Celeb Shot
There Are Two Currencies in Business: Dollars & Emotions
Dan Hill shares insights on how you can leverage feelings to be more successful.
Location, location, location is the mantra for buying real estate wisely. So why not pay attention, in turn, to what has been described as the single most valuable piece of real estate in the world: the few square inches that run from people’s eyebrows to their chins? After all, in many ways our faces qualify as the center of the universe. For starters, four of our five senses (thanks to our eyes, nose, mouth, and ears) are located there. Moreover, in observing a person’s face, we derive knowledge about a person’s gender, race, age, health, and attractiveness—plus how that person is feeling in interacting with us and, by virtue of their repeated, frequent, shall we say signature facial expressions, even to a degree who they are deep down inside.
That’s a lot of information available to us within a few square inches. And yet we often fail to be good detectives despite Sherlock Holmes saying, “I have trained myself to notice what I see.” Now, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but let me nevertheless modestly suggest that it’s very possible to lift your game several notches by paying informed attention to what is right before your eyes. The payoff will be immense.
The math is remarkably simple. There are seven emotions that you can detect through 23 different facial expressions. What are those emotions? What emotions are central to our lives as executives, managers, salespeople, shoppers, voters, spouses, partners, and parents? You can probably guess . . . (the pursuit) of happiness thanks to the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence and anger thanks to Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson starring in the 2003 comedy/drama Anger Management. But to round out the list, did you also choose fear, sadness, surprise, disgust, and contempt?
Hmmm. Seven emotions, of which only happiness is “positive.” Houston, do we have a problem? Yes and no. Every emotion sends a signal and serves a purpose. For instance, disgust matters because trust is, indeed, the emotion of business, and so… seeing its opposite, disgust, on somebody’s face while negotiating a business deal or your next salary raise should get your full attention. Trust aligns with happiness, meaning that with a smile on your face and the party across the table from you, you’re both embracing the opportunity ahead (a positive) or may be filled with false hope (a negative). In contrast, seeing somebody’s nose wrinkle or upper lip flare indicates that something or somebody figuratively smells or tastes bad, indicating you’ve got more work to do to close the deal on favorable terms for everybody involved.
Have I now got your attention? I hope so. What I’m trying to do here is pierce the veil, if even ever so slightly, to indicate all of the value add that comes from becoming, at the same time, both more emotionally and visually literate than you may be to date. Does raising your EQ in real time during your daily interactions matter? Sure it does. Like a robust IQ, the estimate is that a higher EQ will lift your odds of success by 4% to 6% above 50/50 odds. Should that sound negligible, think again. In Roger Federer’s greatest year as a star tennis player, how many of the points played did the Swiss maestro win during his matches in going 92-5 in 2006? The answer is just a bit above his career average of 54%.
In their faces, people best reflect and communicate their emotions. Just as consumer “sentiments” drive the economy, feelings drive individual transactions. Put those facts together and you’re on your way to achieving more than ever.
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