By: Martin Merritt, esq.
Past President, Texas Health Lawyers Association
Past Chair, DBA Health Law Section
martin@martinmerritt.com
“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Clients Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
As you can tell, I love talking about health law & litigation issues, and general wellbeing, if you have any health law questions or better yet, need to refer a case, just call or drop me an email and I will happily talk.
The “Island of the Lotus Eaters.” A big reason I write these blogs is because people come up to me all the time and tell me they enjoy my writing. This week as we begin a New Year, I want to talk about something that isn’t obvious here: The absolute “miracle” that anyone still comes up and talks to me at all.
You may have noticed in the past decade and a half (basically since the invention of “smart phones”), people don’t smile or make eye contact anymore. We walk around with a blank look, that one author I want to tell you about calls “RBF” (resting bothered face.)
In Book IX of Homer’s The Odyssey, inhabitants of a particular island are called the Lotophagi, or “lotus-eaters.” They didn’t have “smart phones” to scroll, instead they had “lotus fruit.” Which was said to be super sweet (and similar to online content), there was an endless supply of it. However, as with most Greek mythology, the “gods never give with both hands.” Anyone who ate this fruit would become lethargic, derelict of duty, and essentially withdrawn and isolated. (Which sounds awfully familiar.)
Alfred Tennyson also wrote a poem, “The Lotos-Eaters” in which the group of mariners who landed on the island, had to be torn away from their preferred isolation, kicking and screaming.
How to “get off the island” this year. Last week I found a great YouTube interview, “The Secret to Being More Likeable,” with body language expert Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa also has a website, “The Science of People.” (Yes, I get the irony, YouTube and websites are a kind of “social media” you can watch on a smart phone instead of interacting with people.) But trust me here, the interview is only 15 minutes long and very helpful, if you want to drag yourself, or someone you love, back to civilization.
Vanessa says that people will more likely trust you enough to talk to you, if you are more “likeabe,” which consists of two components: (1) “competence” and (2) “warmth.” She also has techniques for conveying these qualities.
The “curse of smart people” she says (and if you are reading this, 99 percent of you have a medical degree or juris doctorate, which means you are possibly also “cursed” by being smart), is that “smart people tend to rely only on competence alone,” trusting that people will like you just because you know stuff. Smart people will need to work on “warmth” too.
“Go look in a mirror and let your face go blank,” she says. (Like when you are looking at a smart phone.) “You might find your face has a natural frown when you are not doing anything with it.” She continues, “RBF is ‘cold and stoic’ and the reason many people won’t talk to you is because too much “competence” without being “warm,” leaves people feeling suspicious that you might bite their heads off,” because you have better things to do than talk to them.
Ever wonder why doctors wear scrubs and a lab coat? “Competence” still matters she says, when it comes to getting people to trust you enough to talk to you. I noticed this a long time ago, as a lawyer, that people are nicer to me and more likely to talk to me, when I wear a suit and tie. I never really thought about it much more than that, but I suppose for the same reason doctors wear scrubs.
The advantage of wearing a warm smile. Finally, “like a thermostat,” Vanessa says, “we can dial up warmth, just by smiling.”
I must confess, I do have a natural advantage here when it comes to getting people to talk to me. I am from Mississippi where we smile all the time. (My daughter, who is half-way through law school at Ole Miss reported she had to adjust to this, “Dad, I don’t understand it, they are all so damned happy.”)
I have also noticed, by the way, what works one-on-one, tends to be contagious within larger groups. If people see that you are someone others like to talk with, then others will more likely want to connect with you as well. This may take time, but smiling has another advantage these days.
If you are smiling in public, you will essentially be the only one doing it it many cases. A good start is to put the phone down. It isn’t easy to completely change the way people behave, but it is a pretty good resolution, to at least try to help everyone get back on the boat to civilization where we talk to each again.