‘Summer was gone and the heat died down. And autumn reached for her golden crown.’ — Nick Drake ‘Time of No Reply’

Well summer has gone and autumn is patently here but, this being the hottest year on record in Japan, it is difficult to say that the heat has died down. It has slightly but will stay in the 30s for at least another week.

Autumn here is so different from the one I grew up accustomed to. No musty smells of rotting leaves, wet pavements for days on end, drizzle and fog, limpid sunlight occasionally breaking through cloud cover. Somewhat ironically, here it seems much more like the iconic paintings of that most English of landscape painters Samuel Palmer. Almost as though Palmer’s paintings depicting the end of summer where actually painted here and he later dropped in a church spire, thatched cottage
or haystack to Anglicise the work.

Here warm almost golden light, leaves that hit all points of the chromatic scale from yellow to red. Crickets chirp mournfully day and night, mushrooms appear through the summer’s fallen leaves and the moon seems to get bigger with each passing day.

Interestingly and as testament to how seriously the Japanese take the season’s the leaf colour change schedule was published this past week (first prediction of many; there will be more as the change creeps south). Here, we’ll get yellow Ginkos from the last week in November and red maples from the first week in December. And that is only here, the forecast covers the whole of Japan and the colours have already started changing in the mountains of Hokkaido. Needless to say, some people are already making the trip north to see the changes and by the year end they will be going south-west to see them all over again.

In February’s Brief I talked about the power of communicating with passion and authenticity. When you want to leave a lasting impression (something we should all be aiming for) passion and authenticity beat facts and information hands down.

Passion is so potent because it appeals to the senses — it can be seen and heard and as we often say we can ‘feel’ someone’s passion for something. It creates a strong emotional imprint in those who encounter it.

Authenticity shows the ‘real’ you, nothing hidden, no pretence and this leads to building trust. If you speak from the heart people may disagree with you but they will respect you for sharing your opinions and thoughts candidly. The same can never be said if you lie or otherwise avoid the truth.

Passion and authenticity communicate directly with our emotions and for the most part both qualities are seen as positive.

In a world flooded with information, data, facts (increasingly much of it false) it is easy to underestimate how much passion and authenticity affect emotion and the impact this has on effective communication.

To illustrate how much more influence emotion and authenticity have over data and information in our communications think of the standard interview. Something, I am sure, almost all of us have experienced.

Interviews are emotionally vivid for both parties — we are face to face, in-person, side by side with another person that we are considering collaborating with.

If we are in the role of interviewer we should have reviewed all the information we need — resumes, references, certificates, test results — in order to make the right decision, long before the interview.

All that hard data is a clear indication of whether someone can or will succeed with what we want them to do. Yet, as observed by psychologist Richard Nisbett in his study of a wide range of organisation types, almost always, the interview is where the the hiring decision is made.

According to Nisbett this is because the interview ‘feels right’. There is a high or low level of emotional engagement that makes it easy for the interviewer to decide yes or no. And this emotional engagement is more powerful than all that that hard data about the interviewee.

The alarming fact is that we tend to judge people on their ability to communicate well (or not) for 30 minutes face to face rather than on the documentary evidence of their achievements to date.

Displaying passion, authenticity, along with empathy and authority (the key components of charisma) will all score points in an interview that far outweigh your career history or educational certification.

Exactly the same can be said of a presentation, meeting or any form of inter-personal communication for that matter.

And think of this:

If you work in the interior design industry, you might have wondered why finished projects often look so different from the design concepts you used to pitch for the project in the first place?

Well one of the main reasons for that is that in the first place the client was not looking for a finalised concept at all. In fact they were simply looking for a designer or a team that they could work with; the client knows once you have the right team chemistry everything else can be solved along the way. The ‘competition’ built around a design concept is just a means of getting people into an interview situation so their passion and authenticity can be judged.

As the character Wendy Rhodes, in the TV drama Billions, says to her boss, before his hugely important pitch,:

‘Remember, they are not buying your proprietary trading platform.

They are not buying your strategy.

They are buying you’.

When you are presenting or talking in a meeting and you have important information that needs to be shown, always keep in mind the
‘Speak, don’t show; show don’t speak’ rule.

In the June Brief I included the Dispatch titled ‘Steal’. Based on the quotation widely attributed to Picasso.

‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’.

And in the Brief I included a link to Robert Galsper’s cover of Radiohead’s ‘Reckoner’.

Well here is another steal worth listening to.

American contemporary classical pianist has taken Brian Eno’s 1978

seminal ambient piece ‘Music for Airports’ and completely reinterpreted it (along with a couple of other Eno pieces), on last year’s recording ‘Eno Piano’.

Whilst the original MfA was made using spliced tape loops, vocal loops and synthesisers, leaving an ethereal, beautiful but somewhat cold, artificial sound Brubaker’s reworking has used a Steinway piano and some very clever IRCAM (the French electronic and avant-garde music institute) technology. The overall effect is very close to Eno’s original yet contains much more warmth and personality.

Highly recommended with good headphones.

You can hear Part 1/1 here

or the whole work here, at Apple Music.

If you want for sounds that don’t intrude but rather wash over you as you watch the autumn leaves turn colour and fall then I might suggest this is the recording for you.

Nicholas Raistrick | Communication Strategist, LABtokyo

Nicholas founded LABtokyo 10 years ago with the express commitment to helping people communicate to their highest potential.

We work with private individuals and corporate groups by delivering training and coaching programmes specifically designed to enhance all facets of interpersonal communication.

To see previous Briefs or ones you may have missed, click The Brief

If you are interested in learning more please write to us here or check our website at labtokyo.com.

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