Jeremy Burns: Hello, Ben, welcome to our show. Thank you so much for joining us here today. Now you spent your early career as a customer facing engineer, writing code with customers and you were right there at the coalface ⁓ and leading teams at Microsoft for quite a long time. So quite a technical person, but clearly interacting with customers and communicating was an important part of your job. We're all communicating all of the time, our bosses, our customers, our stakeholders, our teams. But as technical people, we tend to overestimate how well we communicate and underestimate the importance of getting it right. We think that clarity comes with more data. We think that logic will win hearts. And we think that the work will speak for itself. And I know that when we were preparing this, you looked around and you noticed that generally speaking, technical teams and technical people are not the best at communicating. And you realized that was becoming a bottleneck for some people. So what was it that drove you to that realization? And what made you switch from being sort of deeply technical to now focusing on the communication aspects? None of these is true.
Ben Pearce: that was for probably 10 or 11 years, I was then leading teams of customer engineers or consultants or technical pre-sales. People would say, I was selling Azure, leading teams that sold Azure. That was sort when I left Microsoft. And there was just this sort of common theme that I noticed as I was going through all of that, because then I left to found this company ElevatedU to focus on this communication piece. And that was, the technical answer was obviously relative.
Jeremy Burns: Right. Ben Pearce led customer facing technical teams at Microsoft for more than 10 years. And along the way, he saw firsthand that the biggest limiter to impact is not technical skills. It's the ability to communicate, to influence, to connect with people. Ben left Microsoft and founded Elevated U and now coaches tech teams around the world how to turn technical expertise into influence Right. And I know that, you know, we're starting with the fact that you were customer facing, but today we're not necessarily just talking about people who are customer facing. We're talking about, you know, engineers who need to talk to a PM or somebody who needs to go talk to a stakeholder or the CTO to explain something. We're talking about everybody in tech, right? through stronger human skills. And when Ben isn't coaching, he hosts the Tech World Human Skills Podcast and occasionally picks up his guitar. So if you're an engineer or a data scientist or a PM or a leader and you want to have more influence, if you want to see your ideas land better, this episode and Ben's advice is for you. Let's get into it.
Ben Pearce: facing people, but also a lot of time working with internal teams. I'm working with an internal team of data scientists, as we speak, they're one of my customers at the moment, that just need to talk to their internal business a bit better. They need to be able to talk to their retail buyers and things like that in a different way to be more effective. So yeah, it works whether it's internal customers or external customers, doesn't matter.
Jeremy Burns: And I wouldn't mind betting that if you're an engineer, one of the things you need to communicate a lot, maybe not the most, but a lot is we have a problem to solve and there's a number of ways that we can do it. But I've got an idea. I've got an approach. I'd love, I think this is the right way. And I've now got to convince my pair or my peers or the rest of my team that this is the direction we should go in. Right. And you now coach teams, you coach individuals on communication. When you're called in and when you get to work with the team, what are the sort of common recurring patterns, the sort of, you know, the big three gotchas that you always see?
Ben Pearce: Yeah, well, so first thing I'm gonna say is people are people and everyone's an individual. And so everybody's got strengths and weaknesses. And so I don't want to be too reductive and go developers are like this, data scientists are like that. Yeah, it's always, cause it's not right. And everybody's different, but there are some very common themes. So if I think about some of the common themes that sort of come up. So the first bit, and I've already sort of really alluded to that is people don't
Jeremy Burns: Yeah, it's always this for everyone. Yeah, yeah. What's the opposite of that then? if I'm trying to communicate with somebody and you're saying I should meet them where they are, what's the opposite? What am I, by default, what am I doing?
Ben Pearce: the ⁓
Jeremy Burns: So I don't want to spoil another episode, but I've recorded one recently, which will come out, is, ⁓ it's it's a person that works with particularly fractional CTOs and helps them run their business. And that's one of the biggest messages he gave as well, which is not the, the, how the technical pieces is the why and the impact and the value. Right, right.
Ben Pearce: and we often miss that part off so we're trying to do two parts of the three means of persuasion and you need the third part and actually when you now look at modern neuroscience and there's lots of studies on this you know monitoring people's brains as they react to different stimuli and if you are doing how the brain reacts to the rational is like here at the front and that's a very rational thinking part of the brain here at the front of the pot maybe a more emotional bit
Jeremy Burns: Okay. Right. So we're going to get onto your framework a little bit because you've got a method and an approach for how to do that. But let me be a bit provocative because I love to do that sometimes. I'm going to stereotype here deliberately. So I apologize for offending engineers and coders, but let me just sort of be extreme. Coders typically are extraordinarily analytical. They're very driven by data and facts. They're very logical. And obviously some have got a personality, but if I'm going to stereotype and be horrible to them, they typically aren't very good at that emotional connection. And it sounds like you're almost trying to get them out of their comfort zone, like where they live and how they survive into this quite alien world where now they've got to be kind of emotional and connect. How does someone who by their very nature is not in that space. How do they move into that more connective person that you just described? Everyone's just going, whew, right now, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Ben Pearce: uncomfortable. It's not what they want to do, but it is a necessity that they avoid it and might start to build these limiting beliefs that say that person is charismatic and therefore they should do the speaking. I am not naturally and therefore I'm going to never do that. But I think they're doing themselves a massive disservice because some of the most interesting things and some of the most compelling presentations I've
Jeremy Burns: Right. Yeah. I love the idea that it's a necessity and it's a skill that you can learn just like testing or architecture. I love that. So what changes? So if, if, ⁓ if a team or an individual, if they get to grips with this and they, and they listen to your approach and they begin to communicate better, what improves?
Ben Pearce: out, maybe you need an industry presence, say you're out there at conferences, know, all of these sorts of things. So as you move into those more senior positions, you know, which brings more prestige, more pay, more job satisfaction, you all those reasons where you might want to do that. I mean, again, I, you know, I've used the word necessity, it is essential, it is a necessity that you're able to do that. So that's the second thing I'd say is that your career progression massively accelerates promotions, performance reviews, all.
Jeremy Burns: Yep. Yeah. And what forum are we talking about here? Because you can have a conversation, you could be maybe in a presentation, maybe you could be in a senior leadership meeting, maybe it's just a planning session. Is it email? Like where does this apply? Yep, yep, yep.
Ben Pearce: of give you some kind of, I don't want say label, but kind of guidance on your personality type and your communication style, your basic communication style. I've done some of that and they are brilliant. Discovery Insights was my favorite I ever did. And I'd encourage anybody to look that up and do that one because it talks to you about how you communicate. Are you direct, result oriented, very blunt, or are you very, hey, it's about harmony, it's about the
Jeremy Burns: Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna tune out. Yeah. Let's get into your framework. So you've got this framework that you use in your coaching is something that you give to your customers and they apply in their daily work and then communication and the results that come from it improve. And it's called the Auron framework and it's got a weird spelling and I don't know how you pronounce it correctly. Is it Aron Auron? Like what's the right way? Okay. Okay. Okay.
Ben Pearce: Yeah. Yes. Yes. I don't care. I say or, and it doesn't matter. Call it what you long. mean, because the important thing is, right, it's an acronym. And it's an acronym that reminds you, a mnemonic that reminds you of the components. So yeah.
Jeremy Burns: Yes. Got it. And they are A R O N. ⁓ A O R O. Got it. There you go. That proves why I couldn't remember how you say it. Now, so each letter means something and the A, which is where we'll start, means audience. What's that all about? Right. So it's not truly a sort of set of steps where you start at beginning and go to the end. It's almost like a recipe and you must have all five ingredients and you've got to put the right amount into your. Yeah, let's do that. Let's start with the audience part of that. Yep, yes. Yep. Bob, Dave, Sally. Yep.
Ben Pearce: is and we now know and if you know them you know if you know them really well you know what they like what type of style how do they react to different types of information transferred to them do they like it written do they like you know if you know individuals brilliant what becomes a bit harder is perhaps where you've got a bit of a bigger audience where actually right we've got 10 or more people i don't necessarily know who's going to be in there or i don't personally know them particularly well so so then you can just start to put personas right well we got
Jeremy Burns: Right. But presumably also, I we had this with another guest where you may be in a meeting and you've got, keeping it really simple, two conflicting characters. You've got one, we talked about a finance person who just wants, give me the detail, give me the facts, give me the numbers, give me, you know, like, what does this mean to the business in real factual terms? And then the other side, you maybe have got the marketing person who says, I don't know, what value does this provide for our customers? Give me the bigger picture. And you've got in the same meeting, conflicting personalities. How do you then pitch yourself? Because you've only got one opportunity to speak. How do you pitch into that conflicting world? Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I love that approach. I think that's really, really good to actually call it out instead of sitting there sweating, stressing and thinking, Oh my God, I don't know how to present this. Actually talk to the audience first and say, as you've just said, Hey, I know you want data and I know you want big picture. So we're going to do this separately. Let me run with the data first and we'll get to you. And then instantly the two people are sat there and they'll relax. You know, the big picture person will relax while the data is going on and not get stressed. and vice versa. I think it's a great tip. And it brings us onto the second part, doesn't it? Which is objective because those personas in the room, whoever they are, are going to have a different objective from your communication and what you're trying to communicate. Yeah, what do I want to achieve here? Yes, yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah. I've been in hundreds of those, I'm afraid to say. You sit there going, what are we doing? And then, and it's a recurring thing in the diary and you just rock up next week and the same thing. Yeah, I've been there before. Yeah.
Ben Pearce: what is that and if you can get in their head and let them go well he's waiting for me to speak about this right because then you know how you can nail the impact and the persuasion that you're going to have with him so try and write down what's your objective and get clarity but also what's their objective and get clarity and if you can jot that down again you're starting to get quite powerful little thing in your notepad now because you've got who's in there what are the personas what are the objectives and already you can start to see so as I build my message
Jeremy Burns: Mm. Yeah. What I'm hearing is you're almost building up metadata around the communication, aren't you? It's almost like attributes of the communication and what I'm about to convey. And by working that out, first of all, it helps you tailor and direct and structure your main message. And then the third part is R, which is remembered. Yeah, and there's no data, there's no data or detail in there. You haven't backed up or justified anything. You've just almost gone to the high level.
Ben Pearce: Yeah, if everybody left the meeting knowing this is the choice because it's the most secure, performant and cost effective, think those are the things I said. Everybody's heard that sentence. Ben's opinion is we're using this technology because it's the most secure, cost effective and performant. That's the message, right? That's what you want everybody to know. Now, of course, there's all this thinking beneath it. There's all this justification beneath it. But what's that key message? Right. And then I'd say, what are the few, maybe the
Jeremy Burns: Yep. Yep. Let's just quickly run through those in this meeting, shall we? And it's not lost on me that there's three there. mean, there's everywhere you go, the power of three. I mean, you happen to mention three, three reasons why your decision is the right or your recommendations, the right thing. But also when you go into each one, you can maybe give three supporting facts to that. The human psychology just loves hearing through. Yeah. Yep. Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. You're hot. You when you're in a meeting, your heart sinks when they say, we have 11 reasons why let's begin at the beginning and you just you lose your soul. You think, ⁓ please don't do this to me. Yeah. ⁓ and then the E stands for emotion. And I'm really interested in this one because coming back to what we talked about earlier on, if we stereotype technical people, tend to focus a lot on the logic, the data, the analytics. Bye. Interesting. Right. Let's give them the facts. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Ben Pearce: right so I need some horrible data points you know we lost 74 customers or we've had you know spent 475 man hours debugging this issue you know whatever it might be shock, let's get that in there let's get a little bit of a story about the input you know Dave hasn't seen his kids for the last three weekends because he's doing you know you know we've got some bits and pieces in there but then we maybe want to give a bit of confidence but actually I think we can do this and this and I think that's going to solve
Jeremy Burns: Poor Dave. Yeah. I wonder if people go in thinking how I want the audience to feel or the emotion how they want them to remember me is I'm clever. Let me show how clever I am by like. Yeah, yeah. So it's not it's not just like, throwing out a load of stuff. Look how clever I am. It's actually going through the things that you've talked about and making sure that the emotion they feel is, as you say, anger, shock, I need to do something. I'm driven to action. Yep. Mm-hmm.
Ben Pearce: and there's going to be a fable and we're all going to be crying. But actually, just telling the example, what happened last week when we had this customer situation was this and that, that's storytelling. And so if you can wrap your recommendation around just an example of what happened, you just crafted and finessed a little bit, you finessed the anecdote a little bit, that's going to be way more impactful than just giving a load of bullet points.
Jeremy Burns: Yes. that leads on to the final part, which is the N, which is next steps. ⁓ yeah, pointless. Yep. Yep. Ask for it.
Ben Pearce: either craft an email and think about war and peace, I've made it as frictionless as possible. So if you do know what the next steps are, and you can go in with next steps, pop them in, if it's more of a meeting, you know, where part of the meeting is we're gonna think about what those next steps are gonna be, make sure you bring fence time, right? Time management. So often you get to the end of the meeting and go, ⁓ got a dash, right? Bomb, gone. So you've got to be thinking...
Jeremy Burns: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, or worse that you have been I've seen this, you people come in, they go, I have a presentation and they just lay out and they sit back and go, I've done my job. And everyone goes, Okay, what next? And there's no idea is there? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yes. Absolutely right. Yeah. I like, I like to use the word promises. It's like we promised to do this and then people go, okay, cool. So, so recap. So let's just prove that I can spell or on Aaron. So we have a for audience. We have an O for objective, understanding what the objective of the people in the meeting is. R for remember. What do you want them to remember? E emotion. You want them to feel something and N is next steps and that spells Aaron or on whatever. Yeah.
Ben Pearce: whatever you want to call it, doesn't matter. I say or you can say what you want. And so once you've got that, because now, right, you can now craft, what slides might I need to support this? What diagrams, architectural diagrams might I need or not need? What anecdotes and stories might I need here? Do I need to demo the technology? And if so, what would that look like? So as you're then starting to think about what content, what narrative,
Jeremy Burns: Yeah. Right, yep. Got it, got it. Yep. Ruthless. Yep. Yep. So, how do you, how do people use this? Is this just a sort of a series of things they hold in the back of their brain and then when they're going to communicate, refer to it and make sure that what they're delivering is on point? Or is it that, for example, they're going to do, as you've just described a presentation, they begin by writing down the five points and then filling in the color. How do you see people applying this practically? Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ben Pearce: and is there anything that we want to... and actually that's now in my brain all the time so almost every interaction I'm having with somebody I'm sort of going oh how can I meet them where they are yeah hit the objectives make it a bit of engaging make it a bit more memorable and drive some action and so I'd say start off with the higher value ones because it's going to take you bit of time to get used to it
Jeremy Burns: Yep. So sort of the low frequency, most impactful, most important, maybe the things you're bit more concerned about and you know you want to land and then progressively you get it into your more regular everyday, sort of lower impact, but still very important. So you begin meaty and big and progressively it becomes part of your natural approach. And then you've got other tools which are going to leave behind and you've got this what, why, how graphic equalizer, which I think fits in beautifully to what you've talked about. Tell us what that is. Right. Yes. If only I was old enough to remember those. Yes. Yeah. Right, but you could bring the what and the why back in in order to keep people on track, couldn't you? So if they're going down a rabbit hole, ⁓ let's just remember why we're doing this and bring them back. Yeah, yeah. Good. I love it. And then the final thing that we talked about when we were planning, which I love is, ⁓ it's a version and you're going to explain it, but it is a version of the five wise five wise is great because you have a problem. You say, okay, why did that happen? This reason. Okay. Why did that happen? And eventually get into a root source root cause. And you've got a version of that. Haven't you for communication.
Ben Pearce: Yeah. Yeah, and it's to get to the value, right? So if you're starting at a technical thing and want to get to the value, it's very similar to the five-byes. It's just sometimes why is not the right question and sometimes asking yourself the brutal question, so what? It's just a better question to ask. So if I maybe give a worked example to bring it to life, I'll make it up. But ⁓ so let's say that the technical thing you want to do is you need to change the threshold of some setting from five to seven.
Jeremy Burns: Right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, you might ask the so what and go, ⁓ I don't know, there isn't really anything and then you kind of know that the thing you're proposing is probably not worth doing.
Ben Pearce: Yeah, exactly. So what? Well, I like everything aligned because I'm a perfectionist. Right, well that's not going to cut any mustard. So it's just a really nice way for getting from deep tech to value statement that might convince people to let me do this thing.
Jeremy Burns: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then of course you can use that new communication instead of taking people on that journey, just go, we want to change it from five to seven because we're losing X pounds per period of time. Yep, Emotion, how do I want them to remember and feel and act? Yeah. Yeah. Go do it now. Yes. Why are you even asking me? Perfect. Now we get anyone who's listening or watching can go to our website, buildyouredge.org slash downloads, and they can download all of this and a really nice document and they can go off and use it. But if someone, if someone hasn't quite got there yet, but they're listening, maybe they're walking their dog or driving or on a train or something, and they're listening to you. What's the first thing they can do before they've downloaded anything before they've really embraced this. What can they do this afternoon that would just improve their communication skills?
Ben Pearce: you can't and second thing I think about is put it on your dev plan of important skills that you must have for the future. Get rid of those!
Jeremy Burns: Right. Right. And we're not encouraging people, we're not encouraging people to become sort of arena speakers here, are we? It can be a one-on-one situation. It could just be a very simple meeting, a little group meeting, whatever. We're not asking people to transform themselves into, know, Professor Brian Cox, who I had the pleasure of seeing once. Yes, absolutely. Correct. I completely agree. I was talking to somebody just the other day who, ⁓ you know, they were, they were struggling a little bit to get back into work. I said, well, do you ever go to meetups and talk to people? No. What do you just sort of sit in your room and hope that people will come to you? He couldn't quite say yes, but like, it was obvious you do need to build a bit of a reputation. and you've got a reputation. You have a podcast. Let's talk about your podcast. Where can people go and find out more from you, Ben?
Ben Pearce: Well, it's called the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. I think it's a nice complimentary one to this podcast actually. We just talk about the human skills that you need to thrive in the tech world. So we don't talk about deep tech, a bit like this, we talk about the other things that you need to be really successful. So yes, we've been going for a while now and yeah, it's great fun. There's some great stuff that we learned from some brilliant guests.
Jeremy Burns: Fabulous. And you're on LinkedIn and you've got your website. Give that a quick plug. Okay, perfect. Amazing. Thank you, Ben. I really enjoyed getting to know you as part of this process. In fact, we had a session yesterday morning, didn't we? Just talking about podcasts, scratch your head and everything that gets involved in it. It's been a real pleasure. think there's no question that when you see people who can communicate just a bit better than everybody else, you watch them in a meeting or any kind of a situation. And I can think of a couple of people who haven't done this, but are naturally just really good. The impact that they make, the clarity with which they communicate, the way they make people feel, the way they get what they want out of a situation, it sets them apart so much. And when you see people who are just sort of very locked into just, I'm going to get my head down. I'm just going to code. They need to understand it's quite limiting. You know, they're going to be there for a long time. So to be able to get up. to be able to get out, be able to communicate, to be able to connect with people better, excuse me, to be able to influence people. It's so important. And I love this Aurum framework. It's super, super simple. It's easy to remember once you can remember how to spell it. So I really hope people would go and download it and put it into practice. Correct. Yes. I agree. I agree. Yeah. In my experience, I think some people think communication is for other people, but it's not. It's for you. And I think your, your, your approach here is phenomenal. Ben, thank you very much indeed for recording with us today. Thank you for all of the time that you put in preparing and writing things up and spending time with me talking about podcasts. It's been a real pleasure. Good. You're most, you're most welcome. And if you're watching or if you're listening and you want to get hold of Ben's material, please don't forget, you can go to buildyouredge.org slash downloads. You'll find everything there, all of the links to everything that Ben has described. And I encourage you to put it into practice. So thank you again, Ben. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
Ben Pearce: that was for probably 10 or 11 years, I was then leading teams of customer engineers or consultants or technical pre-sales. People would say, I was selling Azure, leading teams that sold Azure. That was sort when I left Microsoft. And there was just this sort of common theme that I noticed as I was going through all of that, because then I left to found this company ElevatedU to focus on this communication piece. And that was, the technical answer was obviously relative.
Jeremy Burns: Right. Ben Pearce led customer facing technical teams at Microsoft for more than 10 years. And along the way, he saw firsthand that the biggest limiter to impact is not technical skills. It's the ability to communicate, to influence, to connect with people. Ben left Microsoft and founded Elevated U and now coaches tech teams around the world how to turn technical expertise into influence Right. And I know that, you know, we're starting with the fact that you were customer facing, but today we're not necessarily just talking about people who are customer facing. We're talking about, you know, engineers who need to talk to a PM or somebody who needs to go talk to a stakeholder or the CTO to explain something. We're talking about everybody in tech, right? through stronger human skills. And when Ben isn't coaching, he hosts the Tech World Human Skills Podcast and occasionally picks up his guitar. So if you're an engineer or a data scientist or a PM or a leader and you want to have more influence, if you want to see your ideas land better, this episode and Ben's advice is for you. Let's get into it.
Ben Pearce: facing people, but also a lot of time working with internal teams. I'm working with an internal team of data scientists, as we speak, they're one of my customers at the moment, that just need to talk to their internal business a bit better. They need to be able to talk to their retail buyers and things like that in a different way to be more effective. So yeah, it works whether it's internal customers or external customers, doesn't matter.
Jeremy Burns: And I wouldn't mind betting that if you're an engineer, one of the things you need to communicate a lot, maybe not the most, but a lot is we have a problem to solve and there's a number of ways that we can do it. But I've got an idea. I've got an approach. I'd love, I think this is the right way. And I've now got to convince my pair or my peers or the rest of my team that this is the direction we should go in. Right. And you now coach teams, you coach individuals on communication. When you're called in and when you get to work with the team, what are the sort of common recurring patterns, the sort of, you know, the big three gotchas that you always see?
Ben Pearce: Yeah, well, so first thing I'm gonna say is people are people and everyone's an individual. And so everybody's got strengths and weaknesses. And so I don't want to be too reductive and go developers are like this, data scientists are like that. Yeah, it's always, cause it's not right. And everybody's different, but there are some very common themes. So if I think about some of the common themes that sort of come up. So the first bit, and I've already sort of really alluded to that is people don't
Jeremy Burns: Yeah, it's always this for everyone. Yeah, yeah. What's the opposite of that then? if I'm trying to communicate with somebody and you're saying I should meet them where they are, what's the opposite? What am I, by default, what am I doing?
Ben Pearce: the ⁓
Jeremy Burns: So I don't want to spoil another episode, but I've recorded one recently, which will come out, is, ⁓ it's it's a person that works with particularly fractional CTOs and helps them run their business. And that's one of the biggest messages he gave as well, which is not the, the, how the technical pieces is the why and the impact and the value. Right, right.
Ben Pearce: and we often miss that part off so we're trying to do two parts of the three means of persuasion and you need the third part and actually when you now look at modern neuroscience and there's lots of studies on this you know monitoring people's brains as they react to different stimuli and if you are doing how the brain reacts to the rational is like here at the front and that's a very rational thinking part of the brain here at the front of the pot maybe a more emotional bit
Jeremy Burns: Okay. Right. So we're going to get onto your framework a little bit because you've got a method and an approach for how to do that. But let me be a bit provocative because I love to do that sometimes. I'm going to stereotype here deliberately. So I apologize for offending engineers and coders, but let me just sort of be extreme. Coders typically are extraordinarily analytical. They're very driven by data and facts. They're very logical. And obviously some have got a personality, but if I'm going to stereotype and be horrible to them, they typically aren't very good at that emotional connection. And it sounds like you're almost trying to get them out of their comfort zone, like where they live and how they survive into this quite alien world where now they've got to be kind of emotional and connect. How does someone who by their very nature is not in that space. How do they move into that more connective person that you just described? Everyone's just going, whew, right now, yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Ben Pearce: uncomfortable. It's not what they want to do, but it is a necessity that they avoid it and might start to build these limiting beliefs that say that person is charismatic and therefore they should do the speaking. I am not naturally and therefore I'm going to never do that. But I think they're doing themselves a massive disservice because some of the most interesting things and some of the most compelling presentations I've
Jeremy Burns: Right. Yeah. I love the idea that it's a necessity and it's a skill that you can learn just like testing or architecture. I love that. So what changes? So if, if, ⁓ if a team or an individual, if they get to grips with this and they, and they listen to your approach and they begin to communicate better, what improves?
Ben Pearce: out, maybe you need an industry presence, say you're out there at conferences, know, all of these sorts of things. So as you move into those more senior positions, you know, which brings more prestige, more pay, more job satisfaction, you all those reasons where you might want to do that. I mean, again, I, you know, I've used the word necessity, it is essential, it is a necessity that you're able to do that. So that's the second thing I'd say is that your career progression massively accelerates promotions, performance reviews, all.
Jeremy Burns: Yep. Yeah. And what forum are we talking about here? Because you can have a conversation, you could be maybe in a presentation, maybe you could be in a senior leadership meeting, maybe it's just a planning session. Is it email? Like where does this apply? Yep, yep, yep.
Ben Pearce: of give you some kind of, I don't want say label, but kind of guidance on your personality type and your communication style, your basic communication style. I've done some of that and they are brilliant. Discovery Insights was my favorite I ever did. And I'd encourage anybody to look that up and do that one because it talks to you about how you communicate. Are you direct, result oriented, very blunt, or are you very, hey, it's about harmony, it's about the
Jeremy Burns: Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna tune out. Yeah. Let's get into your framework. So you've got this framework that you use in your coaching is something that you give to your customers and they apply in their daily work and then communication and the results that come from it improve. And it's called the Auron framework and it's got a weird spelling and I don't know how you pronounce it correctly. Is it Aron Auron? Like what's the right way? Okay. Okay. Okay.
Ben Pearce: Yeah. Yes. Yes. I don't care. I say or, and it doesn't matter. Call it what you long. mean, because the important thing is, right, it's an acronym. And it's an acronym that reminds you, a mnemonic that reminds you of the components. So yeah.
Jeremy Burns: Yes. Got it. And they are A R O N. ⁓ A O R O. Got it. There you go. That proves why I couldn't remember how you say it. Now, so each letter means something and the A, which is where we'll start, means audience. What's that all about? Right. So it's not truly a sort of set of steps where you start at beginning and go to the end. It's almost like a recipe and you must have all five ingredients and you've got to put the right amount into your. Yeah, let's do that. Let's start with the audience part of that. Yep, yes. Yep. Bob, Dave, Sally. Yep.
Ben Pearce: is and we now know and if you know them you know if you know them really well you know what they like what type of style how do they react to different types of information transferred to them do they like it written do they like you know if you know individuals brilliant what becomes a bit harder is perhaps where you've got a bit of a bigger audience where actually right we've got 10 or more people i don't necessarily know who's going to be in there or i don't personally know them particularly well so so then you can just start to put personas right well we got
Jeremy Burns: Right. But presumably also, I we had this with another guest where you may be in a meeting and you've got, keeping it really simple, two conflicting characters. You've got one, we talked about a finance person who just wants, give me the detail, give me the facts, give me the numbers, give me, you know, like, what does this mean to the business in real factual terms? And then the other side, you maybe have got the marketing person who says, I don't know, what value does this provide for our customers? Give me the bigger picture. And you've got in the same meeting, conflicting personalities. How do you then pitch yourself? Because you've only got one opportunity to speak. How do you pitch into that conflicting world? Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I love that approach. I think that's really, really good to actually call it out instead of sitting there sweating, stressing and thinking, Oh my God, I don't know how to present this. Actually talk to the audience first and say, as you've just said, Hey, I know you want data and I know you want big picture. So we're going to do this separately. Let me run with the data first and we'll get to you. And then instantly the two people are sat there and they'll relax. You know, the big picture person will relax while the data is going on and not get stressed. and vice versa. I think it's a great tip. And it brings us onto the second part, doesn't it? Which is objective because those personas in the room, whoever they are, are going to have a different objective from your communication and what you're trying to communicate. Yeah, what do I want to achieve here? Yes, yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah. I've been in hundreds of those, I'm afraid to say. You sit there going, what are we doing? And then, and it's a recurring thing in the diary and you just rock up next week and the same thing. Yeah, I've been there before. Yeah.
Ben Pearce: what is that and if you can get in their head and let them go well he's waiting for me to speak about this right because then you know how you can nail the impact and the persuasion that you're going to have with him so try and write down what's your objective and get clarity but also what's their objective and get clarity and if you can jot that down again you're starting to get quite powerful little thing in your notepad now because you've got who's in there what are the personas what are the objectives and already you can start to see so as I build my message
Jeremy Burns: Mm. Yeah. What I'm hearing is you're almost building up metadata around the communication, aren't you? It's almost like attributes of the communication and what I'm about to convey. And by working that out, first of all, it helps you tailor and direct and structure your main message. And then the third part is R, which is remembered. Yeah, and there's no data, there's no data or detail in there. You haven't backed up or justified anything. You've just almost gone to the high level.
Ben Pearce: Yeah, if everybody left the meeting knowing this is the choice because it's the most secure, performant and cost effective, think those are the things I said. Everybody's heard that sentence. Ben's opinion is we're using this technology because it's the most secure, cost effective and performant. That's the message, right? That's what you want everybody to know. Now, of course, there's all this thinking beneath it. There's all this justification beneath it. But what's that key message? Right. And then I'd say, what are the few, maybe the
Jeremy Burns: Yep. Yep. Let's just quickly run through those in this meeting, shall we? And it's not lost on me that there's three there. mean, there's everywhere you go, the power of three. I mean, you happen to mention three, three reasons why your decision is the right or your recommendations, the right thing. But also when you go into each one, you can maybe give three supporting facts to that. The human psychology just loves hearing through. Yeah. Yep. Yes. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. You're hot. You when you're in a meeting, your heart sinks when they say, we have 11 reasons why let's begin at the beginning and you just you lose your soul. You think, ⁓ please don't do this to me. Yeah. ⁓ and then the E stands for emotion. And I'm really interested in this one because coming back to what we talked about earlier on, if we stereotype technical people, tend to focus a lot on the logic, the data, the analytics. Bye. Interesting. Right. Let's give them the facts. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Ben Pearce: right so I need some horrible data points you know we lost 74 customers or we've had you know spent 475 man hours debugging this issue you know whatever it might be shock, let's get that in there let's get a little bit of a story about the input you know Dave hasn't seen his kids for the last three weekends because he's doing you know you know we've got some bits and pieces in there but then we maybe want to give a bit of confidence but actually I think we can do this and this and I think that's going to solve
Jeremy Burns: Poor Dave. Yeah. I wonder if people go in thinking how I want the audience to feel or the emotion how they want them to remember me is I'm clever. Let me show how clever I am by like. Yeah, yeah. So it's not it's not just like, throwing out a load of stuff. Look how clever I am. It's actually going through the things that you've talked about and making sure that the emotion they feel is, as you say, anger, shock, I need to do something. I'm driven to action. Yep. Mm-hmm.
Ben Pearce: and there's going to be a fable and we're all going to be crying. But actually, just telling the example, what happened last week when we had this customer situation was this and that, that's storytelling. And so if you can wrap your recommendation around just an example of what happened, you just crafted and finessed a little bit, you finessed the anecdote a little bit, that's going to be way more impactful than just giving a load of bullet points.
Jeremy Burns: Yes. that leads on to the final part, which is the N, which is next steps. ⁓ yeah, pointless. Yep. Yep. Ask for it.
Ben Pearce: either craft an email and think about war and peace, I've made it as frictionless as possible. So if you do know what the next steps are, and you can go in with next steps, pop them in, if it's more of a meeting, you know, where part of the meeting is we're gonna think about what those next steps are gonna be, make sure you bring fence time, right? Time management. So often you get to the end of the meeting and go, ⁓ got a dash, right? Bomb, gone. So you've got to be thinking...
Jeremy Burns: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, or worse that you have been I've seen this, you people come in, they go, I have a presentation and they just lay out and they sit back and go, I've done my job. And everyone goes, Okay, what next? And there's no idea is there? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yes. Absolutely right. Yeah. I like, I like to use the word promises. It's like we promised to do this and then people go, okay, cool. So, so recap. So let's just prove that I can spell or on Aaron. So we have a for audience. We have an O for objective, understanding what the objective of the people in the meeting is. R for remember. What do you want them to remember? E emotion. You want them to feel something and N is next steps and that spells Aaron or on whatever. Yeah.
Ben Pearce: whatever you want to call it, doesn't matter. I say or you can say what you want. And so once you've got that, because now, right, you can now craft, what slides might I need to support this? What diagrams, architectural diagrams might I need or not need? What anecdotes and stories might I need here? Do I need to demo the technology? And if so, what would that look like? So as you're then starting to think about what content, what narrative,
Jeremy Burns: Yeah. Right, yep. Got it, got it. Yep. Ruthless. Yep. Yep. So, how do you, how do people use this? Is this just a sort of a series of things they hold in the back of their brain and then when they're going to communicate, refer to it and make sure that what they're delivering is on point? Or is it that, for example, they're going to do, as you've just described a presentation, they begin by writing down the five points and then filling in the color. How do you see people applying this practically? Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ben Pearce: and is there anything that we want to... and actually that's now in my brain all the time so almost every interaction I'm having with somebody I'm sort of going oh how can I meet them where they are yeah hit the objectives make it a bit of engaging make it a bit more memorable and drive some action and so I'd say start off with the higher value ones because it's going to take you bit of time to get used to it
Jeremy Burns: Yep. So sort of the low frequency, most impactful, most important, maybe the things you're bit more concerned about and you know you want to land and then progressively you get it into your more regular everyday, sort of lower impact, but still very important. So you begin meaty and big and progressively it becomes part of your natural approach. And then you've got other tools which are going to leave behind and you've got this what, why, how graphic equalizer, which I think fits in beautifully to what you've talked about. Tell us what that is. Right. Yes. If only I was old enough to remember those. Yes. Yeah. Right, but you could bring the what and the why back in in order to keep people on track, couldn't you? So if they're going down a rabbit hole, ⁓ let's just remember why we're doing this and bring them back. Yeah, yeah. Good. I love it. And then the final thing that we talked about when we were planning, which I love is, ⁓ it's a version and you're going to explain it, but it is a version of the five wise five wise is great because you have a problem. You say, okay, why did that happen? This reason. Okay. Why did that happen? And eventually get into a root source root cause. And you've got a version of that. Haven't you for communication.
Ben Pearce: Yeah. Yeah, and it's to get to the value, right? So if you're starting at a technical thing and want to get to the value, it's very similar to the five-byes. It's just sometimes why is not the right question and sometimes asking yourself the brutal question, so what? It's just a better question to ask. So if I maybe give a worked example to bring it to life, I'll make it up. But ⁓ so let's say that the technical thing you want to do is you need to change the threshold of some setting from five to seven.
Jeremy Burns: Right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, you might ask the so what and go, ⁓ I don't know, there isn't really anything and then you kind of know that the thing you're proposing is probably not worth doing.
Ben Pearce: Yeah, exactly. So what? Well, I like everything aligned because I'm a perfectionist. Right, well that's not going to cut any mustard. So it's just a really nice way for getting from deep tech to value statement that might convince people to let me do this thing.
Jeremy Burns: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then of course you can use that new communication instead of taking people on that journey, just go, we want to change it from five to seven because we're losing X pounds per period of time. Yep, Emotion, how do I want them to remember and feel and act? Yeah. Yeah. Go do it now. Yes. Why are you even asking me? Perfect. Now we get anyone who's listening or watching can go to our website, buildyouredge.org slash downloads, and they can download all of this and a really nice document and they can go off and use it. But if someone, if someone hasn't quite got there yet, but they're listening, maybe they're walking their dog or driving or on a train or something, and they're listening to you. What's the first thing they can do before they've downloaded anything before they've really embraced this. What can they do this afternoon that would just improve their communication skills?
Ben Pearce: you can't and second thing I think about is put it on your dev plan of important skills that you must have for the future. Get rid of those!
Jeremy Burns: Right. Right. And we're not encouraging people, we're not encouraging people to become sort of arena speakers here, are we? It can be a one-on-one situation. It could just be a very simple meeting, a little group meeting, whatever. We're not asking people to transform themselves into, know, Professor Brian Cox, who I had the pleasure of seeing once. Yes, absolutely. Correct. I completely agree. I was talking to somebody just the other day who, ⁓ you know, they were, they were struggling a little bit to get back into work. I said, well, do you ever go to meetups and talk to people? No. What do you just sort of sit in your room and hope that people will come to you? He couldn't quite say yes, but like, it was obvious you do need to build a bit of a reputation. and you've got a reputation. You have a podcast. Let's talk about your podcast. Where can people go and find out more from you, Ben?
Ben Pearce: Well, it's called the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. I think it's a nice complimentary one to this podcast actually. We just talk about the human skills that you need to thrive in the tech world. So we don't talk about deep tech, a bit like this, we talk about the other things that you need to be really successful. So yes, we've been going for a while now and yeah, it's great fun. There's some great stuff that we learned from some brilliant guests.
Jeremy Burns: Fabulous. And you're on LinkedIn and you've got your website. Give that a quick plug. Okay, perfect. Amazing. Thank you, Ben. I really enjoyed getting to know you as part of this process. In fact, we had a session yesterday morning, didn't we? Just talking about podcasts, scratch your head and everything that gets involved in it. It's been a real pleasure. think there's no question that when you see people who can communicate just a bit better than everybody else, you watch them in a meeting or any kind of a situation. And I can think of a couple of people who haven't done this, but are naturally just really good. The impact that they make, the clarity with which they communicate, the way they make people feel, the way they get what they want out of a situation, it sets them apart so much. And when you see people who are just sort of very locked into just, I'm going to get my head down. I'm just going to code. They need to understand it's quite limiting. You know, they're going to be there for a long time. So to be able to get up. to be able to get out, be able to communicate, to be able to connect with people better, excuse me, to be able to influence people. It's so important. And I love this Aurum framework. It's super, super simple. It's easy to remember once you can remember how to spell it. So I really hope people would go and download it and put it into practice. Correct. Yes. I agree. I agree. Yeah. In my experience, I think some people think communication is for other people, but it's not. It's for you. And I think your, your, your approach here is phenomenal. Ben, thank you very much indeed for recording with us today. Thank you for all of the time that you put in preparing and writing things up and spending time with me talking about podcasts. It's been a real pleasure. Good. You're most, you're most welcome. And if you're watching or if you're listening and you want to get hold of Ben's material, please don't forget, you can go to buildyouredge.org slash downloads. You'll find everything there, all of the links to everything that Ben has described. And I encourage you to put it into practice. So thank you again, Ben. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
