Chapter 11 · 12 total
Connection Mode Instead of Performance Mode
How to get out of self-monitoring and back into real contact.
In Performance Mode you are inwardly busy with yourself: How am I coming across? Was that weird? What do they think? What do I say next? As a result, you lose contact even though you're physically present.
Connection Mode reverses the focus. You observe not yourself but the other person. You listen, ask, respond, allow pauses. Paradoxically, this makes you come across as more composed, because you're no longer circling your own impact. Social authority is not created when you perform perfectly. It's created when people feel: you are truly here.
Closing Impulse
Have a conversation where you return every time you catch yourself self-monitoring.