017 The Upside of Up-Inflection - Lack of Confidence or Deeper Connection?
influence-017-upside-of-up-inflection-01-audio.mp3
This is Dr. Tori. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show where we make every day better and we influence for good.
There's a lot of generic advice out there about tone of speech, pace of speech, cadence, and body language. And so I want to dispel some of those myths. Now one of them in particular is all about up inflection. You know when somebody talks like this and they raise their voice at the end? Almost like everything is a question.
Well, I want to dispel several myths about that, but first it's important to understand that the human human interaction is dynamic. It is nuanced. Humans themselves are nuanced and we're interacting with somebody else who is also nuanced. So it's perfectly possible to be having a normal conversation, maybe with someone at work or somebody in the community, a friend of yours, and they're giving off some physical expressions that make you think that there's something wrong with what you're talking about, but keep in mind, they may have just had an argument. They may have just, experienced something very difficult and challenging. And so right now you're seeing what we call in hypnosis, BMIRs, behavioral manifestations of internal responses.
That means stuff we're expressing because of things going on on the inside. inside We're still thinking about that argument, even though right now you're having a normal conversation about nothing That should be too hyper emotional But they still have those expressions because there's still stuff going on and this is happening Many people have things going on in their lives, loss, divorce, breakup, maybe they're going through something because they're doom scrolling at night and they have emotional responses to what's going on in the world.
Okay, it doesn't always have to be about you or the conversation at hand. So the human-human interaction is very nuanced. So that's something to keep in mind. Contexts change, right? how somebody is in one context may be very different in another context and things that can affect context can be everything from time of day to how they're feeling after, not having a great night's sleep before. It could be that they have to use the restroom.
It could be that they're late for another appointment. There's all kinds of things that come into context, that come into play, and it's not always about you. So now, understanding that the human-human interaction is nuanced, and that the human-human exchange is dynamic, it's moving, it's fluid, it's flowing, then keeping those in mind, then it's really important to take
these next thoughts into account. So when we talk about up inflection, when somebody always makes the last word go up like this, oftentimes you'll see in I'm gonna call it popular literature, but it's not really literature at all, in social media, especially people with very quick TikTok videos or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts and those sort of things when people are posting things like that And they only have a few seconds they cover up inflection as if it's bad now There certainly are times where up inflection Again and again and again conveys a certain amount of lack of confidence.
So if you are a public speaker and you're constantly up speaking like this and always raising the last part of your voice, then that can that can actually convey. a lack of confidence in the topic. So that's true, but that's not always true. There are times when up inflection, taking that last word and inflecting it up is ultra powerful.
In fact, it can actually be a tool for listening. How? When somebody is speaking, if you take the last word of what they said and you up inflect it into a question, whatever the word they said or phrase that they said, and you take that phrase. And you just make it a question by taking their exact words and up inflecting.
So let me give you an example. And you may have already heard me tell this story before, but I want to give you this frame. Pay close attention to my up inflection, how I am using it in a masterful influence setting. I have a patient who walks into my room. He came into my office. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
I had seen him maybe three or four times before. He walks into my office with a Hawaiian shirt and he's more tan than usual. Now, keep in mind, this is before the interaction, this is before anything formal. I asked him, I said, Hey, where did you go? And he said, I went on a cruise. Now, listen to my next few responses.
You went on a cruise? He said, Yeah, my wife took me. Your wife took you? Yeah, she takes me every year. Every year? Yeah, she takes me every year on our anniversary. And I was like, wow, what did you do for her? He goes, ah, I got her some purse or something that she sort of wanted and got her that thing. I said, well, I know the perfect gift.
He said, you do? I said, yeah, I do. I see the way she scrunches up her eyebrows, purses her lips, looks down at the floor, shakes her head back and forth. Sometimes she even slams her purse on her lap, looking down at the floor, shaking her head back and forth. And she's, I know that every time I talk to you about smoking, that's what she does.
I bet. No, I don't bet. I know. In fact, I think you know. The best gift you could possibly give your wife is for you to quit smoking. Now, what happened? Up inflection. Just pay close attention to up inflection. The up inflection of the last word that the person said. This is a form of the most open ended question you could possibly ask.
You're taking something they said and you're up inflecting. This is a powerful open ended question.
That question, they may mean something else. This is especially powerful when somebody says something that on the surface, you don't agree with. If they say something on the surface that you don't agree with, I think X, Y, Z, politician is blah, blah, blah. And, and you say, blah, blah, blah. And then they start going into what they mean by that.
And then you'll find out they actually may not. disagree with you as much as you think, because as they start to explain, you'll start to understand a lot more about where they're coming from. Okay? an up inflection at the very end is one of the most powerful ways of keeping people talking and getting them to explain what they mean in a deeper way.
Not only that, mirroring. You know how people always tell you, well, you know, sort of in active listening, you rephrase the, whatever they're talking about and you sort of ask them about it in a slightly different way. No, you're using their exact words. You're using their exact words, their exact terminology, a word that you think might have a deeper meaning or there might be more behind it.
You take that word and you up inflect and it's a powerful open ended question and then they go on and explain it. So this is a way of allowing people to keep talking without having to interrupt. Now technically speaking, it kind of is an interruption, but they've kind of ended their sentence, and then you just take that word and up inflect, and then you will keep them talking.
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This is extremely powerful especially in a professional setting. You, where you're just asking them about what they're saying. You're not making any judgments about what they're saying. This is a powerful form of listening, and it's a powerful way to establish psychological safety.
And assess psychological safety. In other words, if you up inflect on a word and they still stay Nondescript and keep it like tight, short phrases, not really explaining it, then maybe they're not comfortable enough explaining it more in depth to you. And you have a little work to do by way of rapport, but if you ask a question by up inflecting on the last word they said, and then they start spewing forth a bunch of stories.
Right. I once was coaching somebody, on giving event reviews. So in other words, a bad event occurs in a, in a healthcare setting, something unexpected, a safety event, or just an outcome that's not expected. It could be normal biology, but it's not expected. And so something happens and then people.
The patient, their family, the caregivers are distraught or feel, feel bad about it, right? when there's an event review, like when you go in and you look and see, well, what happened? What was the context? What kind of design issues were there? What kind of cultural issues were there that may have led to this bad outcome?
So when they do this event reviews, sometimes the person going in to do an event review has to ask questions. And when they ask questions, it's... Challenging because everybody thinks I'm in trouble. They feel like, this is not the best setting. somebody's coming in and questioning, judging, on what happened and assuming that I did something wrong when in fact people in healthcare are coming to work every single day, doing their best with the best of intentions, but in that setting, when it's an event review, something bad happened, it feels sometimes people assume it's a blame frame.
But, if you use up inflection, you take that last word and you turn it into a question, then The person starts to explain more. That is a curiosity frame. When you ask questions, that's a curiosity frame. You want to understand. You're coming to that interaction to understand. So, when I taught this up inflection strategy to one of the safety event reviewers, they said that they used it in the very next meeting.
It was going not so well. People were closed, arms folded, eyes scrunched, not really sharing. And then finally, when she asked a question, they gave a one sentence answer, she took one of those words, and Turned it into a question. They said something about the heart monitor. She said, heart monitor? And then they went on about all the issues with the heart monitor and its design and, alarms for no reason and, and when it alarms for just noise and not actual emergencies and things like that.
She gleaned so much information. Without really saying a word, she took that person's word and turned it into a question. This is a powerful, powerful, powerful skill that you can develop and you can practice anywhere. If you have kids, perfect place to do this. If you have teenage girls, trust me, I have six kids, five girls.
You will not get the truth until they're comfortable. And if you ask a question that's ultra open ended, And they go on and on about the thing, then you have rapport, you have connection, you have psychological safety. So use the up inflection tip as a way of establishing rapport, of getting people to keep talking, and it doesn't always mean that you lack confidence.
If you do it all the time, and you're talking like this every time, and you always raise your voice, then that can display lack of confidence. But... When you use it as a question by up inflecting, it's a powerful force for psychological safety. So go ahead and use that tip and I'll see you in the next episode.
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