The other day, someone parked their car in front of our garage, blocking us in. When I asked them to move they pointed out that the whole street was packed and that they “gotta park somewhere.”
Which was true, I guess, but not my problem. Well, until they turned it into mine, that is.
I see this in talks all the time. It happens in keynotes, strategy announcements, product announcements, change initiatives, sales conversations, project meetings and pretty much everywhere speakers want something from their audience:
The speaker’s problem is turned into the audience’s problem.
It’s one of the biggest reasons why talks fail to achieve their goal, despite a clean argument, solid data, beautiful slides, and confident delivery. And we often don’t even realize it.
Here’s a simple example that makes it easy to see. Yours might look different, but the principle is the same:
Imagine you’re announcing a new strategy that improves how the company works across departments. In your talk you say, “We need to collaborate better across functions.”
Which is true. And better yet, it’s what everyone was complaining about. Or was it?
Well, that’s the part that’s so easy to mistake. Because if you look closely, the people inside the organization actually have a slightly different problem. And they use slightly different words to speak about it. Maybe closer to this:
“I spend half my week chasing people for decisions that nobody seems to own.”
Their problem is not collaboration. Their problem is that they’re losing half their week. And that they have to chase people. And even then, they can’t get a decision.
And so, “collaborate better” doesn’t click for them. From their perspective, they are already doing everything they can. In fact, for them it feels like more than they should have to. Ask them to do more, and they’ll shut down.
As it turns out “better collaboration across functions” were your words for your problem. (I call that YY.)
Speak to their problem in their words instead, and it’s a completely different conversation. (I call that TT.)
You don’t have to convince them of your version of the problem because they already care for theirs.
“Finally, someone gets it,” they might think. (Even though objectively, it’s the exact same problem and the exact same solution. You’re just showing it from their perspective.)
As I said, in your case the exact words and the exact problems are certainly completely different. But the principle is exactly the same.
YY: Your audience has work to do. What do you mean? Why should I care?
TT: You do the work. Your audience thinks: This person gets it.
Of course, the more badly you need them to act, the more tempting it is to make your problem their problem. (You gotta park somewhere, after all.) But urgency on your side doesn’t create relevance on theirs. That’s when you need TT most, the version of the problem they already recognize as theirs, clearly expressed in their own words. This person gets it.
My new backstage report looks into this in more detail. How to spot the YY trap, what can still go wrong even if you see it, and where you actually find the words that get your audience moving.
The feedback from early readers on this report is pretty clear: “Oh man. You have got the wheels in my head spinning with this one.”
Keep lighting the path,
Michael
