The power of "ah yes, dammit"

--> how to get across a tough message

A while back - longer than I care to remember - I was on the phone chatting to a well-known professional speaker here in the UK who was bemoaning what he called the “seminar scene”.

In other words, the same people going to marketing or leadership or entrepreneurship seminars year after year.

“They want you to present something new every time”, he said, “but they haven’t implemented any of what you taught them last time”.

This troubled me for a long time, because it’s a wider problem I’d seen in consulting too.

What people want to hear is often not what they need to hear.

I gave him some advice at the time which I believe helped a lot - I’ll share it with you in an upcoming email.

But I also discovered something over time which is perhaps even more powerful.

The “ah yes” moment. Shortly followed by “dammit”.

The “aha moment” we discussed last time is when you discover something new and useful and all sorts of lightbulbs go off in your brain. It’s a powerful and pleasant feeling that does wonders for the credibility of the person who gave you that moment.

An “ah yes” moment is a little different, but potentially just as powerful.

An “ah yes” moment happens when you hear something you already know - but that you’re not doing - and you finally get the message.

It’s less of a raised eyebrow “that’s interesting” moment and more of a head-nodding “oh god, you’re right, I ought to do something about it” moment.

And in many ways, it’s more important. Because it gets people to take action.

The thing with an “ah yes” moment is you have to approach it indirectly.

If you just straight-up tell people something they already know they should be doing but aren’t, they’re either going to get bored and move on quickly, or get resentful that you’re nagging them.

Neither of those works well either for seminar presentations or emails.

The best way to do it is to let your audience “discover” it for themselves. To come to their own conclusion that this is indeed something they need to do.

You need them to get them to relax their analytical brain for a second so that your point kind of sneaks up on them.

Aesop was a master at this, as were Saint-Exupéry and Orwell.

I dabble, and it seems to work. I’ll explain how next time.

- Ian