Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta and Leila. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial in your career growth and leadership development. Whether you're about to speak in public, make presentations at work,
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Pitch to investors or an entrepreneur looking to showcase your innovation to a wider audience, you'd be glad you joined us. By the end of this episode, log on to Apple and Spotify, leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on this podcast. Let's get communicating.
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Let's get communicating today with Dr. Michael Gerharz, who hails all the way from Germany and is a communication specialist and expert. He's here to talk to us about not persuading harder but actually resonating stronger, which is his motto. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Dr. Michael.
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Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Welcome to the show. How are things in Germany right now? Well, it's pretty nice outside actually. We have an extended summer here. It feels like that. So enjoying our time here. I'm sure you guys certainly appreciate that. So please tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm a communications coach and I help people find the right words basically. So if you're passionate about what you do, if you believe that the thing that you're working on has
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potential to have an impact to make the world a better place, then I'm helping you to find the words to make that actually happen. I do that for leaders across the globe, figure out how to find the right words when they're standing on the big stage in front of crowds, but also in personal conversations with employees, team, partners, investors. So basically anywhere where you'd need to make, turn your passion into their passion.
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When you were a young boy running around the streets in your town, did you think one day I want to teach people how to communicate? Not at all. When I was that boy, my dream was to become a pop star actually. Oh, hello. So when you took the detour and decided I'm not going the billboard direction, what made you go this direction? What, what got you started on this?
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I was actually then on the more academic route at first. I became a computer scientist, made my PhD in mobile communications. As you do in that field, well, we had lots of meetings and we were throwing ideas at each other at conferences, in meetings, in papers. And one of the things that always frustrated me was how many of those great ideas had been thrown into trash bin because they weren't communicated properly because...
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people couldn't get to the point, they couldn't make it interesting, they couldn't spark the enthusiasm that they felt themselves into their audience and into in the team. And I always found that a bit disappointing, right? I mean, there's so many passion that doesn't get the impact that it deserves. So I started to look for a better way, started reading blocks and books and went to one or two seminars and then started writing about what I learned, elaborating that.
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that writing, it seemed to resonate with people and they reached out to me and well more and more wanted to ask for my services and helping them make that better way of presenting reality. And that's how I changed lanes eventually. You started in software engineering and tech and I worked in engineering, but more the civil, the roads. My engineering background is the reason I started this podcast because I made this observation that
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It's not the smartest engineer who gets to be promoted and lead the team and become the divisional director, but ones who speak more. Because at university, usually you will learn the technical skill, but nobody's going to add those extra things, no? Yeah, exactly. There's no place where you actually learn those skills. You don't learn them, at least not properly in school. You don't learn them at the university. In fact,
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Lots of what you learn there is quite of the opposite of what gets you the promotion later on and the impact later on, because for many of the professors, teaching is just the boring part of their job, where they're more interested in doing the research, but not so much in doing the teaching. So they're not as invested as they could be, or as the students would deserve. And so you don't really learn how to do that in university, at least in most places. There are notable exceptions there probably.
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And then in the job, it's just the same. You're the junior there, and you're not gonna tell your seniors that their presentations are somehow not working, right? And so you're just- None of you don't wanna lose your job. Yeah, and so you're just aligning with how it's always been done there, which is often not the most effective way of getting your point across. But then again, of course you're right. I mean, there are those people who probably are more talented or-
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had the luck of having a mentor who showed them how to do it in a more appropriate way, in a more impactful way, they're going to have advantages in getting their points across and getting yes to their ideas. You bring up a good point with the university lectures, which I don't think we've actually ever discussed. If that's all you've been exposed to as a presentation, what about your classes?
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then you got your first job and your boss says go and make a presentation. I think that's why people present the way they do at first. They're like the university lecturers. Yeah, that happens. And that makes me sad actually a little bit when I see the amount of knowledge and wisdom and insights that's generated at universities and in the research projects that you do at the university and not nearly enough value is put into how
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to get that out again. So how to convey what you've learned to the general public or at least to those who your research has an impact on, right? So then that leads to what you just sketch that. Well, yeah, you're just doing what you see your professor doing or the others in your work group doing, who never learned it themselves. It's not that they hold something back or that they wouldn't tell you the whole truth. It's not their fault, no. It's that they don't know better themselves. Right.
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And then as you said, so they have all this research, all this wealth of knowledge that they should be giving to us, which we then sort of accuse engineers of saying, when you make a presentation and we are not technical, we don't know what you're talking about, then they don't know how to translate it. Like you said, the idea goes to the trash because they don't know how to translate it to layman's terms so we can understand what they're talking about. What the investors can understand as well.
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because you're too technical, which then goes back to our earlier point, which is, that's how your lecture I was presenting. This is one problem. The other problem is that you're surrounded by experts all the time, right? If you're working at the university, for example, doing your PhD, it's because you're passionate about the thing that you do. You're going to work a lot in the lab, and you're going to be surrounded by people who are as passionate about that thing as you are.
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But of course, when you're surrounded by those people, you're going to use the language that's used by experts. So you're only ever exposed to expert language. And then there's that phenomenon of the curse of knowledge that the more we know about something, the harder it gets to speak about that thing in simple terms, right? And we never have that mirror of layman or audiences who are not as expert as we are, who mirror to us and give the feedback that, well,
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I don't even get a point of what you say. I don't get you to understand a word. What does that even mean, R-A-M, or all these acronyms that scientists obsess about? And if I don't understand it, how would I think it's gonna benefit me and why should I buy your product? Exactly. And therefore then how do these engineers with all this expert lingo they've been surrounded by and studied, how do they then make the transition when they make a presentation in order for...
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all the audiences to connect and resonate with what they're saying. Well, there might be a couple of things that you can do with the low hanging fruits, right? And so one of the things that you could easily do that are within reach for everyone is to, well, just speak with your friends about the thing that you spend your day on, right? Try to explain them what you do and then look at their blank stares when they don't get a word and do something with that, because that blank stare is not an insult. It's just
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feedback that helps you find better words. Something that you don't get so easily when you're standing on a big stage for the first time, are nervous and don't know who to look at in the audience. But in a conversation with a friend, you can do that. And you do find better words. If they will...
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reply to you that they don't get it, get what you mean, you will look for better ways for another metaphor, for an anecdote, for an analogy that you could use to explain what you were trying to get across. And then take those, note them and apply them to your presentations and use them there. Because one thing that you shouldn't be afraid of is that you would dump it down, that it would be too simplistic. It is not. If you find simple words,
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to explain complex topics that's worth way more than the other way around, finding complex words to say simple things, right? In a way, we don't blame people. I mean, if you've spent years doing your studies, your PhD, you want us to realize that you've studied something that is expert in that field. So that's why the inclusion, right?
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Because if you spoke in simple terms like everybody, like, Dr. Michael really have a PhD. So we are hypocritical in a sense as well with that. But yes, if we don't understand what you are saying, we won't see how it benefits us and therefore we won't be interested. And you bring up a good point to say, test it with those close to you and see there, they'll give you honest feedback.
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Because if there are 500 of us, we're just going to sit there quietly and think, I have no idea what he's saying. I can't wait for him to be done. Yeah. You raise a valid point there with that fear of, is that even worth a PhD if it's as simple as that? But here's the thing, and here's the twist that might help you appreciate the perspective. Because when you think about that, what makes people think that you are smart is when you make them feel smart.
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when you make them understand something that they couldn't understand before. And they would project that upon you. So they will attribute that increase in their knowledge to you. And so if you manage to break down the brilliance of your research, even if it's the most complex thing in the world, when you find simple words that allow them into that world, it makes them feel smarter and that will project back on you.
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Is that where the resonate part comes in? That's your motto? Well, of course there's a lot of nuance to that, but that's a huge part of it, that you understand that when you present, it's not about you, not a second of your presentation, of your time that you speak is about you. It's always about the audience. All your brilliance is of no use if they don't get it, right? And that you need to take them to places they haven't been before, but because if you don't,
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What use is it to waste all of the audiences and yourself's time in speaking about those things? So it's never about you, it's always about where can you lead your audience to? And if you do that, if you take that posture, you've taken the most important, the first and most important step to, and that is by starting to look from their perspective. Where are they coming from? What do they know? And how can I bridge the gap from what they do know now to what I need them to see?
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And if you look from that perspective, things look very different than when you start from your own perspective and think, well, here's everything I know and I just throwing through everything at you because I'm so brilliant and you need to figure it out somehow. Mm-hmm, make your audience feel smarter. And in taking them through that journey, how can you incorporate storytelling while also trying to make people realize that, hey, you're an expert in this?
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I think common misconception here is that simplicity would be the opposite of complexity. I think it's not. I think simplicity is much more like the entrance, the entry point to complexity. It's through simplicity that we open up our audience's minds for the complexity. It's through simplicity that we make the complex accessible for them and also to our own thinking.
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So if we manage to spark their curiosity, to make them interested by finding simple explanations, for example, using storytelling or anecdotes or metaphors, once we manage to spark their interest, that's the point where we can dig deeper, where we can take them in down, deep down into that rabbit hole and explore what else there's to see and to find. When you started writing blogs,
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and you were talking about this, when people came to you or reached out and said, Dr. Michael, I read your blog and this is what I liked and this is what I need help with. What were some of the common requests from that? Well, one of the things that practically everyone struggles with, engineers for sure, researchers for sure, but also CEOs and entrepreneurs, the kind of people that I worked with today is that,
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If you are passionate about what you do, if you deeply believe in what you do, and you spend all your day into making the world a better place, part of the reason that you're so good at what you do is that you care for the details, that you sweat the details and go all the way to figuring those out. But when you're standing in front of an audience or writing a post or writing even a tweet, there's no room and no time for explaining all those details. So you need to somehow cut it down.
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get to the point, to a point that has the chance of getting through to your audience, of sparking their interest. That takes courage and it's kind of hard for a lot of people who care for what they do to just find the courage and cut to the core. And being able to do that and finding out what's the really essential thing here, the thing that my audience absolutely needs to see here, finding the courage to cut to that is one of the hardest things that I experienced in my work.
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If you want to pitch to investors for funding, you want them to see that you're an expert, but remember, they are not engineers, at least some of them. How do you craft a pitch that will appeal to them to say, he's an expert in this. So whatever he's trying to do, he knows how to create it because he's an expert. But at the same time, we don't understand what
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this is going to do and if the market is going to be receptive to it because we don't understand it. So how do you blend these two worlds? Yeah, excellent, excellent question actually, because that's a common phenomenon, right? That when we show up for funding or the same is true for startups who look for funding and investors, one of their concerns is that they believe in what they do and they are really expert in what they do and they've built that beautiful, that great product or they've come up with that.
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elaborate theory about how this or that works. We want to be appreciated for that, that the others see our brilliance and get our brilliance, right? I think the most important step is to understand that that's not the point, that no one cares about how brilliant you are. If you're looking for funding, it's about how brilliant the investors are, right, to fund you.
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and making them feel brilliant in investing into that project. And if that takes proving your own brilliance, then be it. Then show them all you've got and show them how you can juggle those equations or those complex jargon terms. But it's not the point. It's just to create the trust that's needed for them. But the point really is in funding, is that you understand why are those people funding you.
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What's in it for them, right? What is their motivation to fund you? It might be to make a profit, if it's from the industry, it might be to make the world a better place, if it's to cure a disease or something like that. But to understand that point and to give them a good feeling of that the money is well spent on you because you care for the same things as they do, or you care for the thing that you do.
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delivers on that why of the funders. And you know what you're doing, then that is all that they need to know. They don't need to see how brilliant you are, just that you're smart enough to take good care of their money and bring it to good impact. And then when it comes to communicating, we talk about the pause. Why is the pause important? If we're communicating about our passion project, for example, one of the most common concerns of people
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get our points across, to get them to see the full picture, the whole thing. If you're not communicating for that, but to make an impact for them to actually get it, there needs to be some space for them to actually be able to digest that. So if we're constantly shooting information at them, giving them no breathing room, there's first of all, the risk of overwhelming them. And then there's another risk of, because usually we're communicating to smart people.
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Yes. And one of the things that smart people hate is if you figure out everything for them. Smart people want to feel smart. And to be able to figure something out, they need the time and space to actually be able to do that. If you don't skip even a single beat and take just a second for them to think your argument through, there's no space for them to figure things out. And so you're missing out on impact there. Mm.
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know what that reminds me the point you just made you know how sometimes in a movie there will be a scene and they want to give the whole conclusion of that particular scene and then they jump into a different scene which leaves you wondering huh I wonder how that scene is gonna end and then maybe sometimes they even put it towards the end of the movie it's like they don't want to just spoon feed you everything right from the get-go.
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Yeah, and that is about the worst. Yeah, that's a great example because screenwriters and directors understand that. That the worst thing that you can do to a movie audience is to give the whole story away too early, to reveal how it all ends too early. So 15 minutes into the movie, you already know that they're gonna fall in love or who's going to be the murderer or something, then you're not gonna be interested. Something that screenwriters
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know and are masterful at is that they know how to work with their audience's curiosity, that they spark their interest and then they keep you hooked because they understand what's going on in your mind. What's the next question that's on your mind? They make you curious for a piece of information before they give it to you and that is something that you can easily take and translate to your presentations and to your communication. Make sure that your audience
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is curious to get a piece of information before you give it to them. Let them figure it out. Like you said, smart people, they want to at least figure some things out. And would you say the pause as well helps you if you read your audience, you can even take your presentation in a bit of a different direction than originally planned because you can sort of gauge their reaction if you say something or if you
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did something and they responded in a certain way. Or do you just, I've prepared this, this is my speech. Let me do it this way. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the mode that beginners use and well, it's about just getting through, right? But when you're more used to giving presentations, when you feel more comfortable doing that, of course, then you try to work with the audience. And I tend to believe that the most satisfying
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presentations are those that feel like you're kind of in a conversation, right? That they don't even feel like someone's talking alone, talking to you, but that you feel like he's having a conversation with you. He just happens to be the person who's doing most of the talking. But still, it feels like there's kind of a dialogue happening here. Speaking of conversation so far, and please give me honest feedback. I'm not going to hold it against you. So far in
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this, we call it a podcast interview, has it felt like an interview or a conversation? I'd say it's kind of in between. Okay. Because you've done mostly the questioning and I've done the answering. So certainly the interview part, but it's certainly a more elaborate interview in the sense that well, you work with the answers and lead it to places where they are meaningful. So it's not just a prepared set of questions, right? It's
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No, I don't think we even agreed on what questions I was going to ask. Yeah. Exactly. It's just, well, we start someplace and then we look where the conversation goes. And that's why it feels, although it is formally an interview, it feels more like a conversation. Right. Thank you for that honest feedback. And the reason I asked the question is because, you know, sometimes you're asked to give a keynote. And then when you arrive at the venue, they will say, oh, Dr. Michael, I know we asked you to speak for 45 minutes, but we're running behind schedule.
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We only keep it to 15 for you. Then what do you do? Then I'm glad that I know what my point is, right? That I didn't start preparing my slides and didn't think of my keynote as being a bunch of PowerPoint slides, but that I started by asking, so who's in the audience? Why did they ask me to give that keynote? Where are they coming from? What are they hoping to get out of that? I'm going to be glad that I...
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stuck to one key message that what I like to call the pass along phrase. So when I'm done talking, what's the one thing that they're going to pass along once they get home and their spouse asks them? So what was that keynote about that you've been to today? When you start from that place and then figure out, so how do I bridge that gap from where they are coming from to that pass along phrase? You're not thinking into 50 facts or 30 slides that I need to go through.
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but a journey that I need to take them on. If I plan it like that, I'm able to give my speech in like 30 seconds, three minutes, 15 minutes, or even three hours, if you'd like. Because I know the journey and at every point of the journey, I can dig deeper, but I don't have to. Which is the same principle you can apply. Some investor meetings say one minute, 10 minutes, one hour, whole day, they're all different.
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So if you know everything, you can package it according to, okay, this one is only highlights. This one is the details. This one is, you know, they want to know this much about it. Exactly. The point is the facts and the details are never the problem. I mean, you're probably the most expert person on the planet on your field. So who's gonna tell you what's accurate or not? You're gonna have the details readily available. What's the problem most often is to...
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those details into a compelling storyline. But once you have that, and if it makes sense to you, so if you have that story that feels true to yourself and feels true to your topic, then you're gonna have the details and the facts and the figures readily available, right? And you just need to put them in. I mean, of course that takes a bit of practice, but well, that's probably your least concern if you're really passionate about what you do.
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Absolutely. Yes. So you're a fellow podcaster. Please tell us about the Irresistible Communication podcast. That's kind of the opposite of this podcast. It's just a very concise piece of thinking. It's just two minutes long. It's published twice a week, two minutes. Just a very short snippet onto one very specific thought that I think might be valuable to your communication.
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get you thinking, get you reflecting on what you, how you approach communication and probably leave the podcast, getting into your day or probably your next meeting, reflecting on those things and well, noticing those and in the long-term probably even changing one thing or two. I like that actually, because I remember when I started I used to do some solo episodes. So I didn't have interviews, conversations like this. And I think one of them was like an eight minute story.
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of an experience I had with my baby brother, or I'll make one for like 10 minutes. And people still like it, because sometimes we think, oh, it should be an hour long like Joe Rogan. People actually like the short form because they just get, like you said, the snippet that they need for that day, and they go and practice that. Yeah, I think the beauty of that podcasting world is that there's something in it for everyone. And we have plenty of long form podcasts.
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We have plenty of interview forum podcasts. We have not so much of those short form pieces. And I thought that was the piece that I could contribute that probably would be valuable to one person or the other. Certainly is, I'm sure. And I'm gonna put its details on the show notes. And please tell us about your book, The Aha Effect, where you mentioned that there are selfish communicators, Dr. Fico. Yeah, there are.
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especially in the corporate world, of course, where it's a lot about sales and marketing, but also in the scientific community, where it's about being right at times where it should be about getting it right or where it's about status more than it should be. And if you're approaching communication or presentations from that perspective, you're obviously concerned with what I call the wow effect, right?
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putting on a great show, putting the spotlight on yourself, making people see how brilliant you are, how great the product is, how awesome that theory is. While I tend to think that that's not the point because what use is it if your audience says, what a great show it's been, when what you actually want them to say is, well, what a great idea that is, what an awesome product that is. And so I think that the wow effect is only gets the only halfway there. You need to take them to all the way to a profound aha moment.
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Wow might open the mind, aha is what eventually changes the mind. It certainly does. And as you said, if they have the aha, that's the pasalong phrase instead of, oh, that was a great show. It looks like theater. Okay, let's go home. And they forget about it. Exactly. You want them to leave with a profound insight with something that they could tell about the show other than that your dress was beautiful, right? Or that your words were felt so eloquent or something.
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You want them to really appreciate the idea and taking that idea and telling their friends about that so that they can tell their friends. Right. Is there anything I haven't asked you today that you are hoping to share with our listeners? I could talk about that topic for days probably without me getting bored.
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That's how passionate you are about the subject. I love it. Exactly. Not sure whether that's the best question to ask me, but well, if there's anything that I could probably add is that, well, if you're passionate about what you do, what uses your passion if it doesn't get the impact that it deserves, right? If you're passionate about what you do, part of your job is getting the word out there because if you don't care about that, you can't delegate that. If you don't care about that,
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chances are no one cares about it. And so getting communication right and getting the word, finding the words that make others appreciate what you do, see what you see, make them as passionate about that as you are is just part of the job. And you shouldn't leave the fields to all of those slick salespeople who know how to do that better than you, but have the inferior solution or the inferior ideas, just...
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take ownership of that, figure out how to get the word across and make the impact that your idea deserves. Certainly make the impact. Words of wisdom from Dr. Michael Gerharz, all the way from Germany, who is a communication specialist and expert. I had a really great time and I could really draw from your passion about the subject of communication today. Thank you so much for being on our show, Dr. Michael. Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. My pleasure.
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And before you go, where can we find you for more information after this? Well, the easiest way would be on my website. It's Michael Gerharz. That's G E R H A R Z one word, Michael Gerharz.com, where you find all the things that we mentioned, like the blog, the podcast, the leaders, like the path manifesto, and of course, you can also find me on the usual social media, like on LinkedIn, please feel free to connect or on Instagram. Okay. So Michael Gerhards.com.
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By the way, in America, they say Z instead of Z. I'm South African, so I also say Z. They say Z on this side of the Atlantic. Yeah, I know. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating podcast once again. The Speaking and Communicating podcast is part of the Be Podcast network, where there are many other podcasts that support you in being a better leader and becoming the change you want to see.
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To learn more about the Bee Podcast Network, go to beeepodcastnetwork.com. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.