I once attended a talk by a man who was head of a creative marketing agency. He also had a side gig of being a presentation consultant. I forget his name and agency, but I don't think I could forget what he said.
He would lead his company's pitches to new clients, and would turn up to the presentation wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops; tattoos all over his arms and neck, and thereby set the expectations of the room quite low.
He would then continue brazenly with his presentation – charming, intelligent, and confident – and by the end of the pitch would hopefully have won the prospective clients with this wit.
His logic was that everyone plays the status game, but to be remembered you need to change people's perception of your status drastically. Setting expectations low, and then making them feel foolish for misjudging you.
> Setting expectations low, and then making them feel foolish for misjudging you.
It's a risky game. People tend to make their first impressions within seconds, and then spend the rest of the time looking for evidence to validate that assumption.
Not really. As a shy person, I've been playing it my whole life. For some reason, people meet me and assume... I dunno, that I'm just someone who can be swept aside. I let them believe that.
But I'm a lot more capable than people give me credit for being, and I'll be honest, a part of me enjoys it when that realization starts to set in.
It's not really a machiavellian ploy on my part to optimize some kind of social outcome, just a pattern I've settled into. It's fine for most aspects of my life. Good for poker games with strangers. Bad for first dates and FAANG-style job interviews, where I excessively downplay my abilities.
However, I think generally in life you shouldn't try to "be" anything except healthier and kinder. You were given a role in life, and it is up to you to play it to your best ability. I'm paraphrasing Kurt Vonnegut, I think, when I say be careful who you pretend to be -- because that might be the person you become.
Consciously playing social games is foolish. What you really want in life is inside of you. Strive to be better, not to find artificial ways to dominate others.
You may be interested in this article then:
http://www.thedistilledman.com/how-introverted-men-attract-w...
(How an introverted man can attract women naturally). I found it interesting but haven't tried it in practice yet. The article argues 99% of dating advice on the net is written for extroverts and people who want to be like extroverts.
Thanks for sharing. If you enjoyed this, you will probably also enjoy Models by Mark Manson. I’m only 1/3 of the way through, but the topic of focusing on your strengths rather than changing yourself is a theme throughout the book.
I'm always sceptical of the artificial/natural distinction. Everything is artificial. Everything feels natural eventually. It feels more like learning one way to be, but then deciding not to learn more.
I think it's fine to be happy, but it's fine to have goals, and then change to better accomplish those goals. To pretend to be someone who you truly would rather be. It's not like the old you disappears when this happens... you just grow more nuanced.
I'm not distinguishing artificial vs. natural -- I'm distinguishing conscious vs. subconscious. You should be careful about what you consciously try to be, and make sure if you go through the hard work of changing your personality, the changes are unambiguously positive. Your subconscious, your identity, and the cultural beliefs society has loaded you up with may be wiser than you think.
(There are lots of positive changes that you should consciously strive towards -- being more focused, more in control, kinder, less neurotic, etc. etc.)
If you tinker with your personality to gain more of what you think you want -- wealth, status, etc. -- it can bring you farther away from what you really want out of life, and it can be hard to undo your changes. Few of us in society today are actually in touch with what we want at the deepest level of our soul.
So when you try to "be" something new, make sure it's not conflicting with what your soul actually wants. That sounds hippie dippie as hell, but I think it's actually very real and it's a big problem, especially in fast paced, modern society.
As someone who is also sometimes underestimated, I sympathize with your situation.
Good on you though for being self-aware and perceptive enough to realize it is they who have the incorrect view and having the patience to let that view correct itself over time. Turning it to your advantage and taking joy in watching that correction take place is doubly good.
Most people in your position just assume, “people don’t think highly of me on first impression, and they must be right”
Right, but -- if for example -- you're trying to raise VC money, you only need a couple of yeses.
There's definitely enough people that love to have their mind changed, that you could play specifically to this crowd, and do very well.
It would be dangerous if you needed a 50% nod of approval. But not so much if all you need is one yes. It's probably beneficial to optimize yourself for a small niche.
Thats why its met with "varied success" I think, because impressions at the end will be polarized. The wins are from when he successfully breaks the first-impression barrier. If you are able to convert their impression of you then you are at a significant advantage because they are now fully disarmed.
This technique can also work from a status perspective.
When someone is playing by all the rules, you assume they are doing their best to cement their status.
When someone bucks the norm, you create at least two potential thoughts in people’s minds: 1) this person lacks status or 2) this person’s status is so high they don’t need to conform.
People who dance to the beat of their own drum rather than conforming automatically, garner a lot more respect from me. Otoh, people who are rebel against the "norm" just to be edgy are very obvious and are a detriment to their credibility on the onset.
I couldn't care less if someone's wearing shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt to give a presentation if they obviously know what they're talking about.
Wear what's comfortable, with some respect to common decency - wearing a speedo to give a presentation on a JS library probably won't warrant a great response (though I'm sure stranger things have happened).
I don't meant to be whiny but it's interesting how ineffective this would be for certain groups of people. Imagine a woman showing up in sweatpants and no makeup or a black guy wearing basketball shorts, white socks and Nike slides.
I understand that every room of people is different, and that some might react the exact same way to all three, but I'm skeptical.
It might be ineffective, or the subconscious bias we all have might automatically lower the person's status. IOW, they might have this effect normally.
If that feels unlikely, it's because it is. But we have very little way of knowing how this would play out in any other situation.
My point is we should all be less certain of the stories we tell.
thats interesting. Consider a scenario of a guy with proper attire vs this guy. If the guy with proper attire did the same level of presentation as this guy, who have the probability to "win the clients"
Reminds me of what I called “emotional ramping” when I worked at conference booths. Most people in a booth are either a zombie (exhausted and uninterested) or a clown (putting on a show of excitement). The trick is to start your interactions with people somewhere above zombie and end somewhere below clown. If you start at a 10, you have nowhere to go.
I mean, he was head of a marketing agency, which in itself already implies a certain level of success (that many people can only aspire to). Seeing as how he was a consultant on the side too, I'm assuming that he's done okay for himself.
Perhaps he was judging himself too harshly. You're not going to win 100% of prospective clients anyway, so it's easy to interpret that as varied success, instead of just success that lets you keep going.
To me, what you wear to a meeting is not about signaling status. It's about signaling respect. And that's directly correlated with how much effort you have put into how you present yourself.
Signaling respect based on how much status a person has is not about respect, its about status. Unless you also dress up for e.g. serving soup at a soup kitchen.
He would lead his company's pitches to new clients, and would turn up to the presentation wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops; tattoos all over his arms and neck, and thereby set the expectations of the room quite low.
He would then continue brazenly with his presentation – charming, intelligent, and confident – and by the end of the pitch would hopefully have won the prospective clients with this wit.
His logic was that everyone plays the status game, but to be remembered you need to change people's perception of your status drastically. Setting expectations low, and then making them feel foolish for misjudging you.
In his words: it had varied success.