Transcript
Speaker: on zencaster Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseed and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Speaker: I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseed. Today, my guest independent mind is Dr. Michael Gerharts. Michael is the author of The A-ha Effect,
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Speaker: Very importantly, in the independent minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, my guest independent mind is Dr. Michael Gerharts.
Speaker: Michael is the author of the Leaders Light the Path Manifesto. He writes a daily blog on the art of communicating, which has over 900 articles, and hosts the Irresistible Communication podcast.
Speaker: In his book, The A-ha Effect, Michael describes a decisive shift away from the default mode of the selfish communicators who care mostly about themselves.
Speaker: In this episode of The Independent Minds, we will be exploring what that means. Today, Michael joins me from Kloon in Germany. I've worked in Germany several times, but never in Kloon.
Speaker: When I visit Germany or anywhere else, I always book my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club. It is where I get trade prices on flights and hotels. You'll find a link and membership discount code in the description.
Speaker: Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds. Hello, Michael. Hello, Michael. Good to see you. It's always strange for me when when I say hello, Michael, to someone else and then they say hello, Michael.
Speaker: It's just one of those strange things. But thank you very much for joining me today. It's great to have you here. Looking forward to hearing about the AHA effect. But before we do that, please could you start by telling us a little bit about you and what led you eventually to write the AHA effect?
Speaker: I help leaders find the right words. People who have a story to tell, a story that has the potential to change the word. I help those people find words that make that happen.
Speaker: The reason I do that is, well, basically out of sheer frustration back from the time when I was still um doing research in the field of mobile communication. So that's where my PhD is from.
Speaker: I'm actually a computer scientist, or i used to be one some 16, 17 years back. I got totally frustrated about all these great ideas that have been thrown into a trash bin because they weren't communicated properly.
Speaker: I've been to conferences where 100 brilliant people were listening to a brilliant um guy presenting or speaking about a brilliant idea in a totally confusing manner so that that idea couldn't have a chance to make an impact.
Speaker: um And I sat in meetings where ideas when to die because no one was paying attention due to the nature of those boring ah presentations and the way that these meetings are run through and through agendas rather than propel ideas and and start to make a ruckus.
Speaker: And i was i was just frustrated with that and it started looking left and right and started reading blogs, went one or two workshops and started to do things differently and started to write a German blog back then And that's how I got into, well, a very different kind of communication, which is the human to human communication about of getting ideas that you care about, that you're passionate about into the the minds of your audiences to make them ideally as passionate as you are.
Speaker: It turns out there's that there's a much better way than the one that I observed back in those conferences. Yeah, I think there are probably a lot of people listening to this who will be saying, I've been in those presentations, I've been in those meetings, I've sat through presentations where ah I've had to focus on staying awake because the way in which the presentation was delivered.
Speaker: where the idea gets lost in the the poor presentation, the badly presented slides. And so I'm sure there are lots of people who've had exactly the same type of experience that you've been describing there.
Speaker: So how did that lead to yeah this book, yeah The AHA Effect? but to Or The AHA Effect? but but's Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker: Yeah, the the thing that I noticed is that the path that a lot of those people who were as frustrated as I was took was that they were looking kind of at the other end of the spectrum into what i I would like, what I would call the wow effect.
Speaker: um So ah thinking about how to make it not boring, but exciting, how to, in the extreme case, put on a great show. um But most of the advice that you find on doing that is actually focused very much on that wow effect.
Speaker: um But I always think ask myself, so what use is if your audience, after your presentation, if your audience comes up to you to cheer for you and applaud you and say, what a great show, what a great presentation it's been,
Speaker: when what you actually want them to cheer about is your idea. um So, and that led me to to the thought that, well, in a way, the wow effect is always only leading you halfway there.
Speaker: The wow might be what opens the mind, but what gets not enough talked about is what happens after you've opened their mind. So how to change their minds. And for that to happen, I believe that you need to take them much further than to wow them, to put on a great show.
Speaker: It's to take them all the way to a profound aha moment. Something that really makes a difference in the way they look at the world or your field or at least your topic, the thing that you're speaking about.
Speaker: So how do you go how do you not ah only open their attention, but once you have that attention, what do you do with it to lead them to that point of no return where they really see the world differently in a way that they can't unsee it anymore?
Speaker: And so it's like the wow effect is that moment where people go, this is worth listening to, this is interesting. And that's where a lot of people doing presentations of ideas stop What you're talking about with the aha effect is like that aha moment, that moment like, I get it.
Speaker: It's no longer just ah wow, this is interesting. It's, I get it. You need the people to be thinking to themselves, I get the sense, the logic of what you are presenting.
Speaker: This I am on board with. Yeah, in ah in a way you could say that that the aha moment happens
Speaker: or the aha effect happens at the moment where both fall together, whether where where the emotional side and the rational side agrees, where the brain says that makes sense and your emotions say, yeah, well, I feel it. And um so where both of those fall together and and really make for a holistic realization that this is the way forward.
Speaker: It reminds me of doing a presentation in North America, in Canada, ah working in a high-tech organization. And all these ah HR people who got together for a conference.
Speaker: And had my presentation to Other people had their presentations to do. it was like a PowerPoint slides, PowerPoint slides, PowerPoint slides. I got up and did a little bit of a ah show with it. You know, this is the slide and I'll do, you know, make it a little bit more fun.
Speaker: but I got a lot of attention. i got ah everybody was watching me. You I got that wow moment, that wow effect. And then afterwards, someone came up to me and said, very interesting presentation, Michael.
Speaker: Lots of show, but not a lot of substance. And he was right, because I'd focused on just getting the people's attention, getting people to like me, from because I'd done a presentation that was entertaining, rather than actually dealing with the issue. So nobody bought into the idea, it was just that was an interesting presentation, but there was no moment of,
Speaker: ah so so there was no aha effect within the presentation. And the way in which you describe it makes me think that in order to gain the aha effect, you've almost got to answer the question that everyone in the audience is asking themselves, which is like, what's in it for me?
Speaker: And when you presented all the facts and you've given, the like you said, the logic, And then you've also went over the emotion. You've answered that question of that. Yeah, it makes sense for the business. It makes sense for our organization, but it also makes sense for me.
Speaker: I can see what is in the proposal for me, for my department, for my team, all those sorts of things. You're you're dealing with both sides of the coin, the emotional and the rational in order to get people to buy into and see what is what they need to do, I suppose.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, um and and that's actually the most important shift that happens here is that you need to look from the audience's perspective. So many presenters on either sides of the spectrum, the the super boring, but also the all show no substance um side of the spectrum.
Speaker: and They're mostly concerned with themselves. that That's what I meant with selfish, um what you said in the introduction about my book. They're mostly concerned about, well, themselves, about themselves.
Speaker: having the audience appreciate the brilliance of their idea or even getting to and to standing ovation and sort of make the audience get what's so brilliant about the idea. The difference when you start to think about the aha effect is that you switch that around.
Speaker: You're not concerned anymore with them cheering for you. You're much more cheering for them. You're thinking about What's the impact of what of that idea for my audience? In what way does it change their world?
Speaker: In what way does it challenge their thinking? ah Which paths open up for them through the i through that idea that I'm presenting here? You can only do that if you empathize with them, if you try to understand where they are coming from.
Speaker: what they struggle with, what they aspire to. And once you do that, you can identify the gap that's there between how they see the world now and how they how they could see the world with your idea in it.
Speaker: And once you see that gap, you can think about how to bridge that gap. um But you're not doing it in order to have them cheer for the brilliance of their that idea.
Speaker: but ah having them appreciate how they can do so much better with the idea in their world. Because it opens up new paths, it opens up a new way of thinking, it solves a problem that they have, it might might um help them achieve a desire that they have.
Speaker: So what is that thing? In what way does your idea impact their world and the way that they live their lives. And once you take that perspective, you're approach you're going to approach your presentation from a very different point of view.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. It's thinking much more about your audience than putting on a show. What is it that they need to hear to or ah need to see in order to help them solve their problem?
Speaker: This is what you mean when you say that presenters need to stop trying to persuade and need to focus on starting to resonate with their audience.
Speaker: And that resonation is is where you're both on the same wavelength. There is no conflict between what but you as the presenter it are presenting, saying and showing, and the way in which the person, the audience members, are receiving that information and You're creating a ah shared mindset around the idea, around the solution, around how it will be put into action rather than... yeah exactly. Persuading, trying to persuade people. You framed it perfectly when you said that you make them see something.
Speaker: um And that that's... that's um That's the key. um You make them see something. You don't force your opinion or your way of looking at things onto them, but you help them see something that you have already seen.
Speaker: um And the thing with persuasion is that in a way you've made a decision for them. You've decided that the way that I look at things is the correct way, is the right way.
Speaker: And the difference to resonating with them is that you don't leave that you don't take that you don't make that um decision for them. You leave that decision for them to make. You just make them see a new way of looking at things, a new truth, sir so to speak.
Speaker: And when you do that,
Speaker: ah eloquently and you actually lead them to that point of no return where they cannot see that anymore, but sorry, where they cannot unsee that anymore, um then they will have to make that decision in full sight of that kind of new perspective.
Speaker: And they will have to make a decision with that truth in it. um and But you don't make it for them. And the thing is, when you resonate with what matters to them, when the the words that you use um speak to their struggles and speak to their aspirations,
Speaker: then they will likely make the decision that that's in their best interest, but also in yours, because you've aligned your interests in a way that makes sense, not only for you, not only for them, but actually for both of you.
Speaker: Yes, it's about, I think, my understanding would be that once you've achieved that degree of resonance, where you and your audience resonate, that means that you are seeing things from the same perspective.
Speaker: The decision that your audience will make is more likely to be the decision that you, as a presenter, want them to make because you have achieved that resonance of of the thinking around the issue it's about thinking like them almost before they think like them understanding your audience rather than just telling your audience you Exactly. that That's the the difference between good and great communicators.
Speaker: Good communicators are good at making their audience get them, to get what they speak about. But great communicators take that even a step further. They start with getting their audience. They get the audience first.
Speaker: And then they use the audience's language to speak about their ideas. So they get the audience and then they speak about what they see in a way that helps the audience see it too.
Speaker: And ideally that even leads to, I think the most profound ah high effects are, it are even the ones that you could call an of course effect where, where the audience goes, yeah, of course, it's gotta be that way. Of course it's that, how could I not have thought about that myself previously?
Speaker: Oh, that really is, yeah, yeah it's so i'm So I'm having one of those aha effects at the moment, listening to you and understanding and think, well, listening to you and thinking about the various different presentations that I have done over many years.
Speaker: And then also thinking about the presentations that I'm going to be doing over the next couple of weeks and thinking about, Yes, this is exactly why that particular presentation in the past didn't quite work.
Speaker: And this is what I've got to do for the presentations in the next couple of weeks to make sure that they do work. It is thinking about where the audience are, what their perceptions of the situation is, what I need to give them as information, facts that they they must hear, but presenting them those facts, the information that is important for people to know and to understand in ways that they the audience will
Speaker: see as well will agree with me that they need to know they need to understand what i'm going to tell them and once that has happened then yeah we'll have a degree of resonance but i won't need to persuade them about the next course of action the the the things that i want them to do it should be much more of a discussion around what we are going to do together but in a presentation that discussion is much more me presenting information where if i look into the audience which is something i never really do don't look at your audience when you're doing in a presentation and everything but yes you've got to look at the audience and you need to see the the little heads nodding
Speaker: from what you are saying, that is would be one of the signs that you but you are achieving that aha effect in the way in which you're presenting. Yeah.
Speaker: Exactly. And that that's in a way where the the term lighting the path comes from, and the title of my manifesto, that that that you don't tell them what to do. You you light them the path, a path that hopefully makes sense for them, that even makes them go, of course, that's my path.
Speaker: you but But you don't tell them how to walk that path. You you light them the path in a way that that it makes sense for them. um And then if it's the right path for them, they will wholeheartedly and with full conviction go that go down that path.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. And they will then light your path as well. they will They will go down the path that you have illuminated for them. And then they're likely to turn the spotlight onto you as the person who helped them achieve the success that they have done as a result of what you enabled them to do.
Speaker: It's... eight Exactly. I'm so glad that you that you ah brought brought that up. this is This is one of my favorite topics because, well, so so many people are concerned with getting seen and getting others to pay attention to them.
Speaker: um But actually, when we think about it, it's the it works the other way around. ah When we pay attention to them and we notice the others and hear them and see them and understand what they need and help them achieve some things.
Speaker: So if we pay attention to them, that's when they start paying attention to us. It's not the shouting and the bragging about our brilliance that gets us their attention. It's when we pay attention to them and cheer for their brilliance that gets us their attention.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Because I think people don't want to hang around with a show off, but they want to hang around with people who enabled them to show what they can do.
Speaker: Given the right information, given the right support, that person is someone that I want to be associated with. That person is someone who's helping me. When someone says, well, you've done a great job.
Speaker: It's, I learned how to do it from that person.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Michael, it's a really interesting topic and you know presentations are one of those things that you people really get nervous and worried about.
Speaker: And yet, because communication is such an important part of working and having a successful career, regardless of how you describe success, We are all at some point another going to have to do a presentation to people about the work that we're doing or the work that we need other people to do.
Speaker: having a structure like this, the aha effect and that approach to doing a presentation, I think should make doing that presentation an awful lot easier, an awful lot easier.
Speaker: It's like you say, so when you're doing something that matters, when it matters to you, when it matters to them, when you can see the situation from their perspective, when you've got all of that, finding the right words that make the difference,
Speaker: isn't that difficult.
Speaker: Yeah, it shouldn't be. Yeah, it' it's about it's about really listening to them. and And the interesting bit is that, i mean, you mentioned nervousness, is that um in my experience and in in my work with with with clients, I often experience that this turnaround is actually what what reduces their stress and the nervousness um and the the fear of presentations a lot. Because once you step off that hero's pedestal, once you stop trying to put on a great show and just try to be helpful, it's a totally different game.
Speaker: You're not trying to make them make them see how brilliant you are. You're just cheering for their brilliance. And that's a much easier game to play than trying to be the show off.
Speaker: Yes, very much so. That's a very good way to sum it up and ah good thought, good advice to to bring what has been a really interesting episode of The Independent Minds to a conclusion.
Speaker: It has flown by, Michael, really has flown by. But then very often when dealing with a subject which is is very interesting, and like like I say, I can see now why presentations that I have done in the past have gone well, extremely well in many cases, and why those few, just a few, haven't gone quite as well as I wanted them to.
Speaker: And it all makes sense. And I am now um better equipped to deal with the more difficult presentations that I'm going to have to do in the future. So yeah thank you very much for spending spending time with me and explaining the AHA effect.
Speaker: Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thanks. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Dr. Michael Gerhatz.
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Speaker: Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening, and goodbye.
