Empathy Archive - This Moment Counts

I hated that talk. So why did it work?

Oh man, how I hated that talk.

Though it seemed like I was the only one. The guy (let’s call him Buzz) got standing ovations. He had landed one joke after another. He was charming, had great presence, and clearly, as they say, owned the room.

But 10 minutes into the talk, I sat there like the one guy who didn’t get the memo. I just couldn’t find the point. I mean there were lots of punch lines, but it didn’t add up to a coherent idea.

The audience apparently didn’t bother. By every signal you could see from my seat in the back of the room, it seemed to be a great talk. It completely worked.

Which feels very unfair to the speaker 2 hours earlier who had a clear point, delivered it well, and got a clap on the back by someone saying “nice talk”. No crowd at the front. So, maybe doing it right is just a more noble way of losing?

I want to be careful here, because the easy answer is a lie. The easy answer is that the crowd is shallow and ovations are cheap and you’re the “real” one. That’s a comforting thought. It’s also unhelpful. The crowd isn’t stupid. The speaker has done a brilliant job. They’ve earned the applause and pretending they don’t is just a story you tell yourself so it stings less.

Here’s what’s actually going on. You’re both being scored. But on different timelines. And looking at the wrong one will make you feel miserable.

Buzz’s result is in early. While he speaks and immediately after. Applause, laughter, the little crowd at the front. That’s his whole payout. It’s loud and it’s now.

Yours, in comparison, isn’t due yet. Yours shows up in three weeks, in a decision that goes your way in a meeting you’re not in, because one person in that meeting could still repeat your point to someone who wasn’t there. Buzz’s point can’t be repeated, as there was none. Yours can. But it doesn’t score in the moment you’re on that stage. It’s a score that counts three weeks later.

So when you walk out feeling like you came second … Well, wait. You can still come first on the score that counts later, even if nobody in that building is going to clap for it, then or ever.

However.

It’s a little more nuanced than that. You might be thinking now there are two options. Be Buzz, win the room, mean nothing. Or be you, mean something, lose the room. And you picked the second, with your chin up, being a little proud of the pat on the back ever since, the way someone is proud of a scar.

But. Honest question: Did you actually score three weeks later? Because there’s more to that than not being Buzz. The standing ovation was never the opposite of having a point. Buzz isn’t winning in the moment because his stuff is empty. He’s winning because he made his empty thing land.

You have the opposite problem and you’ve been calling it a virtue. Your point is real and you’ve left it sitting there, correct and unheard, because you never made it land with anything close to the force Buzz gave his.

That’s the thing we need to work on. Not depth. He hasn’t got depth. Not honesty. You’ve got plenty. The thing is that he made nothing feel like something and you made something feel like nothing.

Back to Buzz. In the coffee break, I was standing behind two women waiting in the queue. They talked about him: “How did you like the talk?” the left woman asked. The right one responded: “He’s a great storyteller, but honestly, what was his point?”

The audience wasn’t fooled. They simply enjoyed the moment. That’s all. A good time between the usual stuff.

Now imagine those two women in the queue talking about your talk. You know what you’d want them to say. Do you also know how to make them say it? That’s the work we do in a Clarity Lab.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

Why persuasion has always felt unambitious to me

I don’t want the ability to talk people into things. I really don’t.

Persuasion is often considered the gold standard in communication. Getting people to do what you want them to do. What more could you want … in a pitch, a strategy announcement, a keynote, or any of the moments that count?

Well, a lot more, if you ask me.

Persuasion has always felt unambitious to me.

You get the yes, but do they mean it? Will they wholeheartedly support you? Will they fight for it when you’re not around to push it?

But it also focuses you on solving the wrong problem. If an idea only works because I framed it cleverly, I don’t trust the idea. If people only agree because I found the right psychological hack, I don’t trust myself. And when it works, it’s often a hollow win.

That’s not the kind of communicator I want to be.

Three values guide my work:

Honesty.
Empathy.
Trust.

Honesty means there has to be a real point underneath your words.

Not a beautified version of the truth.
Not a polished version of a weak idea.
No jargon that hides uncertainty.

Instead, something that feels so undeniably true that once people see it, they can’t unsee it.

That’s a much higher standard to hold yourself accountable to: If they knew everything you know, would they still say yes?

Persuasion is about saying things better. I prefer saying better things.

Empathy means you no longer get to start with yourself.

You stop assuming people see what you see.
You stop expecting them to share your priorities.

Instead, you do the work.

You see the situation from where they stand.
You use their language.
You find words for what they feel but can’t articulate. Their fears, frustrations, ambitions, and hopes.

So you can say something that makes them think:

“Damn. That’s exactly where I am. Finally someone gets it.”

And then comes the hardest one of all:

Trust.

Because trust means letting go.

No pressure tricks.
No hidden agenda.
No trying to corner them into agreement.

You trust the audience to decide.

Which sounds noble and idealistic until you realize what it actually demands from you: If people are truly free to choose, then what you’re offering had better actually be a good choice for them.

So, what makes it one? What do they need to see so that you can genuinely trust them with the decision?

Can you clearly articulate that?

The higher the stakes, the more tempting it becomes to manipulate. To not leave it to chance.

But if your idea is as good for them as you say, why would you need persuasion? What is persuasion adding that the truth isn’t?

That’s a much higher ambition than getting to yes through persuasion.

Because when you finally get their yes, it will be with full conviction.

Let’s put it that way:

Honesty forces me to find what’s worth saying.
Empathy forces me to make it worth hearing.
Trust forces me to stand behind it.

That’s the communication strategy I believe in.

I’d rather light the path than push people down it.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

What is your audience dying to know (next)?

That’s everything you need to know about storytelling.

I’m dead serious. Nothing else matters nearly as much. In fact, in a business context, I find most of the storytelling frameworks utterly distracting. The Hero’s Journey, the three act structure. That’s all valid advice. But it simply isn’t needed in a business context.

What is needed is much simpler.

In one word: relevance.
(You could also simply call it empathy.)

Because here’s the thing: You are dying to say what’s important to you. But your audience will only hear it if they’re open to hearing it.

For example, the audience isn’t dying to know: “What are the 7 pillars of our transformation strategy?”

Honestly, they couldn’t care less and it’s easy for them to tune out.

But they are dying to know, and therefore won’t tune out if you speak about:
“What does this mean for me?”
“Can we actually pull this off?”
“Why now?”
“What are we not saying?”
“Is this finally going somewhere?”
“Can I trust this person?”

If you build your talk from these questions, you’ll eventually give them the 7 pillars. But in a way that actually makes sense to them and at a point in time where they actually want it.

In other words, “storytelling” is often solving the wrong problem. It’s used to spice things up, or maybe dress them up. And so, people focus on adding

emotion,
drama,
performance,
humor,
personal anecdotes.

But many deeply boring talks contain all of those things.

Meanwhile, someone calmly explaining a spreadsheet can hold a room hostage if people desperately want to know the info in it.

Tension works exactly counter to what we intuitively think:

The story is not exciting because of the emotion.
There’s emotion because it matters to us.

It doesn’t become relevant because of the drama.
It’s dramatic because it affects us.

In high stakes moments, this tension already exists. The audience enters the room with questions.

Your job is not to make it more dramatic but to figure out where this tension already lives.

Do they care? Do they wanna know?

That is tension. It’s the only thing your audience ever actually needed from you. Not another anecdote. Not a framework. Just the simple, irresistible need to know what comes next.

That question is available to you in any room, before any presentation, before any conversation where the words need to land.

What is my audience dying to know next?
Not: What do I want to say?
But: What are they already wanting to hear that I have not yet given them?

Let’s put it that way: “Dying to know” creates a remarkably effective editing filter for you. For every section of your talk, for every slide, every data point, every detail, every sentence, you can ask a straight question:

“Would they genuinely be dying to know this next?”

If not, then
cut it,
move it,
or rebuild the tension.

(An interesting side note: Surprisingly often, a talk gets stronger when you reveal the ending first. Because now people need to understand how it happened.)

I want to be clear on something here, though. This is not about attention bait. It has nothing to do with what sneaky salespeople do who artificially manufacture tension. You don’t need to create curiosity. When the moment is really high stakes, almost every time the curiosity already exists. The tension already exists.

Your job is to uncover it and align with it. And when you do, all the attributes of a great story (emotion, drama, etc.) are a free by-product.

So, that’s what great business storytelling does. It turns your message into something your audience doesn’t want to miss.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

PS: Interestingly, some of the strongest communicators create exactly this kind of tension without telling a “story” in the traditional sense at all. No long anecdote. No dramatic setup. No five minute detour. Just a tiny spark that triggers a story in the audience’s own mind.

And often, that’s far more powerful. The next issue of What the Best Leaders Say explores why this works, why it’s so easy to miss, and why the best leaders use it far more often than most people realize. Subscribe now to receive it.

The pitch that should have failed

12 years ago, my wife and I landed a surprise hit in the German toy market. As total nobodies in the industry. We ignored every single piece of expert advice. Really, our pitch would fail every single test by every single expert.

It worked out beautifully for us. The reason why is relevant to every pitch and every spotlight moment.

So, what happened?

My wife and I were sitting in our garden, the spring sun shining brightly, when she suddenly said about one of her plush designs: “We should bring these into the hands of many more children. Let’s ask Schmidt Spiele if they want to publish them.”

Schmidt Spiele. One of Germany’s big toy brands.

We had never sold a single toy. We knew nobody in the industry. We had no connections. No industry experience. We were a school teacher and a leadership communication coach.

But still … we sent them an email that afternoon: three paragraphs long with a short video attached.

The next morning, we woke up to a reply asking if we could send prototypes.

A week later, their managing director sat in our living room negotiating a worldwide licensing deal.

I still remember that surreal feeling of sitting there, in our own living room, discussing worldwide licensing rights while prototypes were lying on the table between coffee cups and children’s drawings.

And it all happened because of that tiny video. Do you want to know what was in it? Children playing with the toy. That’s it.

The product was a range of mood-changing plushies. Flip the head and the character transforms. Anxious to cool. Sleepy to party. Angry to happy. We just showed what happened when a child picked it up.

Every expert in the toy industry would have told us our pitch was wrong. We didn’t explain the market opportunity. We didn’t describe how we built it. We didn’t perform our passion for the project or outline our vision for where the brand could go in five years. It contained no market data. No team credentials. No growth forecast. No strategic roadmap. Really, nothing you’d expect from a normal pitch.

So, how on Earth could it work?

The publisher watched that video and saw one thing: their own future. They could see the toy in action. They could see why children would love it. They had enough experience to manufacture it. In other words, they could already see themselves selling it in large amounts.

We didn’t tell them any of that. They saw it.

This is what every great pitch does, whether you’re selling a toy, a strategy, or a vision to your organization. Your audience isn’t asking: are these people smart enough to pull this off? They’re asking one thing: Can I see this working for us? The clearer they can see it, the less you need to persuade.

So, what the video really did was pull the future into the present. It removed the distance between the idea and reality. (In fact, they liked the video so much that they later had an agency re-shoot it and turn it into a professional ad that aired on national TV.)

But there’s one more important detail.

The product itself told exactly one story.

Not twelve. Not five. One.

The toy that changes its mood.

That simple story made the product easy to understand, easy to remember, and easy to pass alonginside meetings. You can almost hear it: “It’s the plushie that changes its mood.”

Done. No explanation needed.

The same principle applies to every strategy you present, every change initiative you propose, every vision you ask people to follow. One clear story, told simply enough that people can clearly pass it along when you’re not in the room.

We used the same two principles (pulling the future into the present and distilling it into a clear pass along message) to land four more deals after that. It became the beginning of an extraordinary chapter in our lives with five consecutive hit products, including The Grumbletroll, Furlocks, Sleepy Caps, and Nuffi, several of them supported by national TV campaigns.

Compare that to the usual dazzling that happens in pitches. You spend months building spectacular decks. Go into incredible detail. Find big words. Overexplain, for example by including the psychology of mood regulation in early childhood.

When the moment counts, that’s exactly the urge. To impress. To make it look a little fancier. To persuade just a little harder.

Rather than find the simple true story that lets your audience experience the future with your idea in it.

The question is: when your moment counts, will your story make the future feel clear and irresistible?

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

Should you explain it simpler?

At some point in your career, you sat in a room where someone was presenting something important. A strategy. A proposal. A decision that was going to affect your work. You understood exactly what they were saying. Every word was clear.

And you wholeheartedly disagreed.

You didn’t say anything because something about the room, the dynamic, the stakes, the relationship, made disagreeing openly feel not worth the hassle. Instead you asked a question that wasn’t really a question and simply ignored what was asked of you.

You were right, by the way. The thing you didn’t say turned out to be true.

What I want to suggest is that right now, somewhere, you are the person at the front of the room. And the people sitting where you once sat are doing exactly what you did.

Back then, the leader concluded: “They didn’t get it. I have to explain it simpler.”

I hope you don’t.

When they say “they didn’t get it,” some leaders mean it in a rather arrogant way: something must have gone wrong in the transmission. The message was right, but somewhere between your mouth and their mind, it got garbled. So they fix the transmission. They simplify. They make sure the transmission is as easy to process for their audience as possible. So that they finally get it.

But what if the transmission was fine?

People didn’t misunderstand. They disagreed. And because disagreement is uncomfortable to say out loud, they didn’t.

Now, here’s the problem:

Simplifying a message that someone disagrees with doesn’t persuade them. It slightly insults them.

Think about what simplification signals to the person on the receiving end. It says: the reason you’re not on board is that you haven’t fully understood. Which means: if you did understand, you’d agree with me.

But that’s nothing short of an accusation of intellectual failure aimed at someone who may have followed your argument perfectly well and simply found it unconvincing.

The better question in that moment is “what would have to be true for this to make sense to them?”

It’s a harder question because it requires you to take their position seriously as a position, not as a comprehension problem. It means asking what they believe, what they see (that you don’t), what they’re responsible for … all of which can make your message land very differently for them than it does for you.

Sometimes you’ll find they’re really missing a piece of context that genuinely does need explaining. But more often you’ll find a real tension: between their priorities and yours, between the short term and the long, between what the data says and what their experience tells them.

That tension isn’t resolved with simpler words – or higher energy for that matter.

And that’s bad news for an entire industry of communication advice built around persuasion. It wants you to think that the gap between you and your audience is a performance gap, and that closing it is a matter of technique. This assumption is so dominant it feels like common sense.

It’s also exactly why teams are frustrated with “high energy” leaders and audiences are frustrated with “inspiring” speeches.

Audiences don’t want you to say simpler things. They want you to say things that make sense and feel right for them. They don’t want you to persuade harder, they want you to resonate stronger.

Sometimes that means finding simpler words. It always means saying things that start from what matters to them, not what makes sense to you.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

“I’ve said it three times and people still don’t get it.”

Or maybe they understood you just fine?

Sure, sometimes people don’t get it.
But quite often, they do.

They just don’t agree.
Or they don’t see why it matters to them.
Or they’ve heard you, but nothing in what you said made it worth acting on.

From the outside, all of that looks the same. No change.

And the most comfortable explanation is always: It must be them. They didn’t understand.

But is that plausible? Knowing that these are smart people?

Let’s assume for a moment it’s true. If they truly didn’t get it, the fix is easy. Just explain it better. Maybe ask them, what exactly they didn’t understand and give them the background required to understand it.

But if they got it and still don’t move? That’s a different problem.

Now it’s about relevance.
About tradeoffs.
About whether they believe it’s true. Reasonable. Worth it.

In other words, before repeating it a fourth time, I’d ask:

What if they understood it perfectly?
What might be true for them to still not act?

Then start from what matters to them, not what makes sense to you.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

Make it sound important

“So what was the big message from the meeting?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Come on, there must have been something.”

“They had this whole thing about ‘accelerating operational excellence.’”

“What does that even mean?”

“I think it means we’re fixing the same bug every week.”

“Ah. Why didn’t they just say that?”

Good question.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

What if persuasion is the problem, not the solution?

I bet that not even a single Porsche has ever been sold because of the car’s specs.

I mean, of course there are 100 good reasons for why a Porsche is a great car, especially one that’s better than a Nissan or a Mitsubishi.

The only problem is that there are just as many good reasons that prove the opposite.

The good reasons miss the point of buying a Porsche. This ad gets the point.

People who buy a Porsche don’t buy it for the good reasons. They have very personal reasons for doing so. One is that they are now in a position to make their youth dream come true. They can – finally – afford one.

But this isn’t a post about luxury cars. It’s a general principle in communication that JP Morgan captured brilliantly:

“Every man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.”

The more a business is trying to prove their idea with good reasons, the more obvious it is that they have no clue about who their customers really are.

And that’s the problem with persuasion.

Persuasion means finding (more and more) good reasons for why I should buy your idea. While the decision hinges on the real reason why I would buy.

Which is why persuasion feels so exhausting on both sides:

You’re trying to influence a different decision than the one I’m trying to make.

The crucial flip is this.

Don’t ask: “How do we explain our product better?”
Ask: “What decision was our customer already trying to make?”

That’s resonance.

And it’s an entirely different conversation.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

Why your best people leave (and what would make them stay)

You’ve built a great place to work. What more do they want?

With your bold purpose the company should inspire them. They should appreciate the stability, the freedom, the growth paths. They should see how many extra miles leadership goes to “create belonging.”

It’s super unfair, isn’t it? On paper, your team really should love working here.

Plus, in the end, it’s also a professional agreement.

Which it is. But professional agreements don’t override human nature.

The thing is, loyalty is not persuaded. It’s felt. It needs to resonate.

And yet, most companies do exactly that: they try to persuade people to stay. With ever more shoulds.

But how does resonance look like?

Patagonia is a great example. Their founder, Yvon Chouinard knew that if the surf is up, a surfer cannot focus on a spreadsheet. No matter how fair the salary is, their mind is out in the water.

That’s why he didn’t come with ever more good reasons why being in the company should be what employees want. Instead, he leaned into the reality of who his people actually were.

He wrote the policy that became a legend: “Let my people go surfing.”

He realized that if people can live the life they love, you don’t have to bargain for their attention. They would bring that energy back to the work. They would get the job done, not because they should, but because the work allowed them to be themselves.

Loyalty doesn’t follow should. It follows would.

Especially if you ask it like this: Why would they never want to work anywhere else?

That question isn’t answered by a checklist of everything your company does right. It requires understanding what kind of people your employees are.

But don’t get distracted by Patagonia’s mission of saving the planet. It draws people. But my point is independent of their mission: It draws the kind of people who would feel out of place anywhere else.

They wouldn’t want to work for a company with lower environmental standards.

Your people might be different. Maybe they wouldn’t want to work for a place with lower quality standards. Or with lower ambition. Or with lower pay.

It may not be your people, but these people are who they are and they stay where they don’t have to compromise.

Now, this is not about bending backwards. It’s about knowing who you’re unmistakably right for. The clearer you can articulate what kind of person will want to do their best work for you, the stronger you can resonate with them.

And when they come, they will likely stay.

Do you know who is the perfect fit for your company?
Why they wouldn’t want to work anywhere else?

And can you articulate it?

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

PS: My newest essay on “What the Best Leaders Say” digs much deeper on this and explores how to shift from “How do we keep them?” to “Who are we built for?” and why that single question changes the entire game.

The gold standard of influence

I’m sorry to have to inform you that persuasion is not the gold standard of influence. It’s evidence that your actual message is weak.

Because if it weren’t, why would you need to persuade?

I mean, I get the appeal. You can’t simply let the audience decide. That would feel like giving up control.

Persuasion promises control. Learn this or that psychological trick and people will bend to your will.

Until, of course, Mary and Joe learn the same tricks and now you are in an arms race for better manipulation tools. So, who’s in control now?

If everyone can access the same persuasion playbook, where is your advantage? Worse, the moment I realize you’re trying to persuade me, my defenses go up.

Resonance works differently because it’s a different premise: Instead of asking what my audience should do I figure out what they would (and what must be true for that to happen).

And then, I craft my message accordingly.

What do you think is more influential?

Tomorrow’s essay will break this down in actionable detail.

Keep lighting the path,
Michael

Posts in Tag: Empathy