Dr. Michael Gerharz, Autor auf The Art of Communicating

Sweat the details: What it really means

Focusing hurts. It means letting go of details. Details that we care about. Details that we feel we can’t possibly leave out. Details that are crucial to the conclusion that our product is superior to other offerings.

Here’s the catch: If you feel that you can’t leave it out because it would hurt your message too much, your audience will happily do it for you. There’s no way they will recall all of the 53 details that you’d like to share with them because you can leave none of them out.

There’s no doubt that the reason you are extraordinary at what you do is because you care. You sweat the details. You connect the dots.

But when it comes to communicating your product, there’s a crucial difference as sweating the details means something completely different.

It means condensing the details into a clear and concise message that’s the perfect summary of your details. A message that represents the details but is not just an enumeration of all the facts. Ideally, it’s a message that’s distinct from any other message because it’s only these details that lead to this message.

And so, focusing empowers.

If it absolutely has to be a meeting

A boring meeting is a great opportunity to catch up with unread mails. Sure.

But why not address the cause instead of the symptoms? Why not work to prevent boring meetings from happening rather than look for ways to re-use boring meeting time?

The best way is to turn it into a doing.

But if it absolutely has to be a meeting, here are a couple of ideas:

Cut the meeting time to one-third. And mean it. This is easy if everyone leaves out the boring two-thirds.
Take a vote 5 minutes into each presentation asking: “Do you want to learn more?” Only move on if the majority vote is “Yes.” (You will be amazed at how much relevance you can fit into 5 minutes.)
Use the Saari principle: anyone may ask “Who gives a damn?” at any time during the meeting. If the presenter or meeting leader doesn’t have an answer to that, the presentation is over.
Like Amazon, forgo presentations in favour of a study hall. Instead of presentations, employees prepare memos. Reserve (let’s say) 30 minutes at the beginning of each meeting exclusively to reading these memos.
Publicly rate the meeting as well as the organiser. This way you can quickly see who organises and leads meetings in a way that makes a difference.

Don’t give in to boring meetings, change them.
(And it always starts with ourselves).

The innovator’s communication dilemma

Many innovators spend an enormous amount of time trying to make us appreciate their innovation. After all, it’s the innovation that they sell and so for us to buy we need to understand how it works, right?

The problem, of course, with explaining an innovation is that it’s, well, new. Which is why it’s probably hard to understand. On top of the fact that a lot of people are not particularly eager to embrace the new.

And so, many innovators struggle with getting the love they feel they deserve.

A shift in perspective might help.

Because, after all, the innovation is likely a new solution to an old problem. Which is familiar to the audience. And easy to understand. They get it immediately because they feel the pain when you reference it.

And so, instead of making us get them, the innovator’s communication efforts might be better spent in getting us. Rather than making us appreciate their solution, it might help for them to appreciate our struggles.

Because when we trust that they do the latter, we might be willing to learn about the former.

Caution: Dangerous communication

Quite early in our lives we learn that when we fall from a tree, it hurts. We accustom to it and learn to be careful with which tree to climb.

Later we learn that fire burns our skin when we get close and so we accustom to it and learn to be careful with fire.

Even later we learn that an agenda slide is followed by a boring presentation and burns our time and so we learn to be careful with granting our attention to some communicator.

We rather tune out to think of more important stuff (or, to be more precise, what we consider to be more important).

Seems about time to remove some of the dangerous parts from our communication. And while we’re at it, turn it from a waste of time into a bargain. More concretely: How can you turn the 60 mins that someone is granting you into their best spent time of the day? And how can you turn your intro into something that makes this obvious right from your first word?

Nothing new

Humans are story builders. Whatever we experience must fit into a story that makes sense.

In a way, you could say that we are “sense makers”. We take what we experience and make sense of it.

Disaster strikes when we are predisposed with what makes sense. Like when we hear some information and quickly dismiss it as something that we already know. Or as just another fact that supports are opinion.

This becomes very obvious in know-it-all people. But to a degree we all fall prey to this effect. I bet that – just like me – you’ve observed yourself being bored by some communication because it’s nothing new.

Yet, what really happened was that our brain wanted to spare some thinking effort and quickly made some sense of the information: the nothing new sense.

Quite likely, we just lost a learning opportunity. We lost the opportunity to discover a new meaning in the things that we seemed to know already. We lost the opportunity to connect the dots in a new way. Or look from someone else’s perspective.

My friend Ariana Friedlander said it like this:

If you’re tired of hearing the same old thing over and over again, perhaps it’s time you changed how you listened!

And that, of course, begins by starting to actually and openly listen. The perfect time to make sense of something is after you listened to it, not before.

PS: Ariana just launched her Leadership Circle, a community of leaders who genuinely care about others. It’s a great place to be if sometimes things feel overwhelming and the weight of responsibility you carry feels lonely. Ariana’s Leadership Circle offers you a chance to gain camaraderie while doing the inner work to be the leader your people and vision deserve. Here’s more info: https://www.rosabellaconsulting.com/leadership-circles

Start with WHAAAAAT?

When developing your story, it’s a good idea to start with why. But when delivering the story, it’s even better to start with “WHAAAAAT?” – with a question mark at the end.

What would irresistibly lead your audience into a WHAAAAAT?-moment? Something that makes them think “How is that even possible?”. Or “I can’t believe we never saw this, how did you discover it?” Or – if they are more of the cooler kind – just plainly: “That’s rather surprising. Tell me more!”

The WHAAAAAT?-moment is the reason that your audience is dying to know more. Because you’ve sparked their curiosity. You’ve hit the mark. Your intro is a promise that you’ve got something that’s really worth their time.

While others struggle with keeping their audience’s attention for even 2 minutes, your audience would riot if you stopped talking after your intro.

So you want to shine?

Recently, I saw two concerts at a festival. One started with a 3 minute explanation of what we were about to hear: That this was her most political song, yet. Why it is structured the way it is. What it means to her.

The other started with the band playing a groove. Then, the singer entered the stage, stretched her arms wide … and began to sing.

We left the former performance after about 5 minutes and were mesmerised by the latter, glued to our seats for 90 minutes.

It’s the result of a profound shift in perspective. The first band’s major concern was to make sure that we see the brilliance of their music. The band leader worked hard to explain it to us so that we wouldn’t miss it. They wanted to make sure that we could appreciate it. They wanted to shine. They wanted something from the audience.

The second act’s major concern was to give their audience a great time by playing their best music. They did shine. They wanted to give something to the audience.

And so, the paradox outcome was that we appreciated the brilliance of the second performance while dismissing the first.

There’s an important lesson for any kind of communication here. When we ourselves don’t even trust in our own message but rather feel the need to have to explain it before we deliver it, how should our audience trust in it? Even worse: this bit of insecurity shows. Audiences are super good to sense when there’s a dissonance between what a speaker says and what she really feels – whether she really believes in what she says.

Our effort is much better spent with making our message actually brilliant than with explaining why our audiences should consider it brilliant.

2 minutes, twice a week

2 minutes, twice a week might be all it takes to level up your communication and tell your story in a way that it gets you the impact your story deserves.

2 minutes, twice a week is the format of my podcast. One tiny step at a time, it takes you on a journey to ask the right questions about how to tell your story. And find the answers that fit uniquely to you.

It’s not about recipes and formulae. It’s about the underlying principles of communication that allow you to find your own voice. Because we have enough of interchangeable communication. What’s missing is your unique take. My hope is that the “Leaders Light the Path” episodes can support you in expressing it in a way that’s uniquely yours.

When I started the format in January, I felt that we already had an abundance of longform podcasts that take you on a really deep dive on specific topics. What was missing was the short shots of inspirations. Of the kind that you hear in between two longforms. Or that you use to get that final kick just before you start your pitch. Or that you use as a start into the week.

If that resonates, I’d love for you to check it out. You can subscribe on all major platforms.

Empowerment

“Empowerment” is a fancy way of saying that you trust your team with making decisions.

Unfortunately, what some leaders mean when they use that word is that they really only trust their team to the extent that they make the same decisions as the leader themselves would – which, in turn, creates more insecurity than it creates empowerment: “Is that really the decision that the boss would have made?” So, the boss ends up remaining the bottleneck of decision making (a huge source of frustration for many teams.)

True empowerment goes beyond that. It grows from razor sharp clarity about a common goal and a feeling that this is the goal we all share. From the leader it requires the empathy to see how that goal aligns with the goals of the team and the individuals who form the team.

This makes communication one of the crucial skills of the leader. I call that “lighting the path”: This is who we are and this is where we go.

Having a path that the team aligns on, allows us to decide. It allows anyone to decide. When the team is focused towards that common goal, it simplifies decision making and empowers every team member to make decisions on behalf of the team. Not only does the leader care for the team but, in fact, any team member does. Because all care for the same thing.

The true core of your message

As the pandemic brought a lot of businesses to a screeching halt, many of them took this as an opportunity to rethink the path they were on.

Is this still who we are and where we want to go? What really matters to us going forward? How does that align with what matters to our customers? Of all the things we love to do, what’s the biggest positive impact that we can make?

In short, these businesses went looking for their true core.

Jonny Prest from Brand Master Flash and I had an interesting discussion about what that means for businesses, most importantly, what helps businesses to uncover the true core of their message.

I highly encourage you to check out Jonny’s podcast on brand stratgey. If you like our discussion on finding the true core of your message, I’ve assembled an exclusive offer for listeners of the podcast to dig deeper. Head over to Jonny’s page to learn more about it.

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