42 How to Sell Yourself
put on a mask. It’s the face of “small talk.” Unfortunately, it’s the
face we use most of the time. It’s the face of the dead.
Pay attention to the speakers at the next meeting you attend.
Watch experts giving their wisest opinion on TV.
Watch political candidates.
Again, look at other people on the elevator and on public trans-
portation. They look as if the casket business should be booming.
The neutral face seems to be saying, “I don’t care one whit
about you,” and the audience reciprocates in kind. It’s the surest
way to turn off the listeners’ attention buttons. For example, the
neutral face cost Al Gore a victory in election 2000.
The open face
Now comes the element of my training I’m proudest of. It’s
the expression I call the open face. I created the concept when I
started teaching in 1952. It’s a winner. It’s the face that says, “I
like you.” It’s a caring face.
People who’ve been through my training agree it’s the most
useful, most helpful concept they’ve ever learned. They’ve dis-
covered, and I hope you’ll discover, that when you make intellec-
tual love to your audience, they have no choice but to really like
you back.
Nearly every follow-up of my training for Merrill Lynch finan-
cial consultants talks about the life-changing and career-improving
effect of the open face.
I treasure this letter from a woman I never met:
Dear Mr. Lustberg,
I am writing to thank you. You have made quite an
impact on my husband. He sat next to you on an air-
plane a couple of weeks ago. The two of you had a con-
versation about communicating effectively, and the im-
pact that facial expressions have on other people. He dem-
onstrated the “open” face for everyone he met and ex-
plained why it was preferable to a “closed” face.
He is a consultant for a large corporation and travels
extensively. Every few months he finds himself in a new
assignment with a whole new group of co-workers. This
is challenging and intimidating for him. He is not known