Read here the full transcript of Jeffery Keilholtz’s talk titled “How To Make A Lasting Impression” at TEDxRockville 2023 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Power of Lasting Impressions
In the not-too-distant past, my wife and I had to make an important decision about enrolling our daughter in school, and during the process, we encountered a remarkable phenomenon. Three people, neither of whom knew each other, all insisted with enthusiasm that we had to enroll our daughter in a particular teacher’s class, Miss Connor.
Surprisingly to my wife and I, Miss Connor’s social capital was soaring high, to the point that there was sort of a hushed, quiet waiting list for her first-grade class in a public school. Our curiosity was piqued, and my wife and I wondered why Miss Connor was held in such high regard.
It wasn’t until one day when my wife personally witnessed the stunning act of selflessness that it all became crystal clear. You see, my wife was waiting for our daughter to walk her home, and she casually observed several other teachers and how they engaged with this little girl, a little girl who had crippling anxiety. She dreaded to get on the school bus.
So my wife is watching, and the teachers are expressing irritation, frustration, exhaustion – typical. But then something incredible happened. Unceremoniously, seemingly from out of the blue, Miss Connor appeared, and she breezes right by these teachers, goes right up to this little girl, and bends down on her level. After a few moments, she reaches out and takes her hand. She stands up and walks her to her bus. She then boards the bus with this little girl, sits down beside her, fingers interlaced, and Miss Connor stayed. That little girl held a bus driver over all the way home.
That moment, Miss Connor exemplified intention, tenderness, and profound empathy, and left an indelible mark on that little girl’s heart. But not just that girl. You see, my wife, who was so compelled, deeply moved by what she just saw, rushed home to tell me about it and about 10 other people. Many of whom were parents in the same school district.
The ripple effect was profound. Parents lined up vying for the opportunity to enroll their child in Miss Connor’s class, and if you were to ask Miss Connor today, what is it that makes her so immensely popular, she’d probably have no idea why.
An ordinary teacher made an extraordinary impact through small acts, and it should serve as a testament to the power of creating a lasting impression.
The Importance of Lasting Impressions in Business
So, folks, how can we be more like Miss Connor? More importantly, why should it matter?
Well, if we pivot to business, according to CNBC, seven out of 10 jobs that are available are never posted online. Of those that are, three out of four resumes are never read by a human being. At the end of the day, 80% of the jobs we will ever have will come through the ripple effect of our social network.
The strength of that ripple effect will be about how many individuals we’ve created enduring personal lasting impressions with. And again, that’s not just in business.
So how can we, in our professional and personal lives, create lasting impressions that make people feel more inspired, uplifted, and deeply moved? Spoiler alert, it’s not LinkedIn. It’s not social media, and it is absolutely not about how many people stand up and applaud us for our face.
It’s about what those same people say about us behind our back. It’s about our unseen reputation, our bedrock reputation. It’s about the small, idiosyncratic things we do and choices we make, and our everyday interactions, precisely when we think no one else is paying attention. That is the secret sauce to making us memorable.
The Entertainment Industry Perspective
But there’s a catch. In entertainment, I’ve had the unique privilege of working on both sides of the table, as they say. On one side, as the actor, the performer, the writer, trying to get noticed, hoping to stand out. And on the other side, as the casting director, the producer, the decision maker.
In an industry flooded with faces dying to stand out, you have to make a lasting impression. But regardless of whether you’re an actor trying to land a role, an applicant trying to get a job, an executive trying to raise capital, or just a leader trying to lead a team, it is not only about the words we say or about the merit badges we puff out on our chest.
The Science of Lasting Impressions
So, with lasting impressions, what is that? Well, according to the National Library of Medicine, lasting impressions are triggered by two things in our brain: heightened sensation and emotional arousal.
Lasting impressions are pictures of our sensory DNA. They’re snapshots. Most likely, people aren’t going to remember the words you say. They’ll remember the tone in which you said it. They’re not going to remember the clothes you wore. They’re going to remember how you physically engage.
In fact, science tells us that the element of surprise is a key component to the snapshot. Surprise is such a key component that there’s a term for it: flashbulb memory. You probably remember when you heard that Princess Diana had died, or when you first saw Michael Jackson do the moonwalk, or where you were when 9/11 happened.
While those were large-scale public events and the details over time can get fuzzy, it’s the stickiness of emotional surprise that glues itself to our senses.
The Peak-End Rule
The peak-end rule validates this very idea. Peak-end is the notion that we evaluate our experiences based predominantly on how the experience felt at its peak, at its most intense point, and at the end. Now, the peak can be positive or the peak can be negative.
I’ll give you an example. We plan all year to go to the beach. We go to the beach.
We come home from the beach. What is the clearest memory we have a year from now? The biggest waves we caught or the day that it poured?
In other words, friends, the lasting value of the snapshot controls the actual value of the entire experience. And friends, time does not matter. The duration of the experience doesn’t matter. These trips can last a week. Interviews may last an hour. Auditions can last less than 30 seconds. When we’re talking about lasting impressions, time doesn’t matter. Emotions do.
The good news is that emotional arousal is possible in every interaction that we have. The bad news, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant you think that they are, every conversation, every interaction we have can move your personal brand a step closer to or further back from where you want it to be.
And that brings us to meaningful emotional surprise. This is the catch, friends. This is the point. To confirm your lasting impression upon someone else, the most critical characteristic you can convey to that particular person is meaningful emotional surprise.
Miss Connor bent down with intention, meaningful. She reached out and held that little girl’s hand, emotional. She boarded and stayed with her on the bus, surprise.
Offering more meaningful emotional surprise in our average everyday interactions provides more sensory value, more emotional value to someone else, and that is what triggers our unseen reputation. Not just with the people we’re interacting with directly, but with casual observers of that interaction. Casting directors, hiring managers, employees, colleagues, family members.
Remember, our forward-facing, LinkedIn reputation, that’s powered by posture. It’s what we want people to see. And that’s fine. Unseen reputation is about how we actually make people feel.
Three Ways to Bolster Your Unseen Reputation
Here are three meaningful things we can do in our everyday interactions to bolster our unseen reputation:
Listening, empathetically. Empathy begins with curiosity. Now, please allow me to be clear. Empathetic listening is not emotional weakness. It is a cognitive superpower. It enables us to reflect back the emotions we hear and to process data and emotions simultaneously. So if you have kids and you’re on the fence about each other, right now maybe. Maybe it’s about their grades. Instead of the next time the report card comes home and we fixate solely on the grades, shut the conversation down, perhaps we try, “You sound upset and angry when you talk about how you did. Tell me why.” We offer our undivided attention and curiosity on the grades, the data, meaningful. We reflect back how they feel, emotional. We ask kids to do something we don’t normally do. Talk more. Surprised. Empathetic listening enables us to listen, to understand, and not only to reply. And that is a critical component to making a lasting impression.
Vulnerability. Studies show that expressing vulnerability connotes honesty and emotional intelligence and most of us in this room probably understand that. However, if we are honest, we have to think of vulnerability as a chance that we can be hurt and none of us want to be hurt. We don’t want to be rejected, have our words played back against us. But friends, vulnerability can also be our greatest reputational asset. Allow me to share a quick personal story. I used to work in a role where I did a lot of writing. And our CEO had a passion for written communication. He was a rather critical man in general and frankly I didn’t think he liked my work very much. And it caused a distance in our relationship. To be fair, this was a rather large company and I consider us virtual strangers. However, the day he decided to leave and move on, I decided to make myself vulnerable and I approached him and I let him know how much I appreciated his leadership. Now, while I didn’t think he liked my work very much at the time, I did believe what I was saying to him. And lo and behold, he was vulnerable back with me. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Jeff, I really appreciate it. Know that I believe in you and I want you to believe in me. And no matter what your next chapter holds, always do your very best to move forward on your own terms.” My boss leaned forward to compliment me. Meaningful. He inspired me. Self-confidence. Emotional. He put his hand on my shoulder and awakened in me an idea of how to forge ahead in my own future. Surprise. That moment seared into my senses. Not only through shared vulnerability did it heal our fractured relationship in a matter of a moment, but it opened up a new chapter for us. To this day, which is now our relationship is based on respect and trust.
Authenticity. Authenticity is essential for creating a lasting impression. It’s so important that authenticity creates oxytocin. It’s a chemical in the brain responsible for social bonding. In a world that is so driven by self-interest, offering a natural and authentic connection without regard for how it needs to benefit you is supremely powerful. I once had a relative who passed away too young. He was a cousin. His death left two children fatherless and his wife a widow. A few days after he passed, several family members got together to have a meal and share it. And I asked the family member about their admitted longing to want to go back to school. And I asked them, I said, “What do you think? Are you going to go back to university?” And they just shook their head and they said, “You know, I’m married. I have a family. I have work. It all just seems like a fantasy.” And they were sitting next to my cousin’s widow who hadn’t touched her plate or said a word the entire time, but she was clearly listening to what he was saying. And that’s when I observed her turn to them and softly and unstenamentally say, “Life is short. Live the fantasy.”
We have about 27 conversations a day at about 10 minutes per click, according to Bain Dialogue, a PR research firm. And out of those 68 days a year, if we do the math, that’s over two months of our lives every year, then talking to and engaging with other people. And out of those approximately 10,000 annual conversations, we consider 43% of them to be completely pointless.
No matter how seemingly small or insignificant or time limited you think they are, remember this. Lasting impressions are predicated upon how we make someone else feel. Offering meaningful emotional surprise puts you in the best possible position to be remembered because what you offer has an enduring personal value for someone else. And as a result, that is what strengthens our unseen reputation and powers the potential of your own personal ripple effect.
The illusion of things happening on stage and on screen is that they appear to be happening for the first time for the only time every time. But in business and in life, we get to actually do these things every day in every situation in real time. Some of us have the chance to do it over 10,000 times a year.
Offer more meaningful emotional surprise in every role in art, business and life and you are more likely to leave a lasting impression. And who knows, maybe we can all grow up to be like Miss Connor.
