When American Voters Didn’t Believe Bill Clinton in his Early Years
How his advisors came up with a simple body language hack to help him
Bill Clinton, the former President of the USA, is known for being one of the best orators of recent history. When he spoke people listened, and what he said, people believed.
But it wasn’t always like this.
In fact he was booed in more than one occasion when he first got into politics. But he honed his public speaking abilities and gradually become a charming public speaker. Today, more than two decades after his presidency, his speeches still inspire trust in people.
In 2011, when he spoke to support Obama for a reelection, it is said that his speeches made a substantial difference. Obama himself has explicitly admitted that Bill was able to relay his campaign’s core message with utter simplicity and inspired trust among voters.
This is a far cry from Bill’s initial amateur period when he was new to public speaking. When he first started, not only did people want for him to finish as quickly as possible, they simply wouldn’t trust anything he had to say.
It became a major issue.
So, advisors were hired to see what the root cause was. And after a lot of research they found out what it was — they found out exactly why people did not believe in anything Bill Clinton had to say.
Two words — body language.
Bill had the habit of punctuating big, and very wide gestures. It turned out that people assumed he must be lying because of his body language, because of the way he would extend his hands all the way out.
His advisors quickly recommended him to imagine a virtual cartoon below his shoulders and above his waist and to only move his hands within this area. As long as he kept his hand movements within this area, the advisors assured him that he would be more believable.
And it worked like a miracle!
Pretty soon Bill’s trust worthiness poll went up and people gradually paid attention to what he had to say.
Since then, the “Clinton Box” has been a very popular idea in public speaking.
So, the next time you have to give a presentation or do a public speaking, please remember the “Clinton Box” — it might just save you!
