Last week I wrote about Victor, a VP I was coaching on Executive Presence.  I wrote about the effect Victor’s facial expressions were having on others and how it diminished his Executive Presence.

Victor’s BIGGEST realization was when he saw a screenshot of his face during a moment he didn’t think he had any facial expression, when he was feeling neutral, not one way or the other, not positive or negative, not really feeling anything.

What shocked Victor when he saw his face was that his “neutral” expression looked COLD.

People don’t realize that when you put a neutral expression on your face, you look cold. Try it in the mirror and see for yourself. Get your neutral face on and then look.

Neutral has no warmth in it. Zero.

And no warmth equals cold. There’s no way around it.

When it comes to human relationships, neutral leaves them cold about you. Possibly even defensive. You are discouraging them from warming up to you.

If you and I worked together for a while, and then I told you that I felt completely neutral about you, I didn’t like you or dislike you, I didn’t feel anything for you, I just felt neutral about you … how would that make you feel? How receptive to me would you be?

You get the idea.

Don’t worry, I definitely don’t feel neutral about you.  I feel very passionate about my readers.

But many people in corporations are walking around and attending meetings with neutral faces on, mistakenly thinking a neutral expression is acceptable or even “professional”, not realizing how cold that makes them look. Some of them look downright mean.

It can be as simple and innocent as, “I was just listening to you. I wasn’t thinking about anything.”  If you do even that, even innocently, you don’t realize how cold your face looks to the other person. And when you don’t see THAT, their response to you doesn’t make any sense. You won’t understand why they are responding to you so coldly.

You don’t realize that, from their point of view, they are talking to someone who looks very cold and possibly even mean.

You may be thinking, “But I don’t feel cold!  Or mean!”

Doesn’t matter.  That’s now neutral LOOKS.  That’s what neutral COMMUNICATES.

Yesterday, I was coaching a woman who, when she disagreed while listening to someone, she deliberately put on her “neutral face”.  She realized how bad that was when I showed her in a screenshot.

She said, “Okay, I’m going to LOOK interested”.

I took a screenshot of how she looked trying that, and she couldn’t stop laughing. It looked phony as all get out. You could tell it was fake.  Fake looks fake.

There’s a WORLD of difference between “I want to look interested” and “I AM interested”. And another world of difference when you make the big leap to “I am genuinely VERY interested”.

She said, “What do I need to do?” I said, “You need to BE interested.” She said, “But I’m NOT.”  I just smiled at her and let her mull it over.

You can understand the reaction a person has when someone listening to them is feeling, “I am not interested in what you’re saying.”  There’s no way to avoid it – it’s going to be written all over your face when that is what you’re thinking.  If you do that, you have just poked a hole in your relationship with them.

People think being interested is something that “just happens”. When they think that, they have a problem when it’s NOT happening. This is not a causative viewpoint.

You DECIDE to be interested. Not to LOOK interested, but to BE interested.  World class communicators ARE genuinely interested. 

A funny thing happens when you do that. You’ll start finding things to be interested in and finding yourself very interested.  It changes your viewpoint. And it happens very naturally once you make that decision.

No one believes me until they try it. So, go ahead and try it for yourself.

Causative listening is intentional listening. 

A genuine feeling of “I care about what you are saying, and I’m really interested in hearing all of it” is required for causative listening.

If you don’t have that feeling, you’re not listening. You’re doing something, but it’s not listening. I guarantee your facial expression tells the world what you’re feeling inside. Even if you put on a “neutral expression”.

Both, Victor and the woman I was coaching yesterday, and thousands of others, have learned the joy of listening to another person. They found that deciding to be interested, opened the door to another world. A world of human connection that can’t be found any other way.

Not only does your facial expression change, your life will change.

When you put this into practice, you’ll discover something that very few people know:

The more people you are interested in, and the more interested you are in them, the more the world will love you. 

Understanding this puts the power to shape reality squarely in the palm of your hands.

Be the cause!