Leaders Should Get It Right Instead of Trying To Be Right. Dr. Michael Gerharz, Leaders Light The Path

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Your positive imprint.

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Today's guest.

Dr.

Michael Gerharz was raised in Germany.

His mentor was a teacher that he had who evaluated his writing and

communication skills with precision.

And he found that clarity in his words made the the difference for

him in getting his messages heard.

He learned the art of communicating.

Earning his doctorate from the University of Bonn, Germany, Dr.

Gerharz moved into the world of executive coaching where he works with people

wanting to change the world and helps them create slogans and the right words.

Dr.

Michael Gerharz can help you light the path by creating messages that

incite action and create movement.

Get inspired, identify your own voice and identify your own

positive imprint and become active.

I know it's hard sometimes.

And let me share a quote with you from the Greek philosopher Democritus.

He said this around 485 BC.

Very simply said.

"Speech is the shadow of action".

Well, my guest today says the same thing and here are Dr.

Michael Gerharz's words.

"When using words to help make change more WOW won't help.

The WOW only makes your audience cheer louder with YAY.

What a great show.

But to make change happen, you want your audience to shout,

oh, what a great idea."

Dr.

Michael, Gerharz welcome to the show.

Hello, Catherine.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Oh, thank you.

And we've met, we've been talking, I've been learning so much about you.

You have this great insight into the world of leadership and words . That's

such a great, not just a skill.

But it's an art to be able to bring that to others and to help them.

So thank you for that.

. Dr. Michael Gerharz: Thanks a lot.

Yeah.

And actually I stumbled into that by accident because well, I'm so sort of

the most unlikely guy to stumble into the world of communication because , my

background is a computer scientist.

And when I tell people about the background, the most common reaction

is a, surprised stare because I mean, aren't computer scientists supposed

to be the pale guys sitting down in their cellar, hacking all the night

through eating pizza and running away crying when someone speaks to them?

Well, apparently not.

At least I don't identify with that sort of image of a computer scientist.

And certainly my friends didn't as well, but yeah.

Nevertheless, what I, what I learned sort of the hard way was that yes,

communication is often getting in the way of bringing great ideas,

brilliant ideas into the world.

I've had my fair share of boring presentations and brilliant ideas fail

because of boring presentations, which was one of the reasons that I took a detour

and left the field of computer science to actually go on the route of asking myself

and helping others to find the answers to 'how can I communicate my ideas in a

way that not only I see the brilliance of it, but, but also my, my audience,

my customers, the team I'm working

with.'

That's so interesting.

And I want to get to what you just said.

And also the quote that I used in the introduction, because something you just

mentioned has so much to do with that quote, but first you are from Germany,

you were born and raised in Germany.

And so, you know, listeners being that this podcast is international it's

so impressive and wonderful and fabulous to be able to hear a little bit about

culture and how life might be different in different parts of the world.

Or the same, because you know, we are all connected in some way today.

Certainly by communication and technology.

Yeah.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

I have three children.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

We have a dog, we live in a beautiful house with a garden.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

My kids are going to school.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

We have Netflix.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

And Disney + and enjoy watching those shows.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

We enjoy reading great books.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

We enjoy playing music and making music together as a, as a family going on

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

walks, um, through through the forests or, or at, uh, down at the river Rhine,

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

which crosses quite nearby to my town.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

And that's how everyday life looks like.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

And of course, then there's the broader, broader situation that

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

everyone is experiencing currently of the pandemic, which restricts

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

a lot of what we can do here.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

Probably similar to what everyone else, um, is, is suffering in the world that,

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

that limits the amount of connections that we can make physically by being

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

present in the same room, which on the same, at the same time increases the,

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

the importance of making connections.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

In the ways that are available digitally via the internet.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

And that's actually something that I'm very happy about.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

The, for example, my kid, they have to live a much more physically distanced

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

life from their, from their friends.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

They meet a few of them, but not.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

A lot less than they would have would do in normal times, but they are in constant

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

contact and more modern technology brings us so close together that although

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

we live in totally different places, we can spend the time together having

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

meaningful connections, building strong bonds, and even having connections.

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

Like the one that we currently do across the ocean, across the Atlantic

Dr. Michael Gerharz:

ocean in totally different parts of the world and still feel connected.

When it comes to technology and communication and even pre pandemic, using

the internet has been a great tool to get to know people across the world that you

wouldn't normally, obviously otherwise.

So let's go to "speech is the shadow of action."

What you had talked about before we got into a little bit about yourself

and Germany, there's another quote.

So Ernest Hemingway, he said, "never confuse movement with action".

And I think that that's definitely what you're saying is, you know,

you have the movement happening

but where's the action.?

You take it from here and how you are helping to light the path for

people around the world with words.

Yeah.

I mean, so many things have shifted in recent times and the internet,

certainly it has play plays a major role in, in that, uh, in that shift

that we are seeing that empowers people who have an important story to tell.

To be able to tell that to a large audience that wasn't even accessible to

the most successful keynote speakers, just 10 or 20 years back when a hall would

be filled by just a few thousand people.

And today I can publish a video on YouTube that reaches a hundred million people.

Just by the power of the words that I'm using and the story that I'm telling,

uh, telling in that video, and this is something that we see happening today in

which has a huge impact on the role of communication for leaders and leadership.

I mean, it was always the case that leadership is to a large

degree a communication process.

That's one of the most important tools that a leader has, but, but the way

that we communicate has shifted a lot by this let's call it democratization

of being able to tell your story, because when a few decades back

so it's sort of in the times of our grandparents, it was sufficient to just

have the authority to speak it because leadership was still largely based on

the hierarchical level that you were on.

And you could on the, on the top layer, you could just command and control and

teams where we're expected to follow.

When you told them what to do.

That has changed a lot.

I mean, our parents had sort of the try the curve and sticks model,

where they use incentives to motivate people with external incentives.

Like let's call it either by force or by candy.

So if you do three things very well, you get, get some sort of bonus.

Uh, but that's all external.

And what has shifted today is that we have an abundance of people who are

able to tell a story that, that we can choose to which stories we attach.

And today it is much more important than it has ever been to tell a story

in a way that resonates with what is important to the people that we are

trying to reach, that resonates with the values that they subscribe to

with what, what matters to their life.

And when we fail to do so, when we still just

consider giving a speech as giving it, rather than thinking that through

to the end, that is the purpose of a speech is not to give it, but to be

received by the audience and even more to incite action, change their minds so

that they feel inspired to take action.

And when you still get stuck In the stories that you tell from your own word,

only bragging about the things that are awesome from your perspective and not

resonating with what what's important to your audience, relating it to their life

then you're going to have to confront a much more difficult time in the future.

Trying to resonate with what's important to people's lives will lead us to

much more valuable valuable team that then we would have if we just stick to

forcing them to what we want them to do.

I think that you've hit on some really important points.

And so I just kind of want to go through a couple of them and really dissect today

because you're talking about, uh, some of these important parts where reality,

everybody's reality is different today.

Uh, but realities are different

and how do we reach those, those realities so that those people understand

as Democritus said and what you said, that's the first part of the, WOW.

But that's not the entire WOW.

Right?

You get right to the heart of the matter with that question.

That is really the crucial shift that needs to happen when we

relate that to a great movie

that we are watching.

What great movies do with us is that they allow us to live another person's life.

A life that we would never be able to live ourselves, that we probably

wouldn't even dare to live there, but any way, by looking at that

person, we get to live that life.

So and what happens is that, although we look at the hero, what we see is us.

And that's the big difference between a speech that resonates and one that

doesn't because the latter, although they might tell a similar story, the

latter, while talking to themselves, we never get through over that threshold

to seeing us in their story, because they are so focused on themselves that

they forget to, to open the door for us to project our life into their story.

And a few years back that that was sufficient probably when attention is

something that, that you can buy, like in the seventies and eighties, where

everyone was basically watching the same program and we could just buy the

attention of our audience by buying the advertisement slot before the news

or a large one pager ad in a magazine.

What we needed to do because when attention is , when selection is , we

just need to be the one who's front, front, and center to their eyes, but

we don't have that situation anymore.

So what we need to do is to to find a way to get the attention of people

who aren't willing to pay attention to something that has no importance for them.

And that means that that people who have an important story to

tell who have something who have a product that actually has an

impact on their life, who are, whose

style of leadership is actually attaching to what matters to their

team as a person has a much higher probability of, of getting through.

And that bridges back to where you started your question to, what do we need to do

when we want to shift that perspective and get from just telling a story from our

own limited worldview to telling a story that relates to our audience's lives.

And the thing that actually has changed a lot that today we need to actually level

up our ability to show and find empathy for others, to see the others and to

find the others, which is also in a way a very old finding it's, it's nothing new

that before talking, you need to listen.

And when you want to, when, when you want to reach someone, when you want

someone to look to see you the easiest way

to achieve that is to see them first, to give them the feeling of I see you.

I hear you.

And when I do that, when I open the eyes for who is that person I'm talking

to, not the target group, but the person whose life I wanted to affect

for whom I've built that product to actually improve their everyday life-

who is that?

What are the things that they are struggling with so that I have

a chance of getting specific.

Telling stories about a life that they can relate to.

They see themselves in so that when I tell my story, they look

at me, but they see themselves.

That's where, where the most effective stories are to be found today.

I love listening to you and how you phrased everything.

You can get visuals and your words are the way you communicate.

It is just perfect for understanding.

And you mentioned the word empathy.

So not everybody has that.

How, as a coach in communication, how do you teach empathy?

Or can you teach empathy?

Well,

first of all, I'd like to w get to what you mentioned

that well, not everyone has empathy.

I mean, I, I tend to doubt that.

There, there might be some medical conditions, like sociopathic

behavior that people actually aren't physically able to show empathy, but

that's the vast minority of people.

The vast majority of people actually is able to feel empathy.

If we are able to feel anything, we are able to feel empathy.

Oh, I like that.

I like that.

The

thing we are not used to is to look through different

so to say different glasses; to change our perspective; to actually

stand up from the table I'm sitting at and changing it around, for example,

Amazon uses for their product.

That's probably one of the reasons why they're so close to what their

their customers actually desire is because they, in every meeting,

they have an empty chair there, and that is reserved for the customer.

Starbucks does the same.

They even have mentally added two chairs, one for the customers

and one for the employee.

And whenever a decision is about to be made, they will ask themselves, will that

make my employee and my customers proud?

And if it doesn't, then there's reason to discuss that.

Then there's reason to ask yourself, 'why am I doing it if not for the people I seek

to serve?' And with the people that help me to serve those people, because those

are the ones that I should make proud.

And if I, if I manage to do that, the rest, especially the bottom

line will take care of itself.

One of the most important things that I do when I work with clients is that

I first of all, listen to their story, try to have them say it in their own

words, without the marketing department intervening or without the public watching

whether every word is just perfect.

And then asking questions.

That's probably even more important than the first one - asking questions,

the obvious ones, the non-obvious ones, but also, and that's probably the most

important of all three, the two obvious ones, the ones that you don't ask maybe

anymore, or that your team doesn't dare to ask because you're the boss and they

don't dare question you or, or you just fear the answer of what happens when

the answer is not as we wish it to be.

But that's actually necessary work.

If we want to reach our audience, we need to ask the question

because they're asking it anyways.

And today choice is so wide that, that they go on to find an answer

that is more suitable to them than ours, that they probably won't like.

So if we don't ask, our customers will ask those questions so that

it it's important that you are the first to ask you the question,

how does it relate to my audience?

How, how is it perceived by them?

And that's the third step that's really a consequence of, of those two, that

you change glasses, that you change seats, that you look at your own words

from another person's perspective.

And that's what I'm trying to do to be that sort of mirror for them to,

to reflect upon so that they can see I'm not not the one who tells

them what, what are the right words.

I'm just trying to make them see what their, what their words are doing to

the persons they are trying to reach.

That is just so phenomenal that we have people like you who have

the communication and the words because not everybody had, like you said

earlier, not everybody has the words.

And there are countless people in history that have talked about that, that, that

sometimes we have to be their words because they don't know how to put

what they want to say into words.

So let's, let's do talk about light the path and what you're doing, but first,

is there anything that you want to add that we haven't, that you weren't able

to share that you really want to bring into this conversation that we're having?

I'm totally confident in the way that you guide

us through, through that conversation.

I'm super happy with, with how you extract the most important thing.

So I'm just curious of where you are leading the conversation next.

Oh, okay.

Well, so now I want to talk about, uh, the world of perspectives

because you just raised some really awesome awesome parts of everybody's

reality or the perspectives.

You are a renowned international speaker.

You go to different places to speak, and it's not all going to be, okay,

this is going to be a medical group.

These are going to be lawyers, uh, et cetera, sometimes they're mixed.

So how do you get your perspective so that you're allowing still that

philosophical thought for people to narrow in on what the words are that

you are saying and accepting your ideas so that they can take action..

Yeah.

I mean, first of all, although we might be, might have very different occupations

and we might have different passions ranging from medicine to literature,

to, to IT, to banking, to sports.

In the end, we are all humans and as humans, we can relate to other humans.

And that is the first, the first crucial step that we need to take, that, that

we don't speak about, about products, about things so much then to speak about

what people do with the things, how people use the sort of sports training

that you were developing or how people are affected by the new treatment

that you've developed or how they are using the new software that you were

developing and how it changes their lives.

And so by relating it to humans and, and painting pictures of humans lives before

and after they encountered your idea, your product, your, your vision for the future

helps them to relate to them what they do.

And then of course, what's, what's important if you, if you really

want to, to get close to the people, reach out to them or engage

with them, interact with them.

Try to try to find out a little bit about the culture of that tribe

of people of that group of people.

What do they care about?

What are their current struggles?

Probably even read one or two magazines from them to find out what

are current problems that they're dealing with so that, that you can

find the empathy of how they look at things, how they look at the world.

And even probably if you have the chance to talk to some, many of them

so that you can actually find find the stories that they can connect to

because it is the, the things that they are dealing with in their daily lives

does that help?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that, that brings me to uh, quite another part of, of what you do so well.

So you talk about getting, you know, understanding their culture and we don't

mean culture specific, but they're what their interests are and, and, uh, what

inspires them, what makes them move?

So one of the things that you do is, you do put forth questions,

both in German and in English.

And if there's other languages, I don't know, but I know about the

German and the English and you ask the public specif very specific questions

about - I'll give one example because there's many, but I'll give one.

Books.

So you want to know what people are reading out there.

What types of books inspire them?

And you didn't ask the question of, you know, I'm looking for a, uh, a, I

just want to go out and read a book.

What can you guys recommend?

That's not how you phrased it.

It was what types of books are you interested in

that I might find an interest in as well and why?

You really wanted to know about me and what made me move and

so, and that was one example.

And I know I don't, I think I gave you Melinda Gates book.

I don't remember,

but I did.

Okay.

'The Moment of Lift.' Yeah.

So I think that hearing you and having you here, I am learning a

lot and your perspective on life and not just perspective, but your

professional work and your studies

really have brought you forward to where you're allowing others to have

their moment of lift and I think that's an incredible place to be.

So, and I certainly appreciate that.

So what are some of the other books that people, you know, brought to your

attention that inspired them or that, or even if it was a romance novel,

cause maybe they were inspired by the romance or the relationship in the book?

Yeah, there were two, two actually novels that I read

recently that had a great impact on me.

One was a German book.

I'm not sure whether that's available in English.

It's the translation will be at 'The Book of a Summer.'.

And it's about the person who who who felt that he wasn't living the

life who was a successful person.

He was business owner, but who he felt that he wasn't living the life that

he was meant to live in, which was the life of an author of a writer,

novelist, which his uncle was.

And through the course of the book, he found out profound truth about life and

himself that led to quite as I will put it, unusual answer to that question.

I mean, there are a lot of books about pursuing your dreams and

how that's sort of the only answer that exists to that question.

That yes, you should go for that truth.

But he found actually a surprising answer to them that might be much more tangible

for a lot of people out there who just feel that there is that dream, but

would who also feel that it might not be that they are Picasso, who is solely

focused on, on his art or Hemingway who's solely focused on his writing.

That's also not, not them.

And that was a very pleasing story for me.

And the other was by Celeste Ng.

I don't know how her, her last name is pronounced.

The book is 'Everything I Never Told You' that, which is

about sort of love going wrong.

The love of parents for their children going wrong, which, and it's about

two parents who try to, to enable everything they didn't have during

their upbringing and their life and making that happen for their daughter.

And in doing that out of love

missing to see her as the person that she actually was, with the

needs that she actually had.

And that was a really moving book for me.

That that was recommended to me recently.

Well, I'm so glad that you're diving into some of those books.

And I find my podcast when I meet people like you and others, I find

the people I have just so inspiring.

And some of the things that they say are, I will have maybe a paraplegic or

an amputee on the show and they say, that's not what identifies me and what

identifies me is the work, the things that inspire them and that they are able

to, you know, work and inspire others.

And, and that just really makes my day shine and makes me feel like I am

providing some great content to people.

Talking to you and, and hearing all of this has just been enlightening and

certainly will help me to improve as well

and I know my listeners as well too.

So now you have a podcast.

And so I want you to be able to share a little bit about that podcast because

it really is a fabulous podcast.

I love it.

Thanks.

So to me it appears that I'm just thinking out loud.

Although, of course I try to make it concise and I deliberately

chose the format of two minutes twice a week because I feel that

we have an abundance of podcasts.

We have podcasts that specialize on the things that we currently

do in diving deep into specific stories and showing the human side.

But somehow, I felt that we have a lack of podcasts that do the opposite,

that really are there to fill the gaps in- between those, those podcasts or

the way between here and the bus stop, where I just need that extra kick

before I dive into that meeting where I just get that extra stroke of, uh,

let's say let's call it insight that that provides me with a different

perspective on the things that I normally do and makes me stop to ask myself,

might there a diff be a different way?

And that's what I try to do to show you a way that might be

different from what you currently do and invite you to try that out and to have

a look at whether doing things a little bit differently than you'd normally do

that might just increase the impact and get you the influence that you deserve.

Well, it's been great.

So if you want to give the title.

It's called "Leaders Light the Path"

and in any podcast platform.

There is a website they can just, you can just visit leaderslightthepath.com

or visit my website.

MichaelGerharz.com/podcast.

You'll reach that podcast, but you also find that by searching for Leaders

Light the Path on all the podcasting platforms from Apple podcasts to

Spotify, Amazon music, you name it.

Yeah.

Okay.

And for the listeners, it is in English for the listeners.

M I C H A E L G E R H A R Z .COM

MichaelGerharz.com or LeadersLightthePath so, yeah.

And so now, Dr.

Gerharz are there any last minute inspiring words that you'd like to share?

Yeah, yeah, probably about a thing, a

question that I stumbled across.

When I recognize that this year actually is the, is going to

become the 42nd birthday of "The Hitchiker's Guide the Galaxy".

Oh my gosh.

Famous novel Douglas Adams.

The radio show is actually one year older, but the book has been published 42 years.

And as you might know that the number 42 plays a major role in that novel because

it turns out that 42 is sort of the answer to the question, to the universal

question about life universe and the rest.

The only problem is that nobody knows the answer.

And I find that to be a very timely observation because I

find that we are, we are living

in a time that's obsessed with answers with people who feel they are being

right and doing everything to, to, to maintain that status of being right

while 42 years back Douglas Adams has so beautifully and eloquently taught us

that it's sometimes much more difficult and I feel also much more worthwhile

to take a step back to ask, so what was the question actually?

What are we trying to find out?

And that it's, it feels like it might be a more, much more worthwhile goal to, to ask

yourself to, to, to pursue the journey of getting it right rather than being right.

So to be able to ask the right question, rather than try to have all the

answers already, because in the end, we're all on a path and nobody knows

the answer to most things.

The world would be a much nicer place if, if we try it more to get things

right, rather than to be right and fight for our positions rather than

shift perspectives and try to understand the other person's perspective.

Thank you so much for those words.

What tremendous insight and inspiration, and you've provided so much.

And I, I appreciate that you are providing this service to the world

and that you're painting a picture for us all into a better community and

better communication with each other.

Dr.

Michael Gerharz,.

Thank you so much for being here on Your Positive Imprint

thanks.

It was a pleasure,

your positive imprint.