Aha-Effekt Archive - Page 2 of 4 - The Art of Communicating

Applause is seductive

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.

First things first

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 changes things for the better

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.

Low hanging fruits

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.

The presenter’s job

This is usually easy: to make sure that the information in a presentation is correct. That there are no mistakes in the data. That it’s complete. That we didn’t miss anything.

This is usually much harder: to make sure that our audience gets it. What does the data mean? How does this work? Why does it matter?

This is the least we should strive for.

Too many presenters stop at being correct. They consider their job to be to deliver the info.

It’s not.

Their job is to create understanding. The purpose of a presentation isn’t to be delivered but to be understood – if not to change minds.

When someone grants us 30 minutes of their time, the least we should do is to speak with clarity so they get what we mean.

The WTF moment

Marketers strive for a WOW moment. But the WTF moment is even stronger.

WTF is short for “I can’t believe that this is possible!” It occurs when you’ve given your audience exactly what they need and much more than they expected. It’s a solution to a problem that matters a lot to them.

Therefore, it’s also the trigger for “Tell me more!” It opens the flood gates.

Of course, this will get much easier if your product is a WTF product in the first place.

The show is part of the substance

When you believe in better, it’s your obligation to speak with the clarity that’s required for your audience to resonate with your message.

Change requires being heard. It’s a huge misunderstanding – and a source of big frustration – for quite a lot of difference makers who make better things and then stop at making them. The resonance that their competition gets for their arguably inferior products by putting on a show feels like an unfair advantage to them. You’ll often hear them complain that “show” seems to be more important than “substance” to their audience.

It’s not, of course. Because the show is part of the substance.

Your audience doesn’t care for the things they don’t see or understand and it doesn’t have to. It’s not their obligation to see why your thing matters. It’s yours. Resonance is actually required to get results.

The good news is this: If your product really does change things for the better, then you’re in a much better position to make your message resonate. Because what resonates most is relevance. So, the actual unfair advantage is to make better things. Because better things create relevance. Then, turn relevance into resonance!

What you say vs. how you say it

Here’s a question I get asked a lot:
“In the debate of what you say vs how you say it, which is more important?”

The answer is more nuanced than you think.

First of all, style and delivery obviously make a difference. They can light up a room or switch it off. They can make people lean in or turn away. But ideas can only make an impact if people lean in.

And so, it’s no wonder people often claim it doesn’t matter what you say, only how you say it. It sounds clever, almost worldly. But the more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

Because if the what doesn’t matter, then why bother saying anything at all?

What really matters in the what vs. how debate

Now, I get where this comes from. We’ve all seen average ideas succeed because they were communicated well, while better ones lost because they were not.

But here’s a truth that doesn’t quite fit: ideas don’t move people just because they’re spoken with charm. They move people because they resonate.

And resonance happens when style and substance work together.

The ones who seem “naturally persuasive” aren’t simply more charismatic. They’ve done the hard work of empathy. They’ve listened closely. They’ve discovered the words that fit their audience’s world. And suddenly, the message doesn’t feel like persuasion at all. It feels like recognition.

So, when you look closely, it’s not at all about slickness or talent. The people who seem so naturally persuasive usually just understand their audience better. What they say feels like what you were waiting to hear all along.

That’s not trickery. That’s not clever wording. That’s empathy.

A nuanced answer to the what vs. how question

Empathy changes the game. Because when you truly care about what you say, you also care about how it lands. You do the work to make sure it resonates. You search for the words that don’t just express your truth, but awaken their truth.

That’s when style and substance stop being two sides of an argument. They become inseparable. The belief you carry and the way you express it become one and the same.

And in that moment, trust is built. Change becomes possible.

So no, it’s not one or the other.
It’s both: what you say and how you say it.

But the “what” is where it begins.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

The loooooooong pause

Many people tend to believe that tension is created by holding back information and having people wait for the reveal. Casting shows love to do that (“The winner is … looooong paaaauuuuuse … the winner is … even looooooooooonnnggger paaaaaaaauuuuuuuuse …”).

Often, though, a much more satisfying experience of tension is created by the opposite approach. By providing information leaves your audience in awe and begging you to tell them more. When you manage to create tension precisely by the things you say then it’s not the performance but the information itself that creates the tension.

If that’s the case you’ll know that you really hit a nerve. Also, it’s the beginning of a conversation rather than the end. Instead of being satisfied by the piece of information they receive, audiences become curious by it. Instead of feeling relieved by the information, tension is built up by the information.

What is a piece of information that you could give your audience that makes them want to know more?

Cute and clever is a trap

Cute and clever is a trap that businesses easily fall into. It’s deceptive because it seems that this is what the others are doing as well. When you see these slick presentations that win the deal, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that it’s the slickness that did the job.

Yet, more often than not that’s not the case. It’s clarity that wins in most cases. With clarity comes slickness. Not the other way around.

You can have beautiful words, gorgeous slides, and catchy titles. Yet, when clarity is missing, your audience will not buy into your story.

It’s like with special effects in a movie. A movie with great special effects might be fun to watch, but a movie with a great story beats the special effects every time. Of course, a great story that’s implemented brilliantly beats both.

For presentations, it’s the same. Clarity beats slickness. Clarity plus slickness beats both. The good news is that once you have clarity, it’s so much easier to find the slickness that you were looking for.

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