You don't need game when you have this

We’re on the sofa, her head is in my shoulder, my hand is in her hair, and I think, “She definitely likes me.” 

I’m 16, I’m at a barbecue with a group of friends, and we’re celebrating that it’s one year since we all went to Canada through a school exchange program. 

Patricia was part of the group, and we’ve been flirting for a few months now. OK, I’ve been flirting, but she hasn’t shut me down, which is progress in my book. 

Now it looks like I’m in, but I’m kinda stuck, because I have no game. I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to be doing here. 

We’re in the middle of a bunch of people, I can’t just kiss her, that would be weird! Also, it’s not like I even have the guts to try that…

One of my friends catches my attention and mouths, 

“Are you going to make a move or what?”

So now I’m under pressure. If I don’t try something, word will get around and I won’t be just lonely–I’ll be a joke. 

I can’t stand to face him, so I look away, and that’s when I see it: a huge full moon shining down the terrace. 

I lean down to Patricia’s ear and whisper, 

“It’s a beautiful moon out tonight. Would you like to step outside with me and…ahm… take a look at it?”

She doesn’t respond immediately, but when she does what she says is, 

“Alright. But it’s late, so let me call a taxi home first.”

Oh. Ok. So maybe she doesn’t like me? 

She calls the taxi, then we both awkwardly make our way to the terrace while a few people watch us go. 

We take a few steps away from the door, I mumble something about the moon, but as soon as I touch her waist she turns around, and we kiss. She does like me, yay!! 

After a short while she says, 

“My taxi should be here now, I have to go.”

“Yeah, of course, cool.”

“Are you coming?”

Wait, what? She wants me to go home with her? She can’t like me that much!!

“Coming… where?”

“Home. I mean, I’m going home, you can keep going to your house in the taxi after. Makes sense, right?”

“Ah, of course, yeah. I definitely knew that’s what you meant…”

That was how it started. 

We dated. We broke up. We got back together. Married. Had kids. 

After 21 years together, I finally understand what she wants. 

Just not always 😅

No understanding without context 

You can’t know someone from what they say. You can’t even know someone from what they do. Sometimes, that will seem enough, but not unless you actually know why they are behaving that way. 

Motivation matters. 

The neuroscientist Uri Hasson discusses an experiment where two groups of participants listened to the same version of a J.D. Salinger short story, “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes”, in which a husband cannot find his wife at a party and calls a friend to ask if he’s seen her. The scientists told one group, before they listened to the story, that the wife was having an affair with the friend, while they said to the other group there was no affair and the husband was jealous. The brain patterns of those in the “affair” group were closely matched between them, but they were nothing alike the brain patterns of those in the “no affair group”. The exact same actions were interpreted in a completely different way because of one sentence. 

If you want to keep your audience guessing, be unclear about the motivation of one of your characters. That works very well in many stories. 

But if this is keynote? A workshop? A TEDx talk? 

The worst thing you could do is be unclear about the context. That might send your audience in a completely different direction than you were intending, which might make them confused, or worse–it may set them against what you wanted them to buy into. 

(Unless you’re in a romantic scenario, of course, where keeping them guessing seems to be a winning strategy 😂)

To fix this, you don’t need game; what you need is to get your premise right out in the open, establish some common ground and then you can take the audience where you want them to go. 

And, if you do that, who knows? 

They might still like you 21 years later 🤘

-Francisco 

PS. Want to learn more about how you start a presentation with the premise? Here’s a great article from Brian Miller, my partner-in-crime: https://www.clarityupconsulting.com/blog/a-better-way-to-start-a-speech

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