides, they’re just images now.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mark Divine :
And that’s an art too, to like, really make sure that your imagery is going to fit with the flow of your speech. Right. And I’m a little bit more free form, so I have. That even can constrain me where I’m like, I’m trying to advance a slide to make sure that the image is matching the story at the appropriate place.

Michael Hoeppner:
Sure.

Mark Divine :
So I got a little work to do in that category.

Michael Hoeppner:
Well, but I’m also not suggesting one needs PowerPoint. I’m not even suggesting if you use a bunch of images, that it’s better than having no PowerPoint and just telling stories. I’m simply suggesting for those of you who are listening out there, say, like, I have to use slides. Okay, fine. Use better slides. Make it more sensory for your audience. But the even more interesting thing about the story you told is that if people are watching clips of this, they’re just listening, most likely. But if you are watching, what you would see is when you began to move your body dynamically retelling this story, your voice changed dramatically.

Michael Hoeppner:
And you can even feel this for a second if you pound in your chest for a second. And of course, the audience can now hear this. And I say, my voice is my body. If I plug my nose, the sound of my voice changes when I say my voice is my body. We are musical instruments. So when you begin to move your body in a profoundly different way, as you do when you tell the story, sounds out different sounds, completely different. The same thing, though, if you stuck a mute in a trumpet, the sound of the trumpet doesn’t. It wouldn’t shock anyone that it changes.

Michael Hoeppner:
Of course it would change. But we forget that we are musical instruments. So this is why I’m excited for this conversation, because this is entirely in line with your work, for sure. And if your audience that is so already attuned to the idea that how you build the physical habits of your day can dramatically improve your life, it’s the exact same thing for communication. And most folks don’t teach communication that way.

Mark Divine :
Yeah, I’d love to come up with by the end of this, a simple protocol that someone can add to Their exercise routine, like I’m going to go work out. And as part of the workout, we’re doing three or four things that are going to improve my communications.

Michael Hoeppner:
Now, you know, not just that, but if people read the book and they don’t do that, they have not taken the lessons of the book. Because literally chapter 19 is called making it stick building your communication regimen. And it’s all about that. A little warm up at the beginning of the day and then a few exercises that you practice to build a different kind of muscle memory so that over time, three months, you have a different habit, a different pattern. Three years of doing it, you’re a different communicator.

Mark Divine :
That’s interesting. So don’t say what’s wrong with the word nothing? It’s not even a word, is it? It’s just kind of a filler, Right?

Michael Hoeppner:
Totally.

Mark Divine :
So basically means I don’t know what’s coming next.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Or what is. You know, what’s so wrong with nothing.

Michael Hoeppner:
Is so wrong with the title is a bit of a trick.

Mark Divine :
Okay.

Michael Hoeppner:
And as soon as readers open the book in the preface, the first thing they hear is that the title is a trick because it activates thought suppression. So that’s the don’t think of a pink elephant trick. So if I say don’t think of a pink. Right, exactly. That’s what your brain goes to instantly. But. But we get and give ourselves this same thought suppression advice all the time. Don’t make distracting hand gestures.

Michael Hoeppner:
Don’t talk too fast. Don’t maintain too much eye contact. It looks intense. Don’t not make eye contact. All these don’ts, they just litter our focus while we’re speaking. And what it ultimately does is it makes you more fixated on yourself than the person you’re trying to reach.

Mark Divine :
Interesting.

Michael Hoeppner:
But everyone knows in communication who’s the most important person, the person we’re trying to reach. So the title is supposed to resonate with people because they’ve heard it a million times. But as soon as they open the book, every single page is helping them figure out what to do rather than what to avoid. And filler is one of those things. We can unpack it if you want to filler and ums and us and kind ofs, you know, is that kind of thing.

Mark Divine :
Yeah, let’s unpack that a little bit. So my perception is that those. It’s just unskillful communication and perhaps not a fully formulated thought. Right. Maybe a partially formulated thought. Then there’s a pause and maybe like waiting for the brain to catch up, to fill in the blanks of what’s next.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
So part of that is really kind of the preparation, or I guess I have to distinguish between a formal speech for versus just, like, communicating the way we are and maybe just stylistically. Right. Some people are more streamer conscious, and other people are going to be more concise and precise with their languaging.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. I’m the last person in the world to dissuade anyone from preparation. But this is distinct from preparation in the following way. Yes, it’s good that you can be very precise with your language when you do have the chance to prepare, but a lot of life is not prepared. It’s impromptu, so you’re on the right track with much of what you’re saying. And for this one, let me just teach the exercise first, because it’s the best way to unpack it. I actually did a spot on Good Morning America recently when I had the host walk on a balance beam. And that’s the most fully realized version of this exercise.

Michael Hoeppner:
But you can do it just with your fingers. And the exercise in the chapter on what I call linguistic precision, which is essentially, are you choosing your words, or are you just opening your mouth and letting words tumble out? In the chapter, I teach people to do an exercise called finger walking. And I’m doing it now, of course, if you’re looking at this clip, but if you’re just listening, what I’m doing is walking my fingers forward in space. You can do it on a desk or a table or the top of your leg. The goal is to force yourself to choose words, step your fingers as specifically, as deliberately, as precisely as needed to choose every single word that comes out of your mouth. Now, as you do this, this is the antidote to thought suppression. It is the antidote to don’t say. Because what it’s forcing you to do is use embodied cognition, that’s learning with your body, embodied cognition, to actually choose langu, as opposed to just letting language tumble out of your mouth.

Michael Hoeppner:
So I like to say that filler language is a symptom, not a problem to some of what you just said. It’s a symptom of not really taking the time to consider what it is you want to say and being in charge of the words that you’re creating to try to impact others in life. Now, I’m not the police. I’m not saying you can never say or kind of, or, you know, more interestingly for the audience, focus on the ratio of ums and what I mean by that is this. If you say, um, every 20 seconds when you’re talking to a friend and you’re trying to help the friend figure out some next steps in their life, and you say, um, every 20 seconds, fine. To your point earlier about vulnerability and humanity, sure, that’s how you speak as you’re navigating this incredible act of decision tree that is choosing one of the 15,000 words in your vocabulary. But here’s a crucial thing. If in an interview or a presentation, all of a sudden you say every three seconds, well, that’s not organic.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s not you. That’s a habit you’re shifting into in which all of a sudden you’re more self focused, not nearly as precise and not as mindful of the audience. And then your filler rate skyrockets. And those filler sounds are worth paying attention to.

Mark Divine :
What are some of the most other, most common filler sounds? Ah, sure. Those are the big ones. Sure.

Michael Hoeppner:
It bounces around. Around the world too, by the way. So in Ireland it’s N. In Japan it’s. Yeah, exactly. And in France it’s like. So yeah, it does. It bounces around.

Michael Hoeppner:
But in the chapter, I even go further, which is this. I give people two criteria to think about. Filler. Because it really could be any word, actually, if it satisfies these two criteria, one, it’s not grammatically necessary, and two, you’re not aware you’re doing it. So the hilarious example from the chapter is I one time coached a guy in the financial world and he said the word viscerally practically every other sentence.

Mark Divine :
Really?

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, viscerally, viscerally. And he had no idea he was doing it. It didn’t fit in the sentence whatsoever at all.

Mark Divine :
But it was just enamored with the word.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes, yes, he was enamored with it. And it just became a crutch and a bit of filler that he would just throw in all the time into his sentence.

Mark Divine :
Interesting.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
There’s so many vectors. We take this. But I’m just going to just throw some stuff out because I, you know, communication is so multifaceted. But what about vocal variety? Like, you know, we did this earlier, playing around with the enunciation. Like there’s. You take one word and you can communicate it with a lot of different variety, a lot of different tonalities, and it might come off and actually have a different meaning or even like with the tonality of how you end the word, you know, like up. It’s going to be more of a question if it’s Down. It’s kind of a statement.

Mark Divine :
So what? How do we really get a hold of variety and tonality?

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, let’s look at this quite rigorously. So you said enunciation. Enunciation is totally distinct from vocal variety.

Mark Divine :
Is it?

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Enunciation is percussively how you shape sound into words.

Mark Divine :
Okay.

Michael Hoeppner:
But vocal variety has to do with the musicality of the sound before it even gets enunciated.

Mark Divine :
Interesting.

Michael Hoeppner:
It does change a little bit because if you open your mouth more for enunciation, it affects how quickly you can speak and things like that. But for the purposes of most folks improvement, it’s better to think of the two things distinctly. Enunciation, vocal variety, vocal variety. Humans use it and we’ve been using it as long as we’ve been human. So I didn’t invent that at all. I invented though, a naming system to help people remember it. And this is useful to people. Pace, pitch, pause, power placement, Pace, pitch, pause, power placement.

Michael Hoeppner:
Okay, so I’ve made it Ps and it’s alliterative exactly five Ps. So pace is speed, that’s fast and slow. Pitch is high and low, high, low. Pause is just a musical rest. Silence. Power is volume. I’ll move back from the microphone for loud and soft. And placement means where the sound is placed in your body, where it amplifies the most in your body.

Mark Divine :
Interesting.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Now what’s fascinating, if we go back to your story about PowerPoint and we listen to the first part, when you were talking about what the delivery was like, when you were using slides, your voice began to speak more about like this dynamic right here with almost no variation whatsoever. And then as soon as you talked about, and then I ran across the thing and the person shouted at me and they said, hey. All of a sudden your voice took on all this inflection and musicality. We do this quite naturally. When people get stressed, when they feel under pressure, self focused, what they tend to do is contract. Because if you think of those three threat responses of fight, flight, or freeze, you can’t fight anyone when giving a presentation. You can’t flee the room.

Michael Hoeppner:
So what do you do? You freeze a little bit. And what that means is you contract. You breathe less, you open your mouth less, and all the variation in your voice goes away. And all of a sudden you’re talking like that. So for most people, the journey is simply using more variation on all of those five Ps and the fastest way to unlock that again is through a physical approach. So in the chapter on vocal variety, I teach A drill called silent storytelling. And we can get into it if you want to.

Mark Divine :
I’d like to. But first, could you give us some examples? Like choose a sentence.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
And vary up the five Ps.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, you got it. Hey, everybody. This is really easy. It’s super easy. You know why? Because you already know how to do it. Don’t even have to think about it. Do this thought experiment. Some kid has grabbed your cell phone.

Michael Hoeppner:
Okay. There are four, let’s say, and you want your cell phone back. And all you have to trade is a wiffle ball or a stack of post it notes. Now, I want you to imagine yourself saying this sentence. And I’ll do it in a monotone so I’m not cheating. Listen, do you want this thing or this thing? All right. Now I want you to imagine yourself comparing these two objects, the cell phone and the Wiffle ball, and how you would use your voice to make the wiffle ball seem much more attractive to the kid to try to steal that phone back from them. And I promise you, you would change all of these five Ps pace, pitch, pause, power, placement, all of them automatically.

Michael Hoeppner:
And you would never think I’m focused on improving my communication because Michael Chad Hebner’s book, Don’t say Told me I should do so. You would just change them. The same thing is true for when and how you vary your voice. So I’ll give you an example. I’m going to use a parenthetical a sentence. One time through, I will lift it higher. One time through, I will lift it lower. And you’re going to hear that both ways.

Michael Hoeppner:
The sentence makes sense. So here we go. My book, which focuses on how communication is physical, should be used like a how to manual. That’s the first one. Here we go. My book, which is physical, help people use it like a how to manual. Okay. I didn’t get quite the exact same words because I can’t remember exactly what I said.

Michael Hoeppner:
But you heard first time, low, high, low, second time, high, low, high.

Mark Divine :
Right.

Michael Hoeppner:
They both make sense. So the point is not obsessing about which words you should inflect and how. The point is simply use vocal variety to get your ideas across. The only one that would not make sense is this one. My book, which focuses on the physical aspects of communication should be used like a how to manual. You hear that?

Mark Divine :
Yeah.

Michael Hoeppner:
So the point is just vary your voice. It doesn’t. Don’t have to micromanage how. Just do it.

Mark Divine :
That reminds me. And that’s what I was just checking. I Had written down a statement about a year ago that was profoundly interesting to me that relates to this topic, and it shows you how the emphasis on any particular word in a sentence will change the meaning of the sentence. And this sentence, every single word, if you put an emphasis, it changes the meaning.

Michael Hoeppner:
What’s the sentence?

Mark Divine :
I never said she stole my money.

Michael Hoeppner:
Exactly.

Mark Divine :
Yeah, right. I never said she stole my money.

Michael Hoeppner:
Somebody else did.

Mark Divine :
Somebody else did. I never said she stole my money. I never said she stole my money.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right.

Mark Divine :
I never said she stole my money.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right.

Mark Divine :
I never said she stole my money.

Michael Hoeppner:
She borrowed it.

Mark Divine :
I never said she stole my money.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right. She stole my money, not yours.

Mark Divine :
And I never. She stole my money.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right. She stole my car.

Mark Divine :
She stole something else.

Michael Hoeppner:
Isn’t that.

Mark Divine :
That’s just genius.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, for sure. Imagine this is a litigator, right? And you are the witness on the stand. And the jury’s gonna think dramatically different things about what actually happened based on your vocal variety in that situation. You’re right.

Mark Divine :
That’s fascinating.

Michael Hoeppner:
Now, that’s because we use vocal variety to convey meaning. So this is not an optional thing. If you’re listening to this, this is not about you having more drama or more flair. No, this is core. It’s crucial. In fact, we use vocal variety to convey meaning, to convey emotion, to surprise our audience so they actually listen to what we’re saying, and also to orient our audience. So this is not an optional thing. In order to be effective in your life as a communicator, you have to do this.

Michael Hoeppner:
And amazingly, you do it already when you’re not thinking about it so much.

Mark Divine :
What’s coming up to me right now is another kind of interesting, kind of, I guess, gap, communication gap. And this one was in Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow. And he talks about cognitive bias. And so if you’re. If. If you’re in a Native American, let’s just say. And I said, yeah, I pulled up to the bank, Right. You might be thinking, well, Mark was in a canoe and he pulled up to the riverbank, Right.

Mark Divine :
Whereas I’m thinking I drove my car and stopped in front of the, you know, banking institution.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
So how do we ensure that context is conveyed or communicated effectively so that we don’t have these major gaps in understanding?

Michael Hoeppner:
I should clarify something about the book, which is. In no chapter of this book will readers learn a thing about content. You can divide communication into two buckets. Spoken communication, anyway. Two buckets. One is content the other is delivery. Content is what you say delivery is everything else. How you say you say it.

Michael Hoeppner:
Vocal variety, enunciation, eye contact.

Mark Divine :
And the context, I guess would fit into that because.

Michael Hoeppner:
A little bit. But the context there.

Mark Divine :
I never said she stole my money. The context is communicated by the emphasis on a particular word, because otherwise it’s a completely different meaning.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes, agreed. But the example you gave was actually about the meaning of the word bank to one audience versus to another. So their frame of reference is car. The other’s is canoe. That actually is a reflection on the content meaning, the word choice.

Mark Divine :
I see. Yeah.

Michael Hoeppner:
But yes, you’re right that delivery does convey a whole bunch of context and energy. And again, tone, emotion, surprise, et cetera. So what I would suggest is that if you’re trying to make sure that you are understood, all the behaviors of delivery are crucial to understanding what your audience is perceiving and what you’re trying to convey. Eye contact. We use this not to have good presence and to look into each other’s souls. No, we have eye contact to see. Is my message resonating with my. Yeah, that’s right.

Michael Hoeppner:
And it’s different for different people. I mean, neurodivergent audiences have slightly different relationship. Different cultures use eye contact differently. But in general, it’s one tool that we leverage to see did they understand that danger is coming or not? So, yes, to all those behavioral tools. And that will give you a lot of information about what your audience actually thinks or feels.

Mark Divine :
Right. One of the practices we use in Unreal Mind is called. We just call it active listening. And it’s kind of a misnomer because really what we’re saying is mindfulness. It’s like be present enough to clear your mind of formulating a response, of judging, of classifying, and trying to relate the information that’s coming out of the other person’s mouth to something that you know so that you can come back with something pithy or whatever, which is the normal mode of communication for most people. Right. They’re not listening. They’re actually in their head.

Mark Divine :
They’re probably collecting 5% of the information, and 95% of what is going on is their formulation of some sort of positional response. So we try to get our clientele to just stop doing that. And that’s a pretty incredible hard and incredible transformation when you can just actually listen fully present and receive.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
And the power that would have on the communication or the understanding. Right. Is pretty extraordinary. I’m curious, do you have any exercises that are similar to that? Or that you can kind of expound upon.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, you have to read the chapter on vocal variety, which is great, because that dovetails with our previous conversation. It’s also the longest chapter in the book, by the way. Not because it’s boring, but because it’s so important. The subject matter, I mean. But yeah, I will help you with that coaching that you give to your clients right now, because the exercise in that chapter is called silent storytelling. It’s amazing for what you’re talking about. The way it works is this. You have to tell a story, but you don’t get to use sound.

Michael Hoeppner:
So essentially, you’re mouthing the words, and you’re doing it as much as you can so that people could kind of read your lips, but you’re also allowing your face to get in on the action and express how you feel about it. And also, you use your hands.

Mark Divine :
Sounds like pantomime almost.

Michael Hoeppner:
It’s kind of like pantomime, exactly, but it’s not so far as to be charade. So you’re not counting off syllables on your arm or that kind of thing? No, you’re just communicating as a heightened version of yourself from a physical communication perspective. Think of it like being muted on tv, where all the viewers should be able to read your lips. This is an incredibly powerful exercise for both doer and us.

Mark Divine :
I was gonna say the receiver is gonna get the main benefits, probably.

Michael Hoeppner:
No, no, both, Both, both. Because the receiver. This is an incredible exercise to teach them how to do the very thing you’re talking about.

Mark Divine :
Pay attention.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes, and pay attention to every darn moment as opposed to the past. What was said so I can think of a great answer. Or the future. What I’m about to say to dazzle my audience or win the debate. No. What is the word they’re forming right now? And I have to use all my powers of perception to figure that out. So it brings the listener into the present moment, but for the speaker, it unlocks all these incredible things. One, eye contact.

Michael Hoeppner:
Because they have to look at their audience to see are they mostly getting what I’m saying or not? Two, gestural ease and freedom. Because all of a sudden, their hands have a mission that is no longer. Don’t make distracting hand gestures. It’s an active mission. Number three, when they put sound back into the equation, their voice, like you did when telling a story about blowing off your PowerPoint slides and just telling a story. Instead, their voice leaps out of their body because they’re using their body in a much more dynamic way. But It’s a very powerful exercise for both listener and. Or speaker and receiver.

Mark Divine :
Yeah. Michael, let’s talk about how. Let’s say someone is disembodied. I don’t mean that in a spiritual sense or you know, astral body says, I mean like they’re just head up.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes.

Mark Divine :
And you know, a lot of people are that way.

Michael Hoeppner:
Right.

Mark Divine :
Because of our health issues and people are not really connected to their body. How do we. From a communication perspective, what are some of the tools to get people back into their body to be more expressive and to be comfortable, not feel awkward about talking with their hands and using their body. More communication because it is so powerful.

Michael Hoeppner:
The first thing I would suggest is that people should try to get an accurate perception to reality lens because they’re probably more or less disembodied in different situations. You even hear speakers in high stakes situations describe this as was like an out of body experience. So when people tend to be more stressed, more nervous, they tend to be more disembodied. And sometimes as they become more relaxed, more focused on the other person, they become more embodied. But you’re right, lots of folks are walking around from just the neck up. So every exercise in the book tries to use embodied cognition to unlock better behavior. Silent storytelling is a perfect example, the one I just explained. Another great one is in the posture chapter.

Michael Hoeppner:
People tend to go about posture in all the wrong ways. I’m sure you know a lot about this and from the listing I’ve done to your pod, which I love, you touch on this sometimes, which is. Posture tends to be done from a very a standpoint of recruiting all the wrong muscles, like stand up straight and everyone tightens their lumbar like crazy and makes their cervical spine really tight trying to achieve height. But actually we are balanced beings. When we use our body well, we’re keeping our head aloft from ease and grace and balance and release, not from muscular effort. So in the chapter, what you do is you cut out a paper crown and you kind of like those paper crowns. Well, I’m dating myself now, but I used to go to Burger King as a little kid. They had these paper crowns.

Michael Hoeppner:
Okay, yeah, same kind of idea. And you put this crown on and then your job is to walk around the room visualizing that you are a monarch of some nation. And this tends to instantly inform people’s bodies. And they begin to use their body differently. Taller, more released. And what happens as soon as they do that? As soon as their head is taller, there’s more room for their diaphragm to actually drop down so they begin to breathe. And the breath is a thing that begins to unlock a much more embodied existence. Because when we’re living from our neck up, we’re not breathing.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s just one example.

Mark Divine :
Right. What about preparation? Like warm up exercises? You know, for. If I’m actually going to give a presentation virtually or on stage.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
How do I effectively prepare for that?

Michael Hoeppner:
Sure. This is one that probably if this is a pain point for the audience, you should read the chapter. Or if you don’t want to get the book, go to my company’s website. It’s totally free. You don’t even have to log in. It’s just there for you. GKTraining.com and on the resources tab, we have a whole bunch of videos. Now, the reason I say that is because if I said to you, hey, Mark, teach me how to do an incredible squat, you could talk me through it direction by direction, but it’s a lot better.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, it’s a lot better to watch a video. So if this is something you want to build for yourself, do that. GKTraining.com and watch the videos. But the short answer is you should do a whole physical and a vocal warmup, just like you’re a communication athlete. Because you are. And the warmup has to involve three big things. One, your trunk. You’re not warming up your ankles.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s not the primary muscle of communication.

Mark Divine :
Right.

Michael Hoeppner:
So that means sun salutations and yoga moves and big full body torso stretching. Number two, the breath. And one of the easiest ways to do this is some yawning exercises. So yawn a whole bunch. That big. Yawn sighs out, meaning a sigh like you’re sighing on a lazy Sunday morning. Blow some air through your lips, doing some lip trills so you have to get the breath going. And then three, you have to warm up your enunciators.

Michael Hoeppner:
And you’ll see some exercises on the site if you want to go there. But you can also just think of the tongue twisters you’ve probably learned from. You know, when you were a little.

Mark Divine :
Kid, Sally saw seashells by the seashore.

Michael Hoeppner:
Exactly right. And you can do higher level of difficulty ones if you want to.

Mark Divine :
That’s tough enough for me.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, I’ll give you one that is likely to lead to profanity if you’re not careful. I will be very careful. This is a family friendly podcast, folks. Here we go. I am a pleasant mother pheasant plucker. I pluck pleasant mother pheasants I’m the best pleasant mother pheasant plucker who ever plucked a pleasant mother pheasant. You get the idea.

Mark Divine :
Okay, I’m not even gonna try that.

Michael Hoeppner:
But the point here is that your body, if you. I mean, every single Q and a you and I have been doing in this conversation, every single question and every response has been feeding back to this big idea that you’re a communication athlete. It’s a physical thing. You would never go do extreme sport or something and not get your body limber and ready to go. Why would you think that you could give a big speech or a presentation and not have all the muscles of your enunciators firing dynamically? So warm up.

Mark Divine :
Is there any reason to warm down or recover? You know, like musicians or singers, they need to really protect their voice.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes.

Mark Divine :
And so they take voice breaks and they rest it and they do things. What about just the average person who talks a lot?

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Unless you’re trying to do a vocal health regimen, most people don’t have to think about this that much. But yeah, if you’re talking all the time. Absolutely. And that can be quite simple. It’s a series of gentle humming exercises. So you’re just literally allowing your vocal cords to flutter with a lot of ease and recovery. Most people don’t need this though, because they’re not in the, I think about.

Mark Divine :
The average performance, you know, executive who’s just so over committed and always giving speeches and always talking and always on.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
And then they find themselves, you know, like burned out and they lose their voice. This actually happened to me, I think in December and it was definitely associated with some sort of low grade kind of bug or illness that I had. But I kind of started to lose my voice.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Remember that, Catherine? I was like, I could barely talk. And I thought maybe metaphysically it was just because I’d been talking too much. Right. And I just needed to talk less.

Michael Hoeppner:
It’s not because you were talking too much?

Mark Divine :
I don’t think so.

Michael Hoeppner:
No. I can prove it to you. Okay.

Mark Divine :
Prove it.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Here you go. Here’s a proof point. If you’ve ever been with a newborn who cries all night long and the next morning could still keep crying and could keep crying the next night too. And could keep crying for three days.

Mark Divine :
They’re not going to burn out.

Michael Hoeppner:
No, they’re not. Because when we’re a newborn, we have literally no tension. We are an open vessel. Breath comes into our body seamlessly, our throat and vocal cords and entire communication architecture and equipment it’s completely relaxed. So it’s almost like blowing a horn. You could blow the horn forever as long as there was sufficient breath to go through it. As we grow, we accumulate a whole bunch of tension and habits and holding a bunch of stuff, you know, from all the work you do on physical and also spiritual and mental health and things like that. So those layers tend to have physical manifestations and we use our body in very different ways.

Michael Hoeppner:
So long way of saying if you lose your voice, it has everything to do with how you’re producing that sound and much less to do with how much of the day you’re talking. I mean, yes, it’s true if you say 30,000 words in a day, yeah, it is more wear and tear. But if you’re doing it in a healthful manner, you really should be able to at the end of the day, still wake up the following day and be able to speak more.

Mark Divine :
Right.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s an aspirational goal, to be frank, because a lot of people do have. They’ve acquired tendencies and habits that don’t serve them. And this is not about judgment, folks. Industrialized society conspires to break good use when it comes to speaking or to how we even use our bodies. Back to your question, though. For most people, if that’s the case, the warm up is the very crucial part. The warm down is a little bit less essential. And for people who don’t have a experience of speaking so much that they lose their voices, I’ll give you a different warm down activity after you’ve done the big event or the big communication situation, reflect on it and reflect on one key place.

Michael Hoeppner:
If I messed up, would it have been the end of the world to just acknowledge it without apology? Don’t apologize about it, just acknowledge it and continue.

Mark Divine :
Hey, that didn’t come out right, but hey, yeah, moving on.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right, that’s right. And in the chapter on recovering from mistakes, I actually have these cards on the pages of the book that can be cut out that say things just like that. Oh yeah, that’s not what I meant. What I meant was. Or oh, I can’t believe I forgot. I also want to say. Or let me go back for a moment, let me clarify that, because so often we think we have to be flawless and we don’t. We should be flexible.

Michael Hoeppner:
And that gets to the very first thing you asked me about, which is, given the messages our society sends about being flawless, we all have this idea that we can never have a gaffe or a foible and Very often, not only can you, but what determines if you’ve reached your audience is not, did you make a mistake? But how you handled that mistake when you made it. Because they’re when, not if they’re going to happen.

Mark Divine :
I’m just in my mind reliving a time where I, you know, as the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized how horribly wrong it was going, but I couldn’t stop it because it was already in motion. And so there’s no other, you know, thing you can do, really, except for make fun of it.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Make light of it.

Michael Hoeppner:
Move on.

Mark Divine :
We can learn a lot from exemplars, right? And when we originally scheduled this, we were going to do it on Around Martin Luther King, you know, day. And he is such an extraordinary orator or communicator. What are some of the real key things that we can learn from how he. The strategies he used and how he communicated?

Michael Hoeppner:
We have to have a whole second podcast.

Mark Divine :
I know, I’m sure.

Michael Hoeppner:
Extraordinary. It is absolutely extraordinary. My book just deals with delivery. How you say stuff. He was a master of that, but he was also a master of content, for sure. No one was better at weaving poetic devices into what he was doing. Imagery, metaphor, allegory, stories. Allegory.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Even just the poetry of language. So he would do this incredible thing that Herman Melville does in Moby Dick, where you have call me ishmael, and then three sentences later, you’ve got an 87 word long sentence. King was brilliant at using incredibly simple phrases and then immediately after, some huge aspirational, complex thought. So the audience feels smart and inspired at the same time. So their hearts and minds are both activated in every darn speech. He was incredible about making the content about the people who are listening as opposed to himself. I mean, you could just go on and on and on, and then on the delivery side, talk about an exemplar.

Michael Hoeppner:
If everyone in the world can instantly do some impersonation of how someone speaks, you know, and the whole, like, flattery is the. Or what is it? Impression is the sincerest form of flattery or whatever the phrase is. Everybody could give a, you know, medium bad to good impersonation of Martin Luther King because he was that skilled. And if you think about those five P’s of vocal variety. Oh, my gosh, watch the I have a dream speech and see for yourself. Just watch pace, pitch, pause, power placement, and watch how he varies all of them. I have a dream. I mean, the pitch is the obvious one we all hear right away.

Michael Hoeppner:
The up and the down, because we don’t use that much pitch in our day to day. That’s the first one. But he plays with power. And I have a dream about, like, the volume of his voice varies dramatically, but even the placement, that’s the one that’s harder for people to recognize. But if you take again, that you are a musical instrument, the sound amplifies in your body in different places, which is why when you have a cold, your voice sounds different because the sinuses are so clogged, sound can’t amplify in the same way. That’s why your voice sounds different. Okay. He would allow the placement of his voice to entirely shift from the back of his throat all the way up to the front of his face.

Michael Hoeppner:
It would bounce around all the time. And the point is that when you use more vocal variety. Well, hang on, Caveat. It can go too far. We could talk about that, but for most people, it never goes far enough. When you use more vocal variety, and we’ve studied this, audiences evaluate you as more authentic. He was a master. He’s as good as it gets.

Mark Divine :
Let’s talk about the pause a little bit more, because I think people are uncomfortable in silence or in stillness. They feel like they’ve got to fill that space.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
But then they’re taking opportunity away from the listener to fill it themselves with curiosity, maybe, or wonderment or like. And so I think this goes in a broader context of storytelling. Our culture has gotten a little bit watered down to where if you watch a typical Netflix show, there’s no mystery left anymore. There’s no, like, boy, the audience is really smart and can figure this out for itself. So we’re not going to tell them everything. You know what I mean? And I just turn shows off because I’m like, oh, where’s the fun in this? The same thing with personal communication. Right. And that’s why the pause is so important.

Michael Hoeppner:
What you’re saying. There’s a really discouraging detail in what you’re saying. Let’s talk about Netflix for a second. A friend of mine who was a producer at abc, I’ll give him a shout out because why not pass credit along, right? Eric Ortega. Yeah, that’s right. Good job, Eric. He taught me about what’s called second screen. Do you know what second screen is?

Mark Divine :
I have not heard that.

Michael Hoeppner:
A lot of Netflix shows are created for what’s called second screen viewing because they know the audience is already scrolling and the TVs just on in the background, so their shows are dumbed down. Enough that you can mostly still follow, even while you’re also. Oh, look at. Oh, that person posted. Oh, that’s good.

Mark Divine :
That is really disturbing.

Michael Hoeppner:
Oh, wow. I hate that person. Cleaning out.

Mark Divine :
Holy cow.

Michael Hoeppner:
Right, Exactly. Which I think is. Is terrifying for us as communication beings. So part of what you’re picking up on might be intentional because they’re actually creating content that people can consume while multitasking.

Mark Divine :
Oh, wow.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, it’s its own.

Mark Divine :
That makes total sense.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, I know. But to your. Your bigger question about pausing. Yes, pausing is essential. It’s crucial. It’s one of the five P’s. Again, a vocal variety, Pace, pitch, pause, power and placement. And if you want to unlock this for yourself, I’ll give you a really fun, intuitive way to think about why do humans pause? And it’s so obvious when I say it.

Michael Hoeppner:
One, you need to think of what word to say next. Or two, you want to give your audience time to digest what you’ve said. That’s it. And part of that is when you give them time to digest, hopefully they have a moment potentially to contribute to the conversation too. Most people know this, though. They know that pausing is important. The bigger question, and this is actually, by the way, the first skill building chapter in the book, because it is such an important thing. The bigger question is, how do you pause if you’re not comfortable with silence? How do you learn how to do that behavior? And so in the book, you actually rip out a page and tear it into six strips.

Michael Hoeppner:
The drill is better done with Lego or Duplo blocks actually though, cause they’re more three dimensional and fun to use. But the idea is that you practice sharing one idea at a time, not 3 or 15 or 25. 1. You can also think of it like a sentence. You pick up the strip of paper or the Lego block, you say your first idea or sentence, and at the end of the idea, kind of like where the period might go. At the end of the sentence, you put the object down, remain silent, don’t speak, pick up the second block or strip of paper, say the second idea at the end of that idea. Again in silence. Kind of like where the period might go.

Michael Hoeppner:
At the end of the sentence, put the object down. If it’s the Lego blocks, you click it in place and you keep doing this thought after thought after thought. And what happens is this everyday miracle occurs for people the first time they do the exercise, which is in that pause. They can finally do the thing that they know they should be doing, which is breathe and think. So either they Recognize I’m done. I said all I needed to in three sentences, not 30. Or if they’re not done, they can actually think of a smarter next thing to say. And you do this enough, what happens is you build comfort with silence and you build it in a physical way.

Mark Divine :
So you just literally dovetailed or double clicked on one of the Navy seals famous training acronyms or techniques. We call it pbta. Pause, Breathe, Think and then act.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
And so that effect, I mean, the act of communicating comes after pause, breathe, think.

Michael Hoeppner:
You are blowing my mind. Because you could literally put those four letters on every darn LEGO block or strip of paper. Because you’re exactly right. And the amazing thing is when you really practice is you can unlock a bit of a flow state where those steps become incredibly, they become incredibly quick once you’re in a efficient flow of communication. Because think how quick your brain can sift through words and choose ideas, but it can’t if it’s not doing those stages. If it’s just trying to look good or trying to not mess up or trying to create a good impression, it can’t do that.

Mark Divine :
Right. But PBTA is just a functional version of another tool we use called the OODA loop. You’ve heard of the OODA Loop?

Michael Hoeppner:
No. Educate me.

Mark Divine :
So OODA is an acronym because we love acronyms in the military commentary for Observe, Orient, Decide and act. So observe, Orient and decide are more theoretical. So the SEAL said, well, how are we going to do that? We’re going to pause, we’re going to breathe. So that opens up the space so you can become more situationally aware. Then we’re going to go into the thinking process and then obviously some methodologies or tools that help with effective thinking. Right. And only then when you can get through that process, you’re going to act. But the idea is to practice it.

Mark Divine :
So the ODA loop is meant to be. That’s why they call it a loop. You observe. You orient yourself to what you observe based upon what you observe and your orientation to it. You make a decision and then you act on it. And then you immediately go back and start observing it again. You see, how did my words land? Or how did this action affect the environment or the enemy in the case of the seals? And then you kind of keep going through that. And so your decision making becomes very agile and fluid, real time.

Mark Divine :
And you practice that. It’s going to be different for every kind of unit. Like this was originally created by a guy named Colonel Boyd who was a fighter pilot. And so this is like, you can imagine aerial combat. It’s very dynamic. And so the Ooda loop has to be very, very quick. And the idea was you try to confuse the enemy so that it severs their Ooda loop or stretches it out while yours remains really tight, then you win. For the seals, the Ooda loop is going to be, depending upon whether you’re in an ambush or a firefight, it’s going to be a little bit longer, but still pretty dynamic and rapid.

Mark Divine :
Or you can look at, in terms of like, longer term, strategically, always learning to learn about how your actions, thoughts, decisions, communications is affecting your environment and the enemy. And how are you going to respond to that?

Michael Hoeppner:
This is why I was so excited to have this conversation, because the things that you teach, that you’ve learned, that you’re focused on, maybe even obsessed about in a positive way, they’re the exact same things that I am, but in a very different field. Because what you just described is what I call a different name in communication, the virtuous cycle of good communication. Because that loop of very rapid evaluation and action you just described is exactly what people do when they learn this exercise with the Lego blocks. And as opposed to being in a firefight, what they’re doing is evaluating ideas to share. And the crazy thing about speaking is that you’re talking about a very high stress, very dangerous situation, a firefight or a, you know, you’re in a fighter plane in combat. Some speakers, when they’re on stage in front of the big lights, they feel as though they are in a life and death situation. And so just as that loop helps train combatants. Is that the right word? Combatants? Sure, sure.

Michael Hoeppner:
Okay. Train combatants to be incredibly mindful and fast, though, with accurate, smart decision making. We’re doing the same thing for speaking, but people can never do that if they don’t actually slow things down and physically train. So they build muscle memory of doing basically that Ooda loop. But about speaking, that’s cool. You’re the one who said that’s cool. I didn’t know about the Ooda loop. That’s the coolest thing.

Michael Hoeppner:
I’m going to start teaching the LEGO drill now that people say this is the Ooda loop, but for speaking.

Mark Divine :
Yeah, we got to wrap up quickly here, but these three words have been burning a hole in my brain, and this came from you. And it has to do with, I think, content delivery, but use of antithesis, assonance and parable to create unforgettable messages. What are those and how do we use them to Create unforgettable messages.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, well, let’s reference back to Martin Luther King Jr. Shall we? Because he’s the best at all this stuff. These are poetic devices or poetical devices. And we used to study this in rhetoric and we don’t so much anymore. Alliteration is consonant sounds that are the same. So when I say I’ve created an alliterative system for vocal variety that is pace, pitch, pause, power placement, the fact that those words all start with the letter p makes it alliterative. Assonance is repeated vowel sounds. So I’ll give you another master beyond Martin Luther King.

Michael Hoeppner:
If you look at William Shakespeare, this just assonance and alliteration is littered through the complete works.

Mark Divine :
Interesting.

Michael Hoeppner:
And then parable is a version of a story.

Mark Divine :
Can you get an example of assonance?

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. In sooth I know not why I am so sad. So all those vowel sounds in there. Ah, ah, ooh, ah, ah. Say again. Your seal. Your seal. Call.

Michael Hoeppner:
What is it?

Mark Divine :
Huya.

Michael Hoeppner:
Hooya. So that is the opposite of assonance because you’re two very different vowel sounds put right together. What happens when you hear these repeated sounds is it tends to create this kind of momentum and it moves an audience. If it’s good enough for Shakespeare and good enough for Martin Luther King Jr.

Mark Divine :
He’s thinking how hard it would be to learn that, because it’s really not tough. I mean, it’s the realm of poetry, really.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. The place you’ll see it in the most everyday manner now is advertising copy. So just look at billboards. If you ride rapid transit in whatever city that you live in, look on the billboards and signs on rapid transit. It’s all over the place. You’ll begin to see it everywhere. Why? Because it’s catchy and the company or advertiser wants you to have that stuck in your head. But people can use it for speaking as well.

Michael Hoeppner:
And the way I would suggest that people begin to encounter this is just begin to notice it in the world around you. Don’t even try to adopt it yourself, just begin to notice it. Same vowel sounds, same consonant sounds. Another thing you could do is crack open any play by William Shakespeare and read a couple of pages and you’re going to find a bunch of examples of it.

Mark Divine :
And parable seems to me to be the ability to communicate a complex idea through a very simple to understand story.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
And this also reminds me of something I learned from my friend Bo Eason, who does communication or storytelling. He says that the personal is the general. And what he meant by that is if I have a story of some challenge I overcame or some suffering that I endured, it’s not unique to me. So tell my story and everyone else will learn the lesson that they need to learn from it. I don’t have to translate what they need to know from this story. So too many speakers and too much in communication, and we addressed this a little earlier, try to spell out the lesson for the individual as opposed to telling the story and letting the individual discern their own lesson. Yeah, and that’s what the parable was. And to keep it simple.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yes.

Mark Divine :
I mean, that was what one of the. When I think about Jesus Nazareth, his teachings were extraordinary because if he had tried to, you know, explain some of the really complex things that he was teaching in the language of, you know, the day, his people wouldn’t have understood.

Michael Hoeppner:
It nor would it stick around 2,000 years later.

Mark Divine :
That’s right. So he had to parabolize it. If that’s a word. It is now.

Michael Hoeppner:
You just made a word up. Just like Shakespeare. Exactly. Funny thing was, the hotel I was in last night had a book. It was just in the room for some reason it was the teachings of the Buddha. And I would say the exact same thing. Incredibly simple teachings usually built into stories or parables and things like that. And you’re exactly right.

Michael Hoeppner:
And I would go even further than your friend Bo, which is, yes, he’s right about all that. I would even suggest that it’s hardwired into us. Communication is our superpower. If you read the book Sapiens by Yuval Harari. Harari. Yeah, thank you. He talks about how this development of incredibly complex and agile communication allowed us to out compete other hominids because we’re able to use story and spoken communication to create a tribe and a bigger tribe and a team.

Mark Divine :
And then most people think it’s the use of tools and the opposing thought, right? No, it’s actually the ability to communicate which then allowed us to go from me to us.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s exactly right. So the storytelling, which activates empathy, which activates relatability, I would suggest it’s hardwired into us that we gain motivation and commitment from hearing others share.

Mark Divine :
That’s fascinating. Anything else from the book? We got a wrap up soon. But don’t say how to communicate effectively to live a better life.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, sure. So here we go. Ask me, ask me a habit or two that might. People might not like that they have. And I’ll teach you a drill, how to change it on the delivery side. So let’s stick to delivery.

Mark Divine :
Sure. A specific habit or just like ask what are. What’s a habit? Or two that people might want to change.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, either one. Well, I’ll take the bait. All right, here’s a good one. You ready? Eye contact. If you know that you struggle at times with eye contact, don’t keep beating yourself up about that. Instead, grab a wiffle ball and practice with a friend. And at the end of each sentence, you have to throw a ball to the friend so they can catch it. Grab a couple friends.

Michael Hoeppner:
Use eye contact to indicate to them you’re going to throw a ball to them in a second. This turns eye contact into a game because you have to be looking at them so you know they’re ready to catch the ball and they have to look at you to prepare to catch the ball. That’s cool. That’s an example stance. Let’s say, you know, you have wandering feet when you’re on stage. Don’t just tell yourself, stop shuffling my feet. Stop pacing. Stop shuffling, stop pacing.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s not gonna work. That’s the suppression. Yeah. And in the book, you actually, in the stance chapter, I have people lay the book flat and there’s two silhouettes of feet there. Stand on the book and just focus on keeping the pages of the book adhered to the ground.

Mark Divine :
This is really interesting because I learned also recently that where your feet are pointed matters to the audience. So, for instance, if we’re sitting and my feet are pointed out like this, that’s noticed and it’s sending some sort of message that I’m not really focused on them. There’s something going on. Right. Or if they’re all kind of catty wonked. And so when you’re standing or sitting and you’re communicating to point your feet toward the audience, isn’t that interesting? I don’t know what the psychology is behind that.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, well, let’s anchor it to something you know really, really well. If you were in some kind of, let’s make it friendly combat, like a martial arts practice or something, and you were gonna spar with an opponent, you would do that automatically’s really important. Right. And they would be facing forward underneath you. Balance as well as possible. Not because you were thinking about how the audience was perceiving you, but because that is going to allow you to move dynamically and safely as quickly as possible. And again, the idea here is reinforcing communication is not you just thinking smart stuff. It’s you unlocking this positive, virtuous cycle of good communication in which those smart thoughts can be shared with other people via the physical act of speaking.

Mark Divine :
You know, the exercises that you talked about today, obviously they’re powerful if done as an individual, but you also talked about a few kind of partner exercises or even group exercises. I imagine having what I would call a training team for communication would be really powerful. Right. So if you have some friends and you’re all working on becoming public speakers or better communicators, how cool would it be to get a group together and once a week, you know, start drilling?

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Do you have any workshops, by the way, like that? Because that would be.

Michael Hoeppner:
Sure. Yeah. You can just go to my company’s website, gktraining.com and we leave that kind of thing all the time. We have online courses people can take. So, yes to all the stuff you’re saying. And I will even go further, which is I’ll give the audience some very good news and also some very bad news. And they’re. I mean them both with 100% honesty.

Michael Hoeppner:
The very good news is if you read this book and use this book, it will change your life. That’s why the subtitle is how to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life. That’s not hyperbole. It’s true. Here’s the bad news. If you don’t read the book and use the exercises and practice the exercises, it won’t do a darn thing.

Mark Divine :
Right. Same thing as exercise theory to practice.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right.

Mark Divine :
But the practice is the key.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right. So if you read these exercises. Cool. That’s amazing. Wiffle ball, Stand on the book, stack some Lego blocks, but you never do them. You will get Zippola out of this book. So to your point, when do people get better at sticking with some discipline and some practice with support? So, yeah, build a team. And in fact, in the chapter on building a practice regimen of some sorts, I suggest that grab an accountability partner or a buddy or even a small group, do a book club to go through the book together or.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, people want to work with us and get a chorus or a group workshop. You absolutely can. GKTraining.com.

Mark Divine :
You’Ve worked with a lot of folks and coached a lot of folks on this. What’s the most valuable thing that we could do starting today to improve our communications?

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, I would. Legitimately. Even before you buy the book. If you buy the book, take one of the chapter. It’s not one of the chapters. One of the exercises I talked about and try it literally, as soon as this podcast Is done. Try the exercise.

Mark Divine :
Like a common theme where we got to start here. Like this is the most valuable thing you do. Is it different? No.

Michael Hoeppner:
The reason I say it is because the first thing kind of like your. What’s the loop that you talked about? Yeah, the Ooda loop. The first thing is your job is to experience whole. Holy cow. By doing this one small physical intervention, I can begin to unlock a positive feedback loop. So the point is start anywhere, use any one of them, in fact. So if you know, you speak too quickly, do the finger walking exercise. If you know you ramble, try the Lego block.

Michael Hoeppner:
If you have a problem with shuffling feet, stand on a book. Because what you wanna do today is begin to experience. Wow, this can be changed. And that actually incentivize people to learn. It’s kind of the same as. I mean, let me put the question to you. I’m not in the greatest physical fitness right now for a variety of reasons that we spoke about earlier. I’m not going to get into that right now.

Michael Hoeppner:
If I said to you what can I do today to begin to improve, what would you tell me?

Mark Divine :
Just start doing burpees.

Michael Hoeppner:
There you go. It’s the exact same thing. So the burpee of communication.

Mark Divine :
The burpee will tell you everything.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s right, the burpee of communication.

Mark Divine :
To be fair, I would assess you and determine your dysfunctional patterns and where your issues are and then design a program that’s customized for you, as I would too.

Michael Hoeppner:
But you asked me a slightly different question, which is I can’t magically beam myself into tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of different places all at the same time. So if you weren’t there to evaluate a person, they had listened to this pod or they had read something that you’ve produced, what would you have them do?

Mark Divine :
Yeah, I would say do a burpee and send me a video.

Michael Hoeppner:
Exactly right.

Mark Divine :
Learn everything I need from that.

Michael Hoeppner:
That’s exactly right. So the same thing here. So use a LEGO drill that I explained earlier or do one of these exercises and take a video and send me a video. Exact same thing.

Mark Divine :
Interesting. Awesome. Michael, thanks so much for joining me today and thanks for coming in person. Yeah, it’s a big call from Connecticut.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah, my pleasure.

Mark Divine :
Enjoy your time out here in San Diego away from the snow.

Michael Hoeppner:
It’s fun to have a face to face conversation. My pleasure.

Mark Divine :
I really appreciate it.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Who yah.

Michael Hoeppner:
Who yah indeed. Or rather hoo ya. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Mark Divine :
When I can get two or three hundred people to shout that from their belly.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Whoa. Well, wait a minute. Let’s do something then. Let’s do something. Everybody, if you’re in a private place, it’s a nocturnal car. I’m completely serious. Wherever you are, if you’re a private, we’re going to all say this phrase on the count of three.

Michael Hoeppner:
But when we say it, you’re not going to say it in a limit. Like, you’re not going to say it in a limited way. You’re going to use all of your physical and vocal communication instruments to turn air into sound and sound into words, which is the everyday miracle of speaking. So can you teach the audience again, what’s the exact sound again?

Mark Divine :
Hoo. Yahoo.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yah. Yeah, like that. So on the count of three, everybody, we’re gonna say this. Are you ready for this? You ready? Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Let’s do it.

Michael Hoeppner:
Okay, if you’re. If you’re listening and you’re not in a. You’re in a public position, don’t have to do it. Okay. But if you’re private, you have to do this right now. On the count of three. One, two, three.

Mark Divine :
Hoo.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yah. Everybody feel better already? What you just did was activate your physical and vocal communication instrument, and you can do that all day long, every day and get better and better and better.

Mark Divine :
Amen to that. Hooyah.

Michael Hoeppner:
Hooyah, indeed. Yeah. Do people need to know URLs or where to get the book or that kind of thing or anything? There’s a. We have a Don’t say dot com. It’s the easiest URL in the whole world to remember, so if people want to do it, they can check it out.

Mark Divine :
All right. Yeah, we’ll get that in there too.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah.

Mark Divine :
Awesome. Thanks very much.

Michael Hoeppner:
Yeah. Thank you.

Mark Divine :
Good.

Michael Hoeppner:
You’re gonna get a video of me doing a burpee. Now, if you’re not careful, you’re like, all right, Mark, do your worst. Do.