Wow opens their mind. Aha changes their mind.
Both are better together.
Aha moments can’t happen when your audience doesn’t pay attention. Wow moments are great at getting you attention.
But wow moments get you only half way there. After all, what use is it when people cheer about what a great show it’s been when what you actually want them to cheer for is your idea?
When you’ve opened the door, walk through and take your audience all the way to a profound aha moment.
Clarity can show up in the form of a thought or in the form of a feeling.
The aha effect happens when both fall together … when your gut tells you that something feels right and your brain understands why it is right.
You’re missing out if you only look at one of those sides.
The keynote was a great success. Standing ovations.
“What a great presentation!”
“You’re a natural born presenter!”
“That was quite the roller-coaster ride! What a brilliant show!”
And yet, the day after, nothing happens.
Because it’s never about “What a great show!” but always about “What a great idea!”
The wow effect brings you the excitement in the moment. But that excitement always fades. Sometimes later, but mostly sooner.
That’s why you need to take your audience beyond the wow effect – all the way towards a profound aha effect.
Aha effects last much longer.
PS: Happy to help.
“And how is clarity to be achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.” — F. L. Lucas
Wow effects are easy to achieve. When in doubt, throw money at the problem. Samsung, for example, has put entire orchestras on stage during their keynotes.
Wow effects rarely increase clarity, though. Also, you don’t even need clarity to achieve a wow effect.
Aha moments are different. You can’t buy an aha effect.
The aha effect requires effort. It requires you to do the work and think things through. You’ll have to see your audience to understand where they’re coming from and what matters to them. You’ll have to understand their language so that you can find the words that lead everyone in your audience to see what you see.
Aha effects require clarity. Clarity requires effort.
But it’s worth the effort. Because while wow effects usually fade quickly, aha effects often last.
The best way to think about wow effects is as a door opener to your audience’s connection. But once you’re in, lead them all the way to an aha moment.
-> Passionate beats eloquent
-> Prominent beats competent
-> Relatable beats spectacular
-> Relevant beats fancy
-> Simple beats complex
-> Useful beats beautiful
-> Wow beats aha in the short run
-> Aha beats wow in the long run
Don’t persuade harder, resonate stronger!
TED has popularised the art of presenting big ideas. What gets easily overlooked is how another art is even more essential to a great TED talk: the art of digging deep.
This is the art of not only identifying the stones but actually picking them up and looking under. The art of scratching our heads and asking further. The art of looking for answers as opposed to stopping at the questions. So that we arrive at ideas that don’t just look big but actually are big.
For this, it’s not enough to copy the looks of a TED talk: the structure, the storytelling, the stage layout, the timing. That’s just the surface.
A big idea is not in how the idea looks.
A big idea is in what it inspires. What it changes. Such as a fundamental change of perspective.
More often than not, these ideas originate in the mud and dirt. By digging deep. And getting your fingers dirty.
People on the TED stage are standing there because they have an important story to tell. One that originates from doing the work. Sweating the details. Looking beyond the obvious. Asking the questions and looking for answers.
The problem with our world of inspirational TED-like speeches is that it’s copying the looks of a great TED speech while missing the work that precedes it. These people copy the TED part but not the digging deep part.
Yet, digging deep is the most reliable way of arriving at a big idea talk. Dig deep and do the work. And then, tell a true story about what you worked out.
This is how you light the path.
Getting applause for your talk and having an impact are two very different goals for a presentation.
A good round of applause feels great. That’s for sure. But the enthusiasm of the moment is no guarantee that your message will stick. Or that it changes a mind.
Even worse: applause is seductive. When you get some, you want more. When you get a lot, you want even more. And it’s quite possible that you do because once you get the hang of it, you’ll have a good sense of what makes your audience cheer for you. The temptation to strive for that applause is not a small one.
And yet, the talks that resonate the most are often the ones that cause the audience to become quiet. Pause. Reflect upon what they just heard.
Applause and impact are by no means mutually exclusive, but they also don’t necessarily come together. Faced with the choice, I’d always prefer the talk that makes a difference rather than the one that makes for a good round of applause.
But let’s look at it from a different perspective: If the audience is still resonating with our talk a month – or a year – after … because that talk made a profound difference in their life … now, that’s a reason to be really proud of.
How can I surprise my audience? How can I make my slides more punchy? How can my gestures reinforce what I’m saying? How can I involve the audience?
No doubt, these are all valid questions. But only after we have answered an even more important question: What change are we trying to make? Where does our audience come from and where are we leading them? What do they believe before the talk and what do they believe afterwards?
Because only the answers to these questions enable me to identify what kind of surprise will grab my audience’s attention. What kind of punch will hold their attention. What kind of involvement will incite action.
A wow effect is a means to achieve an aha effect. The better you understand what exactly the aha looks like from your audience’s perspective, the better you’ll be able to identify the kind of wow that leads them to that aha.
If your product truly changes things for the better then all you need to do is to speak the truth.
I’m amazed by how often people just don’t trust in that truth. They will look for all sorts of fluff and stuff to decorate the truth to make it look more appealing.
Fascinated by the breathtaking shows of the competition, people will go to great lengths to hunt down an even more breathtaking wow factor – looking for fancier titles, more bang in the visuals, and of course expensive tech equipment.
Don‘t get me wrong, all of this can be very useful. Make things sound and look as good as you can.
But in the end, it’s not about how great things look but how well they resonate. Audiences enjoy a great show, no doubt about that. But would you rather care about “what a great show” or about “what a great idea”?
If your product is actually amazing, then what you need most is clarity. And empathy. These two are the prerequisites for a great story.
Start there. Focus on the truth not the decoration. Work on making your story resonate as strong as possible. And when you’ve got that kind of aha, the wow will take care of itself.
Several months into the pandemic, remote formats still have a firm grip on businesses and events. From online meetings to online conferences, we will be seeing each other mostly on screen for quite some time to come. The good news is that there are still a lot of low hanging fruits in that new world of speaking.
Although many speakers and businesses have levelled up their technical skills and adapted their talks to online formats, many still struggle to fully embrace the possibilities that online brings along. We still see a lot of talks transferred onto the video format rather unchanged.
It feels a lot like back in the days when television still largely looked like filmed theatre. Now is the time to change that. After all, Netflix and YouTube is always just a click away. So that’s the new competition.
And that’s why now is the time to look for creative ways to make your talks even more instructive and entertaining. To make use of technology that just isn’t feasible in an on-stage setting. Rather than to try to mimic a stage setting, the right thing to do is to embrace the fact that you’re not in the same room, anyway.
Give me a call to analyse what’s possible for you.
