Dr. Michael Gerharz, Autor auf The Art of Communicating

Kind of remarkable

The Blue Man Group is kind of remarkable. Actually, it’s two kinds of remarkable: “built in” and “on top”.

Built in remarkable is the way they play the drums. They are highly skilled to get fascinating sounds out of unusual musical items (mostly drums). It makes for a remarkable show that people speak about (read: “make remarks about”) long after.

I call it “built in” because there would be no show without these elements. You can’t make a drum music show without playing some kind of drums.

But there’s another remarkable component to the Blue Man Group, the kind that I call “on top” remarkable: the blue skin color. They could make the same show without the makeup. But they choose not to. It’s built on-top of the actual product to make it even more remarkable.

So remarkable, in fact, that you can’t speak about the Blue Man Group, without mentioning that they are, well, blue men.

And thus, just because it’s on top doesn’t mean that it’s not essential. In fact, the Blue Man Group came to be because the three founders drew the attention of MTV due to their blue masks. The blue faces helped spread the word much more easily. The group understood that there was no shortage of remarkable music shows but a shortage of blue men making remarkable music shows.

Here’s the best part: once established, on-top remarkable becomes something that others can’t copy. While there are a lot of great music shows, there is no second Blue Man Group (other than their own worldwide shows, of course).

What kind of remarkable is your product?

Status boosters

When you pass a new information along and when that information is in line with your reputation then the mere act of passing along can boost your status, e.g. …

You can be the first to know something, boosting your status as the person who always has the lastest info.

You can be the one who knows the research behind some finding, boosting your status as the person who others can trust.

You can be the one who knows the latest innovation, boosting your status as the one who knows all the cool stuff.

You can be the one who knows the latest gossip, boosting your status as the person who is well connected.

You can be the one who knows where to find the best deal, boosting your status as the clever trader.

You can be the one who knows a life hack, a path forward, a new idea, or many other different things … boosting your status in all sorts of different ways.

Aligning with this status boost is one of the most reliable ways to get others to pass our message along. What would it be for your message?

Opinionated leadership

Someone once told me that “there’s no prospering team that’s not led by a strong leader with strong opinions.” And, indeed, reality seems to prove this. Look around and you’ll see examples of strongly opinionated successful leaders everywhere: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, John Chambers, and many, many more …

Yet, strong opinion gets often confused with micro-managing – leaders who interfere with the tiniest decisions, leaving their teams with severe uncertainty about what’s the right thing to do.

What gets easily overlooked is that the opinions of great leaders are much rather related to the direction of their teams, not the decisions, to their vision, not the execution.

You hire great people precisely because they are the ones who know what to do. They don’t need you to tell them what to do – and even more important: they actually don‘t want you to.

It’s a major source of frustration for them when you do so constantly. It slows everything down when you become the bottleneck of decision making. (And on top of that it can quickly lead to a feeling of overwhelm for yourself). The worst part: Quite likely the best talent will sooner or later leave if they don’t get the freedom to make decisions.

This is why lighting the path is such a powerful approach. When everyone on the team aligns with a common goal, one that you as a leader made them see and agree on, it allows anyone to decide. If your team is focused towards a common goal, that goal simplifies decision making and empowers every team member to make decisions on behalf of the team. No need to micro-manage.

When you light the path for your team, you can trust them with making the decisions! Your opinions are better spent on the path rather than on how people walk the path.

The two kinds of suspense

There are two types of suspense: artificial and intrinsic.

Artificial suspense is what TV casting shows do to you right before an ad brake. They could tell you but don’t – because they know that as soon as they’ve told you, tension falls apart and you walk away (possibly disappointed because the reveal fell short of the promise).

Intrinsic suspense is the opposite. It’s what great stories do. They do tell you! Because that’s precisely why you want to know more.

Revealing the information opens up your curiosity as opposed to shutting it down. It’s much more the start of a new thread rather than the end of the previous one. Rather than walk away because you got what you wanted, it makes you stay because you want to know what happens next.

The same can be achieved with a great marketing story – when your story is so relevant that your audience absolutely needs to hear more about it.

It could e.g. be an eye opener … exactly what they wanted to hear … just what they’ve been looking for all along without even realising it themselves.

And so they beg you to tell them more: How does that work? What would it cost? What would we need to change? What are the requirements? Is there more to it? Can this be applied to other problems? When can we start?

If your product is that good, if it’s exactly the product your customers have been waiting for, then you can skip artificial suspense. You don’t need to hold the best part back. You can reveal it because it’s precisely the thing that makes them want to know more.

In essence, the relevant question to ask is not “How do you make your topic exciting?” but “Why is that crucially relevant for your audience?”

And if it isn’t … then, sure, you can reach for artificial suspense. But the better approach would be to work on relevance.

What’s hard about slogans?

It’s not really hard to come up with a great slogan that grabs someone’s attention.

What’s hard is to come up with a slogan that’s true to who you are and grabs the attention of those people you seek to serve.

The former problem requires some creativity. The latter requires empathy. The crucial difference? You can buy creativity. But you can’t buy empathy.

How cool is that?

“How cool is that? I can speak about my idea for 30 minutes and everyone’s going to listen? Wow! This is great. Let’s get to work. I want to make sure that this is going to be the best presentation we ever did.”

Well, sadly, this was a rather unusual way of looking at things. More realistically, reactions are often more like this:

“What? Thursday? Impossible! I still have to write that report plus a bunch of meetings. How long did you say? 30 minutes? Phew. Martin, you did a similar presentation the other day. Can you send it to me? Let’s see whether I can just wing it from there. Yes, Wednesday is fine. I won’t have time to prepare, anyway.”

Crazy, isn’t it? And yet, it’s the typical reaction.

But honestly: Where else do you get 30 minutes of exclusive attention from an entire audience other than with a presentation?

So, what are you going to do with it the next time this opportunity opens up for you?

Why people feel uncomfortable in public speaking

The most common reason for people to feel uncomfortable with their way of communicating is that they use words they don’t believe in.

For all sorts of reasons.

Some speak to professionally designed slides that look beautiful but are out of touch with their personality. The agency just didn’t get them and so it’s out of sync with what they really want to convey.

Others don’t really trust that their story resonates. They are unsure what really matters to their audience. Which translates to their body language so that their audience can’t find trust in their words, either.

Some tend to use an overly formal way of speaking because that’s supposed to be the professional way. It leads to stiff language that’s out of sync with how they feel.

Others lack a feeling of clarity so that they are unsure that their audience gets their point. The least sign of misunderstanding on someone’s face leads them to become even more nervous.

When you don’t really trust in the words you use to have the impact you seek, it shows. Training for better body language is one way to deal with it. But a very tedious one. (And often in vain.)

A much better approach is to take one step back and work on your story. Improve clarity. Work hard to find empathy. Find your own voice. And Brief your partners accordingly.

Finding a story that you trust in yourself so that you speak words you believe in about the things you deeply care about is the best way to feel more comfortable with the way you communicate.

So, the next time you feel uncomfortable speaking up, ask yourself whether you’re about to use words that you truly believe in. If not, work on the words first.

Embracing weaknesses

In school we learn that it’s best to have no weak spots.

In real life, however, it turns out that acknowledging our weak spots allow us to really let our strengths shine.

Here’s a great example from Transfer Wise (now know as Wise), an international money transfer service, who once published this customer experience on their site (emphasis mine):

“Great exchange rates, much better than the competition. The transfer could be a bit faster. For me it took five business days to get my funds.“

Being razor sharp about the fact that “fast” is a weak spot, Wise gains two things:

Simplified decision making. By focusing on one priority rather than juggling two (or more) priorities, they avoid the struggle to decide which of the two is the real priority for any given situation. “Cheap” is their top priority, not “fast”. Always. Whenever they face a choice between two services, one of which is quicker while the other is cheaper, the decision makes itself.

Clear positioning. By being upfront about their priority they filter their customers. If you care for fast, they might not be for you, but if you care for cheap, they clearly are.

Even more: By surfacing their weak spot, they reinforce their strong spot. They will compromise everything else for being the cheapest and they have no problem telling you so.

It’s about time to ditch the school approach to weaknesses.

Nobody’s perfect in a wider range of areas. Nobody can be.

Pretending to be is lying (in the worst case, even to yourself).

Acknowledging our weaknesses, even embracing them, allows us to let our strengths shine. When we can’t have it all, then setting a priority, doing it consciously, and being upfront about it, is – in my experience – a much healthier approach than trying to hide our weaknesses.

(And while we’re at it, why not stop associating “weaknesses” with failures.)

Inciting action

The beauty of books is that you can live other people’s lives. The beauty of dreams is that you can live a different version of your own life.

None is the life you actually live.

If you want to change that, you’ll have to take action.

This is the point where great stories deliver more than good stories.

They encourage – if not require – us to take action. Great stories don’t stop at just showing us a different life. They lead us to a point of no return. A point where we can’t unsee what the story made us see. A point where the desire to live that different life has grown tremendously – to a degree that it creates tension. Tension that can only be relieved if we take action.

I would love to hear which stories did that for you.

In the moment

The best camera is the one you have with you. For most of us that’s our phone, nowadays. I’m glad that these cameras are at a level that allows me to capture beautiful scenes like the ones below from our family trip. We took a few days off to relax, go for some walks, and enjoy just being in the moment.

Here are some impressions from that trip.