Enthusiasm Archive - The Art of Communicating

The appeal of the new

Recently, I visited a bookstore and overheard a conversation with a customer was hesitant to pick up a book by any author he hadn’t read before.

That reminded me of a person I know who avoids restaurants he hasn’t tried yet.

And another one who prefers to watch movies she already knows.

I think it’s a myth that people crave the new.

Some certainly do.

But most don’t.

They crave familiar.
They hate the risk that always comes with the new.

If you speak to an audience praising your innovation, keep this in mind.

You’re certainly excited by the new ideas, the breakthrough design, the fresh take.

But is that true for audience?

Are they eager to take the risk of the unknown?

Or do they need a little reassurance of the familiar, to see the things that haven’t changed, to be reminded of how that fits with what they already know?

It’s easy to get caught up in our own excitement for the innovation, but it’s just as important to give our audience a chance to catch up.

The next chapter

When leadership announces the script for the new year, you can often feel their excitement. The CEO bursts with pride and it’s fair to assume that they truly believe in that new script.

And justifiably so as it might really be a great script. You’d be thrilled, too.

But for the team, it can feel very different. They are still heavily consumed with wrapping up the conclusion of the current script and before they get proper appreciation for making it a hit, they are now expected to cheer leadership for writing the next hit.

Especially when it’s a reset or an entirely new script, this can feel incredibly frustrating for the team, creating a sense of instability and disregard for past efforts. When things are constantly shifting, it can disrupt the momentum and erode the sense of purpose and continuity, leaving team members feeling disconnected and undervalued.

But what if you viewed your journey not as a series of annual resets but as chapters in an ongoing story, building upon each year’s triumphs and trials?

That, in my experience, is a much more satisfying story for the team – and quite likely a more respectful one, too. This approach transforms the collective effort into a shared legacy, where each new year adds depth and meaning to our unfolding story.

The goal is to evolve together, blending past achievements with future aspirations, making every member feel like an integral part of this continuous narrative.

In your business, will the new year unfold as a standalone blockbuster, or as the latest episode in a hit series?

Fired up

Sometimes, the obvious needs to be stated: If you’re not passionate about what you do, how can your audience be? If the audience can’t see your enthusiasm, how would they fire up?

Are you passionate about the thing you do? Do you share your enthusiasm with your audience?

Faking authenticity

Authenticity is always in the eye of the beholder. When our audience experiences what we say to be in sync with how we say it, they perceive us as being authentic.

And it turns out that audiences are quite good at it. Humans are super good at pinpointing when something about the way a person speaks feels “not quite right”.

Often, it’s just subconscious. Few can actually pinpoint where this feeling comes from. But, the gut feeling is there. We have a good instinct when someone isn’t quite honest. Or when they don’t really believe in what they say themselves.

A lot of confusion stems from the assumption that we could easily fix that by working on our body language or improving our voice.

We can. But not easily.

Just look at all the bad acting on TV. This is by people who have worked hard for many years to learn the craft of acting. And they are still not at a level where we find them convincing.

Now, just imagine the level of “authenticity cheating” that you can achieve by taking a few lessons on body language or reading a couple of books on it.

It’s not going to work.

A much better approach than to work on appearing more authentic is to work on becoming authentic. And that doesn’t start with how you speak and move but with what you say.

Saying words we believe in about the things we believe in strips us from the need of faking it. It’s much better to work on the real thing than to try and fake it. Work on the story you tell and make sure that you believe it yourself. Not only that. Make sure that you’re totally committed to it.

Because then it’s not about faking it. But about amplifying what your body wants to do anyway. It’s not about doing things our body doesn’t want to do in order to appear as something we’re not. But about doing what’s right and working to reinforce it.

Authenticity starts with the story we tell.

The jumping CEO

A big difference between startups and established companies is how they speak about their product. Where in startups people show their pride openly, in established companies I often hear people humbly say: “That’s nothing special.”

And it might not be. If you work with that product every day. For years. Refining it in tiny steps.

Yet, while indeed none of these tiny steps might be anything special, together they have added up to something extraordinary – albeit to something that people take extraordinarily for granted.

To the company, the product may have become second nature. But to an outsider, it might still be and continue to be awesome.

In established companies, I often experience humility to a degree that they have almost become blind to their own brilliance. And this then permeates the entire communication, both internally and externally. Achievements are hidden – almost ashamedly – in the third bullet point of the third page.

The thing is this: If you don’t believe yourself that what you do is extraordinary, it shows. If you are not a fan of your own product, you won’t easily turn others into fans, either. And that’s the reason why you need to work so hard to convince others of the bullet points.

The solution to this is not for all of us to become the jumping CEO as pioneered by Steve Ballmer. We’ll leave that one for those who were born for it.

The solution is to take a look from the outside, from our audience’s perspective. To not take for granted what we see each and every day but look at it with fresh eyes. Because you might as well discover that that’s actually something to be proud of. It might just turn you into a fan of your own product in a way that seemed gone long ago.

Often, that’s the pivoting point in a coaching session. When leaders start seeing what’s actually extraordinary, they stop trying to decorate the diamond that is their product and start polishing it. No longer do they sell a product, but they become glowing advocates of an idea. They no longer look for fancy slogans, but simply explain and tell what they themselves believe in. Each of them in their own personal way, some of them the complete opposite of the jumping Ballmer.

Every single time, it’s breathtaking to witness the transformation that takes place in that moment of time.

Football is boring

… unless we root for a team. At which point a whole range of emotions kicks in: hope, joy, sadness, anger, …

When we don’t root for a team, it’s just 22 people running after a ball and trying to kick it into a goal. The same is true for any sports.

As long as we don’t root for a player, watching a Tennis match is among the most boring activities on earth. We must care for the outcome. Otherwise it’s just two people smashing a ball.

What’s the outcome that your audience cares for when you talk to them? Where is the player that they root for in your story? (Hint: It’s not you.) What makes it more than just a person reading off their slides?

Contagious behavior

His employees immediately knew when Martin was onto something. It showed in his eyes, his voice, and his gestures. Not that it was a big difference. I’m not even sure, outsiders would have noticed. But for anyone knowing him for an extended period of time, it was pretty clear that a full steam ride was ahead.

And it was contagious. The enthusiasm spread. Soon after, the whole team was going full steam. Exchanging ideas. Pushing forward. Challenging common sense. Pursuing new lines of thoughts.

What Martin regularly manages to achieve with his team is what happens when you yourself believe in what you do. When you say what you mean and mean what you say. His team totally trusted in his judgement because he wouldn’t bullshit. He didn’t use superficial motivational language. He just communicated his vision in a way that provided people with the confidence that this is going to work – just like it did last time … and the time before that.

How can your people tell whether you actually believe in what you say? How can they tell that this is going to be a full steam ride rather than one more of these fancy ideas? How do they know that you yourself are fully committed to it?

It pays to share these feelings with your team.

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