While we have explored -and validated-the concepts of grit and power-posing here since 2013, we haven’t talked about IAT.

“The IAT is the brainchild of APS William James Fellow Anthony Greenwald (University of Washington), and he began working collaboratively on it with APS Past President Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University) and APS Fellow Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) in the mid-1990s. Over time, the tool has led to the examination of unconscious and automatic thought processes among people in different contexts, including employers, police officers, jurors, and voters.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has integrated findings about implicit bias into training curricula for more than 28,000 DOJ employees as a way of combating implicit bias among law enforcement agents and prosecutors. And in a historic 2015 decision involving fair housing, the US Supreme Court referenced implicit bias in a ruling allowing federal action against housing policies that have a disparate impact as well as being overtly discriminating.”

The Bias Beneath: Two Decades of Measuring Implicit Associations -The Observer, Association for Psychological Sciences Journal, January 31, 2018

Jesse was shamely published in the Wall Street Journal. Had she used her upcoming book for toilet paper, we wouldn’t be needing to empty stores shelves like last year’s.

Meanwhile, WSJ has refused to publish me, because it might tickle the elites anti-male rhetoric.

What’s up, WSJ ? How long do you think you’re going to keep the horses blinders on us ?

Back to the WSJ article, Jesse discovered black gold with a study that found “intelligence contributes 48-90 times more than grit to educational success.” No kidding, Sherlock. Too bad Jesse doesn’t understand, or conveniently chooses to ignore grit is a less-measurably character trait while intelligence is a polygenic, inheritable, relatively easily-quantified trait. Intelligence is peaking at age 20, after which is slowly declining. Grit ? It doesn’t peak at 20, it can shoot up to the skies at 60 ! Genius Jesse is trying to compare apples to oranges. As for me I’ll stop commenting on her remarkably worthless article.

The elites are shooting at us with non-sense. They always have.

What is your conversion rate ? Not that kind of conversions that we work with in tech-although that matters also- but conveying your message across. Do you capture your audience attention ? It doesn’t matter if they agree or disagree with your message if they are engaged.

Speaking skills are essential and unfortunately, poorly developed on Wall Street. I think a lot of people working in finance should take an acting class. Become a world class act. Like Lady Gaga (Lady Maga ?) here. Be the center of attention. It helps if you trained with Mark Burnett.

Image: Gagadaily

To become an eloquent communicator, one should:

1. Be an very good listener and reader. I have a vocabulary of 100,000 words which is above average, certainly in finance
2. Utilize metaphors, eulogies.
3. There are so many things at work: register, cadence, timber and so forth.
4. Speaking slowly and deep generally works best.
5. Pause before articulating the message.
6. When words come alive, that’s eloquence.
7. Use the words that match your audience’s vocabulary. Use of powerful verbs convert action. Believe me ! [Lady Gaga]
8. Speak with authority. You have been asked there to speak, not your audience.
9. Any speech should finish with a call to action.
10. Up your persuasion skills.

Mark Bowden talks about the unconscious (brain-stem) choice audiences make on the body language of presenters:

1. Friend or foe ? First unconscious judgement. Also there’s a 3rd category: indifferent, which is the default setting
2. Is he like me ? My tribe ?…That the second unconscious judgement.
3. A smile, the ‘universal signal’, must build for about 3 seconds, and it must sustain for 3 seconds.
4. Maintains eye contact with your audience.
5. Gestures at the belly level are interpreted as goodwill and honesty. At the chest level, excitement.
6. Hand gestures down and finger pointing are a telltale of berated unfriendly delivery, aka “signaling predators”.