Eric Harris - The Campfire Method

PowerPoint may be the most common management tool on Earth, but it might also be the fastest way to lose the room. We sit down with Eric Harris, creator of The Campfire Method, to rethink how leaders communicate when the stakes are high and change is constant. Instead of treating presentations as a deck you “run,” Eric argues for a more human approach where we earn belief, reduce anxiety, and help people move from point A to point B as an act of compassion.

• Click HERE to order a copy of The Campfire Method
• Click HERE for Eric Harris' LinkedIn profile

HERE ARE MORE RESOURCES FROM REAL GOOD VENTURES:

Never miss a good opportunity to learn from a bad boss...

Click HERE to get your very own Reference Profile.  We use The Predictive Index as our analytics platform so you know it's validated and reliable.  Your Reference Profile informs you of your needs, behaviors, and the nuances of what we call your Behavioral DNA.  It also explains your work style, your strengths, and even the common traps in which you may find yourself.  It's a great tool to share with friends, family, and co-workers.

Follow us on Instagram HERE and make sure to share with your network!

Follow us on X HERE and make sure to share with your network!

Provide your feedback HERE, please!  We love to hear from our listeners and welcome your thoughts and ideas about how to improve the podcast and even suggest topics and ideas for future episodes.

Visit us at www.realgoodventures.com.  We are a Talent Optimization consultancy specializing in people and business execution analytics.  Real Good Ventures was founded by Sara Best and John Broer who are both Certified Talent Optimization Consultants with over 50 years of combined consulting and organizational performance experience.  Sara is also certified in EQi 2.0.  RGV is also a Certified Partner of Line-of-Sight, a powerful organizational health and execution platform.  RGV is known for its work in leadership development, executive coaching, and what we call organizational rebuild where we bring all our tools together to diagnose an organization's present state and how to grow toward a stronger future state. 

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Preview

John Broer 0:08

Hello, warm welcome to all of our friends out there in The Bosshole Transformation Nation. This is your co-host, John Broer. And when I say co-host, that means there's another co-host here. Hi Sara, what's happening?

Sara Best 0:20

Hey John, it is good to be with you. Uh things are rocking and rolling. The world is crazy. But we are here, and we have a great episode today.

John Broer 0:28

We are here. Tell our listeners who we're gonna meet today.

Sara Best 0:32

Well, uh, our guest today, friends, is Eric Harris. You must get to know Eric. He is the inventor of The Campfire Method. We're gonna talk about the campfire method. It is uh a way to present your ideas as a leader without a slide deck, uh, and there's just so much more to it. He's a former uh marketing executive uh who's who's really brought together all the best things about the way people interact with information to help equip leaders to be more present and more persuasive with their audiences. And I'm not even doing it justice. I just think you're gonna be excited to tune in and learn the simple steps to the campfire method. And Eric has written a book. It is dropping um right about now, actually. So, how exciting to offer um an opportunity for our listeners to find the book and learn more about his methodology.

John Broer 1:27

Check out all the show notes, all the info is in there, and let's meet Eric.

Announcer 1:34

The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes, and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Sara Best 1:56

Eric Harris, welcome to The Bosshole Chronicles podcast.

Eric Harris 2:00

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm I'm really just thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

Sara Best 2:06

I was eager for this episode. I have personally enjoyed working with you as a coach, and and you've been helping train me in really the approach and the methodology we're going to be talking about today. What really struck me as I was learning the principles of what we're going to call the campfire method, we in our world want leaders to learn to adjust and adapt their style, to recognize that there's wisdom and strength in what they do and how they're naturally wired, but that everyone's different and people need to hear things in a different way and they need to have experience in a different way. And it's so often the case that we encounter leaders who say things like, you know, I just, I just need people to be challenging. I need that intensity at the top level. My um, yes, yesterday I heard a guy say, My top five people, they know they're gonna get beat up. Like I need that challenge to really have us be successful. And I was thinking about the people on the team. Um, much it much like that, and and in this way, the the campfire method offers leaders a way to adjust and adapt their style. It's just so pure and authentic. So it is exciting, exciting to have you here to outline that. So let's just start by asking you, Eric, how did you come up with the campfire method?

Eric Harris 3:22

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for asking. So I was born and raised in advertising. I started my career in the business of brands. And we did uh so many presentations that we've lived and breathed around this idea of um, you know, we have a big idea for a client that would move their business forward. And we would, we would make every excuse to have a presentation. And we saw ourselves as galvanizers and people who could rally people around common ideas. And it really was about the idea. It was the idea, the idea, the it was all about the idea. A couple of years after I left advertising, I went to go work on the corporate side. I went into corporate marketing. And when I got there, I looked around and I realized, oh, it's not about ideas, it's about decks. The deck, the deck, the deck, the almighty slide deck. And the the way that people were communicating with one another was so transactional. And and I realized how pervasive that was. And I looked back into my career and the skills that I had developed as a creative director, and I said, you know, I can help these people. And so I started to train my team on how to deliver presentations that really helped others not just get information or be told what to do, but to create meaning, to create belief, to tap into uh the emotional essence and the and the motivational posture of a person so that you could effectively get them from point A to point B, not as an act of aggression, but as an act of compassion.

Sara Best 5:16

Yeah. I had picked up on that line, um, an act of compassion. Leaders not selling their ideas, but helping people see a better future as an act of compassion. So powerful.

Eric Harris 5:28

Oh, absolutely.

Sara Best 5:29

Yeah. So tell us more about how do we how do we begin to understand uh a deck-free world? Like it's it's probably causing trepidation for some of our listeners because the deck is the present, like it is the message. Uh so in this idea. Yeah, yeah. So tell us more.

Eric Harris 5:48

Yeah, absolutely. Well, well, let's let's understand a little bit more about the current landscape. So as of today, Microsoft estimates there are about 1.2 billion daily active users of PowerPoint. 1.2 billion. Okay, so just put that in the frame of the the global population. That's about one in every seven people on Earth are using PowerPoint daily.

John Broer 6:13

Wow.

Eric Harris 6:14

So those those 1.2 billion people are responsible for about 500 million slides a day.

Sara Best 6:22

Wow.

Audience Empathy And Story As Structure

Eric Harris 6:23

Okay, so that's how pervasive this is. That's that's the world that we live in. And so what we have to ask ourselves is is it working? Is it actually doing what we expect it to do? Um, and I think you know, you can look at employee engagement numbers, you can look at the the general state of the employee experience, which is which is pretty much currently thought to be the worst it's ever been. Right. Right. So the way we communicate at work, really what it boils down to is we are presenting all the time. We are always presenting. You're not just presenting when the title of the meeting on the calendar invite says presentation. You're presenting in the break room, you're presenting when you ask for a resource, you're presenting when you share the budget, you're presenting. There's so many different versions of presentations. Right. And what they all seem to have in common, and what they have for the last, you know, 25, 30 years or so is that they all seem to revolve around decks. So so I'm gonna go ahead and argue that it's not working, right? The loneliness epidemic at work is the worst we've ever seen. People are connected to one another, but they're not connecting with one another. And so the the current landscape is just frightening. And a leader who actually models a compassionate approach to understanding their audience and also taking responsibility for their ideas is a that that is so rare, but it is so welcome in this environment. And so that's why the campfire method exists. It's because it we we want to empower leaders to be compassionate communicators in the air we breathe in business, which is presentations.

Sara Best 8:14

Yeah, tell us more.

Eric Harris 8:16

So here's how you do it. So, number one, uh, we have to understand the science. We have to understand what's going on in both the presenter's mind and heart, and in the audiences' minds and hearts. Uh, once we understand kind of the science of storytelling, then the next step is to really understand your audience. So that's the promise number one is I'm gonna understand who's listening. Uh, and not just demographically, not just title, geography, location, understanding your audience by what they feel, what they fear, what they celebrate, and who they really are as people. Humans. Um humans, absolutely. And yeah, I mean, humans with real and meaningful skepticism about change, humans with real and meaningful joy that they find in the work that they do, or at least they have the capacity for that. Right. And and so if we can recognize them as the humans that they are, then the next step is we're gonna craft the story that will reach them. And when we talk about storytelling in presentations, it's not for decoration, it's not anecdotes for the sake of entertainment. It's actually story as a structural system. It's scaffolding to help someone get from one side of the creek to the other. It it's to get someone from point A to point B, we have we have a responsibility to to the way that humans prefer to communicate and the way that we have for millennia. Uh it's it's so coded in us, it's in our DNA. We are we are wired for story because we're wired for meaning.

Sara Best 10:09

So I just can I just pause there and say, I every time I've heard storytelling or you know, the the opportunity to use storytelling, I contract a little bit and I get a little scared. And there's a part of me that even though I know it's what we do as humans, I'm like, I'm not sure if I know how to do that. And it and it sounds like it's so distinct from everything that I've been trained how to do. But I think what I hear you saying is it's really not. It's it's really not different from how we're wired.

Eric Harris 10:37

No, not at all. Not at all. It's really actually quite, quite alarming when you see, for example, um like if I was gonna tell you um something, if I was gonna tell you a story as a friend, I would tell you the beginning, I would tell you the messy middle, and then I would tell you the resolution at the end. Yeah. That's that is a simple three-part framework that that humans have used to communicate for ever. Yeah. It's it's the story arc. I mean, that's what it is. It is the story arc, absolutely. Yeah. And yet, if I was going to give you a presentation and I was one of these leaders who are using modern conventional tools to do it, I wouldn't do it that simply. I would have an executive summary slide and an agenda, and then I would walk you through the KPIs, and then I would show you the spreadsheet, and I would embed that spreadsheet into a slide deck, and I would make you squint your eyes, and I would even make apologies about it, and I would say, Oh, I'm sorry, this slide is a bit of an eye chart, and everyone in the room would groan, and then we would all just go on about our business. No one would change, no one would understand anything differently about the future and their role in it. Right. That's right.

John Broer 11:52

Eric, you wouldn't know this about me, but uh I started my first practice back in 1990, and the name of my firm was called Strictly Speaking. I mean, uh that's what I did. I helped executives and people in business develop their presentation skills. And uh your your point resonates so strongly because I would say to an executive, I want you to imagine going into this presentation and the monitor or the projector, whatever, is not working. I mean, you need to be able to convey and and share this experience without all these trappings. And that that horrified them because they were so, to your point, it's so formulaic and they're so rooted in it. It's it's become part of sort of their presentation DNA. And that that's why I'm excited for our our audience to learn about the campfire method because again, it allows you to truly, from a more internal perspective, share something, which requires some vulnerability, and not a lot of executives are comfortable with that.

Eric Harris 12:57

Oh, yeah. No, I love how you said that. It's it's remarkable how often we see that it's just it's reverse, right? Like the the challenge is I'm a leader, I have a responsibility to the company, I have to move this company from point A to point B. In order to move that company, I have to move the people. Yeah. So these are high-stakes moments. We walk into those high-stakes moments, and to calm our own nerves, we slam everything into a PowerPoint.

Sara Best 13:31

Yep. Yep. Okay.

Eric Harris 13:32

So so even though we know we have a responsibility to the people, we tend to default to what's easiest and most comfortable for us. And that is what needs to change.

Sara Best 13:46

I have the opportunity, by the way, to read um chapters from your just about to be dropped book, right? Has it dropped yet, Eric?

Eric Harris 13:54

Is it it drops? It drops next Tuesday, May 5th.

Sara Best 13:58

Yeah.

Eric Harris 13:59

Oh, we get to talk about another book. Awesome. Yeah.

Future Vision Plus Present Tension

Sara Best 14:01

Yeah. I mean, this is the whole point of of featuring you today is to make sure this work and this this opportunity gets out there for people. But as I reflected about what you communicate in your book about story, it's the you've been saying this, but the words I would use are, you know, it creates tension. You know, there's that beginning, the messy middle, and the resolution or the end. It creates tension, but it draws the audience in, it makes them care. And I think that's a very personal, compassionate thing to do is create an experience that somebody can contribute to or or engage with. I think that's powerful. And then my favorite part is how it shows your story shows a future worth choosing. And it gives the person sitting there the opportunity to choose or not, but to be kind of drawn in, if that makes sense. Am I saying that right?

Eric Harris 14:58

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, we do have a responsibility to paint the picture of the future. And and here's where the response, this is a coin with two sides. So the the picture of the future must be compelling and exciting and create opportunities in people's minds. And at the same time, the future alone is not enough. It's not the reason why people will say yes to an idea or to a vision or get on board and enroll in a strategy or uh join an organization through a complex change. Um, the future alone has to be coupled with the tension of the present. And, you know, one of the things that I'm I'm I'm fond of repeating is people don't buy because the future is shiny. People buy because the present is heavy.

Sara Best 15:49

That's right. I love this. We talk about this a lot and when we're working with leadership teams. You know, when we're trying to move from here to there, we could spend all day talking about how wonderful there is going to be and how amazing and how effective we're going to be. But that does not move people. You're right. It's you have to have a strong business case for why we can't stay here.

Eric Harris 16:09

Absolutely. And that's a mistake that I see people who might be labeled boss holes make, is that, you know, as a as a leader, um, especially the more visionary style leaders, we some of them tend to, and I'll, you know, I'll go ahead and say we. I'll put myself in this category too, because I will admit to have been a boss hole from time to time. The future is so exciting. It's so exciting. And we we often, as visionaries, live in that future. In fact, we cannot be distracted by the present. It's it's part of what makes us, it's part of our superpowers. It's part of what makes us special and and effective is our own ambition, right? So the the need to live in the future is driving a lot of these leaders. And so what we see happen a lot with the more visionary style communicator is that there's a little too much emphasis on the promises of tomorrow and not enough uh grounding and empathy that can come from the realities of today.

Sara Best 17:13

Yeah. And that makes me think about the numbers of people. John, it's it's more than 60%, is it not? The people who are a little challenged by change and uncertainty can be very stopping. And um, they need to know, like they need to understand what about what we're doing now? What happens to what I know, and how do I gain access to what I need to know to understand this new future?

John Broer 17:39

Oh, yeah. So the word that comes to mind for me, Eric, is persuasion. And that might be a heavy word, but again, it's different than coercion and manipulation and pressure. I mean, in order for people to literally be persuaded to move from here to there, you're you're right. There has to be something compelling, but it also has to be rooted in reality. Uh to Sarah's point, uh, you know, those of us that are visionary and thinking about how bright the future might be, let's let's acknowledge what people are experiencing right now. And what is that, what is that compelling message or the way to help them out of that particular, you know, toward that other place that holds more promise. And yeah, I mean, that that is it seems to be completely woven into the methodology you've created.

Eric Harris 18:27

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, and I love, I really do love the term persuasion as a um uh a noun that that that describes in an essence what what story is capable of. And it does come with some baggage. We need to recognize that. And it's important for leaders to understand that um, you know, the job, the whole job isn't always to persuade. Persuasion is part of it, but that is also it must be grounded in an understanding of the current state, and you must demonstrate that understanding. And also, I I do think there's this mentality sometimes where leaders will um express a disdain for the current state and not realize what kind of damage that actually does, because a lot of the people on their team take intense and immense pride in creating that current state. And they're walking around all day thinking, look at all this cool work I'm doing, look at what I'm getting to do. And then the leader comes in and says, tomorrow's gonna be even better.

Sara Best 19:36

Right. Right. Well, and I I want to just double-click on the empathy uh component, John. You brought it up and and Eric, you mentioned it earlier. In this age of AI and this magnanimous transformation that's happening, it feels like instantaneously, like the ground really is moving for everybody, regardless of your industry. I think that if leaders don't not just, I mean, they can't just understand how people are experiencing experiencing this, they have to believe them. They have to believe that there's trepidation and frustration and fear and anger and be willing to work with that versus discount it, dismiss it, make it wrong because they don't necessarily feel that same way. So I think this methodology helps the leader center upon what that person is experiencing and build from there.

Designing The Room For Connection

Eric Harris 20:32

Thank you. That's that's great.

Sara Best 20:34

Now we're gonna talk about environment, are we not?

Eric Harris 20:37

Yeah, let's talk about environment. So that's the third, the third promise is that we will leverage our environment so that it supports our ideas. And the environment is one of those issues that is commonly defaulted, commonly overlooked, commonly um accepted for whatever we are given. Yeah. Um, for example, when we are scheduling presentations, we will often just go to the Outlook calendar and say, what's available? What time can I get? Um, but when you're approaching things more intentionally through what you learn in the campfire method, you'll take into consideration the time, the location, and the atmosphere because people will anchor their beliefs and their feelings not only to where they are, but how it feels where they are, and also when they're experiencing these messages. So there are different times of the day that work better for certain types of communications. Uh, there are certain sequences and contexts wherein communications land differently. Uh, for example, a message that reaches people close to a layoff has a totally different impact than a message that reaches people close to uh a big sales conversion. So there's uh a lot of things that leaders kind of Forget to take into consideration, or sometimes, worst case scenario, they're lazy about it. They they they know that those contexts are real, but they choose to ignore them for the sake of convenience.

Sara Best 22:18

And I think we experience experience this a lot. Like we'll get the time that's available. Hey, this is a busy leadership team. We want you to come in for 30 minutes. We're going to be at this location. And, you know, like, okay, we'll be there. But I I walked into this room and there weren't even enough seats for everybody in the room. Well, one person was standing up sort of in a windowsill against the wall. And the room it was easily uh two to three times smaller than it needed to be for this group of leaders. And there was this little teeny screen in the front of the room. So I just want to clarify too, or emphasize this default. It sometimes we just accept what's there without understanding uh how it will take away from uh the encounter and the experience that we're hoping to create for the person. So to be a little more on purpose about even the lighting in the room. Do you have any good examples, Eric? Um, I know in the book you talk about uh the sales presentation, the organization that was getting pitches from the marketing crews, and there was one that stood out from the others. I'm not sure if that's a good example that you want to share here, but something like that so our listeners can grab a hold of it.

Eric Harris 23:28

Oh, yeah. No, I'd I'd love to tell that story. So so this was many years ago. I was part of a team that was asked to choose a new uh advertising agency for our business. And uh we went on a tour and visited five agencies in two days, five cities in two days.

Sara Best 23:46

Yes, yes, yes.

Eric Harris 23:47

It was brutal and we were beat up by the end of it, but really the beat the beating was that the first four agencies were exact cookie-cutter replicas, presentation-wise, of one another. They would welcome us with applause, walk us down a long hallway to a U-shaped conference room table. There'd be a big screen, we would all sit in our chairs and basically pay homage to the screen. They would regurgitate our brief back to us as if that was proof that they had understood the assignment, and then they would walk us through work that really failed to deliver on the brief. And it was so frustrating. We, by the time we left the fourth of those agencies, we were like, Do we even need another one of these? This is ridiculous. We show up at the fifth agency. It's late at night. The CEO greets us in the lobby. There's no applause. And she says, Hey, y'all, respectfully, uh, the team that worked on your business is waiting for you in the conference room. But everyone else went home for the night because we didn't really think it was important to put on a dog and pony show. We value work-life balance. And so, right off the jump, we were like, This is different. This is this is special. And when they walked us down the hallway, instead of walking us into a slideshow theater, they walked us into what was like a country club lounge. They had retrofitted their entire conference room to be leather club chairs. There was a bartender in the corner mixing old fashions. There was no screen anywhere to be found. And they they invited us in for a conversation. And they said, We we figured you've had a long couple of days. We thought you might like to just sit back and talk for a minute. And oh my gosh, it was so welcome. And and not only that, but when they went through their work, um, they handed it out on notepads and gave us pencils and said, Mark it up. Let's do this together. Nothing is precious. The only thing that we really want is this conversation with you so that we can shape what our work will become together. And it just it they created a completely different environment than the other agencies. Afterwards, the the CEO stopped me and my CMO in the hallway and said, Hey, we understand you've you've had a lot to think about. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and send a contract through DocuSign. Um, let us know your thoughts or if you have questions. We got in the car, we got in the Uber on the way to the airport, and my CMO signed the DocuSign in the Uber.

Sara Best 26:30

That's amazing. Yeah. Uh, and you know, to allow creative energy to flow to be the human experience it needed to be. That's phenomenal. It's a great example.

John Broer 26:40

Oh, yeah.

Sara Best 26:41

Thank you. So environment is important. Go ahead, John.

Thaw For Ambush Moments

John Broer 26:44

Well, no, I wanted to ask a very specific question relative. I mean, getting back to the whole boss hole prevention idea. Um, I think there is a lost art of what I would call extemporaneous or impromptu, the capacity for somebody to uh be very extemporaneous or impromptu, uh, provide some impromptu remarks in the moment. And how does the campfire method help an executive, manager, supervisor, senior leader really understand that in the moment, unexpectedly, needing to convey um uh a good a great message, uh, an engaging and compelling message. It doesn't have to be soaring vision, like you said, but just to really reach somebody. Maybe it's a small audience. So how does it, how does it help them?

Eric Harris 27:36

Oh yeah. I'm so glad you asked that question. There is actually a specific tool in the campfire method that we teach. It's called Thaw, T-H-A-W. It stands for thanks, help, and wow. And so it's a simple three-step process for getting unfrozen or getting unstuck in a moment where you're either caught off guard or you weren't expecting to necessarily lead someone on a journey in that moment. Uh, but it's a it's a reframe because ambushes happen. And and you know, I mean, raise your hand if you haven't been ambushed by some news or some employee or some vendor or something, uh, a reporter, right? This happens all the time to leaders. And so the the thaw uh framework is really designed to help those in-the-moment conversations blossom and turn what could have been an ambush into an opportunity. Uh so thanks, help and wow is essentially speak gratitude into your audience. That's step one. Say thanks. Thanks for thanks for asking that question. Thanks for being here. Thanks for all you've done so far. It really, the the expression matters less than the intention. Uh, just some sort of expression of gratitude. Follow that up with help. So either here's the help I need from you, or here's what we are doing to address this issue. Here's the help we're bringing, or here's the help we need. And then finally, wow, is take a minute to celebrate, lift their eyes, take them out of the current situation and remind them of what could be. And and then you have effectively turned uh an adrenaline-soaked situation into uh a dopamine situation where people are going, oh, I like where we're going. I want more of that.

Sara Best 29:35

Okay, so are we gonna talk about the fourth element, which I think I know what that is? It's you, isn't it?

Authentic Presence Through Practice

Eric Harris 29:42

It's you, absolutely. Yeah, the so the the fourth promise in the campfire method is that you'll know yourself. And really what that comes down to is um, well, let me let me frame this up. Most presentation training, most public speaking training teaches you how to be like everyone else. It teaches you that there is a certain place you hold your hands, it teaches you that when you speak, you need to have your thumbs resting on your index finger, or it teaches you that uh you should stand at the podium. And uh there's a lot of of uh those are kind of silly examples, but um, there are so many different criteria for how to turn the knobs on uh what you what you ultimately are as the medium for your message. And that's really what it's all about. So knowing yourself is taking responsibility for the fact that when you have an idea in a high-stakes moment, you alone are the medium for that message. And so here's here are ways that you can adjust and be authentically you, not some other version of you.

Sara Best 31:00

That's so good. What can get in the way of that authenticity showing up? What are the things you've come to understand are common that prevent leaders from showing up this way?

Eric Harris 31:11

Well, one and probably the biggest one is that we've been taught for decades that emotion doesn't belong at work.

Sara Best 31:20

Right.

Eric Harris 31:21

I think that's the the number one challenge in in creating an authentic presence. Um is that we've been told that we need to keep things factual, simple, um, even transactional. Tell people, like I some of the worst presentation advice, for example, is tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them, right? Or be brief, be brilliant, be gone. You know, it's there's all these different axioms and different expressions that that that kind of put leaders in a position to think that what they really need to be is not there. And so and it's it's a it's it's very, very challenging to break through that and kind of get over that hurdle. Um, but when you accept your responsibility, when you accept that you are the medium for your idea and that you alone are the only way that your audience will ever understand it or make sense of it or derive any sense of belief or meaning or purpose from it, that's when everything changes. So emotion is allowed to show up. In fact, it's encouraged to. It's it's how you show up as uh the owner of the idea, not just the information that supports it.

Sara Best 32:40

Right. I have to say, too, leaders that think emotion isn't visible to others might be fooling themselves. Their face and their voice, their tone of voice may say one thing, but their body language and their energy, um forgive me, Tim, but I've my husband is kind of like that. Like he'll say one thing, but you're reading his body and going, oh no, that that does not line up. So I think that's a challenge. The other thing, uh, and and you made this point for me when I was doing your training, um, preparation. Preparation, rehearsal. We can't we can't just wing it. So can you say just give us a minute on what kind of preparation is needed?

Eric Harris 33:21

Yeah, no, that's that's the second part of really what the presenter presence is all about. When you think about um what we currently do, you know, compare the preparation process of a of an elite athlete or a Broadway performer, right? The percentage, the ratio of practice time to performance time is so different, skewed wildly in favor of practice. Um athletes practice for hours every day to to then go play in a one-hour competition. It's it is it is remarkable the degree of um, well, it's remarkable how that's flipped in corporate culture, how every minute of every day is game day for these leaders. And and so they often don't prioritize or don't have the discipline or the muscle to force that practice into a very busy schedule. Uh so at Gather Round, we have a rule, it's one hour for every five minutes of content. So, yes, a 30-minute presentation takes six hours of rehearsal. It's it's necessary. And the reason it's necessary is because, like anything, you get better the more you do it. It's it's actually scientifically proven practice does make perfect. It is it's a process called myelination where proteins actually bind to the neurons in the brain. It's it's the reason why Malcolm Gladwell wrote outliers. It's real. Practice makes better.

John Broer 34:58

So that is so true. I I would imagine you encourage people to get a mock audience. I mean, get people in front of you.

Eric Harris 35:05

I do. And in fact, I recommend two types of audiences. I recommend one who has a stake in the idea, uh, one who does not. So the the person with the stake in the idea or the people are going to they're going to uh evaluate your idea. And the people without are going to evaluate you.

Sara Best 35:27

Eric, as we kind of head into the home stretch here, we're going to just make sure that people have access to a link to where they can find your book, which is going to be dropping soon. They can have the campfire method in their hands. They can study it. They can also work with you directly like I did. You work with teams, you work with individual presenters and leaders. So we'll make sure that people have access to you through the show notes. Two final points I'd love you to speak to. One is adrenaline is a hidden enemy. And the second is information does not equal understanding. Can you just touch on those as we come into the home stretch?

Adrenaline And Why Information Fails

Eric Harris 36:07

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So uh for starters, adrenaline as the common enemy. Uh, one thing that that presenter, and this is usually a light bulb moment in in trainings. Um, presenters who take high stakes stages in big moments, um, are often, when I ask them to describe how it feels, they describe similar sensations, heart racing, stomach bats, right? They're there the uh shortness of breath, um, sweating, cotton mouth, right? All of these things happen. Absolutely, yeah. Um, and and and they're very focused on what that feels like for them. And all of that is absolutely true, but it's only half the story. So the other half of the story is that your audience is also flooded with adrenaline in those high stakes moments. Uh audiences arrive to presentations, especially the high-stakes ones, asking themselves more questions than they have answers to. What does this mean for me? What am I about to hear about? Are they going to ask anything of me? Am I involved in this? Am I affected by this? Right. And the fear that that the unknowns create for the audience uh creates that adrenaline sensation. Not to mention the sensation of being slammed into with ideas all day, every day, right? Leaders are showing up on our, on, on their employees and their audiences' front doorsteps, going, here's a thing. Do you want it? Do you want to buy some? Right. Right? It's it happens all day, every day. So the adrenaline factor is high and it lives on both sides of the equation. It is very present in the presenter, it is very present in the audience. And so if you can see that adrenaline is that common enemy, then what you have to embrace is that your role as the communicator in that is not to sell in an idea. That's not your first responsibility. Your first responsibility is to reduce the adrenaline on both sides of the table.

Sara Best 38:13

Well, and if you I you taught me that if you don't design for this, you will be rejected. Like you and your ideas are already done before you get five minutes into the work.

Eric Harris 38:27

Oh, absolutely. Because adrenaline creates a binary sensation in the audience. And so really your odds when when your audience is experiencing fight or flight, your odds of successfully moving them from point A to point B become 50%, just like that. Just right off, right off the jump.

Sara Best 38:46

Well, people, if people get your book, they can learn about how to address that right in the beginning of your presentation. By the way, yeah, this is powerful. And then simply, information does not equal understanding.

Eric Harris 39:00

No, it does not. It does not. Information is free, it is everywhere. In the age of AI, it is it's the push of a button or speak to text into chat GPT. It is, I can get all the information I need anytime, all the time. What it what it takes real intentional human communication to create is understanding. And that understanding comes from uh belief. It comes from a sense of, oh, I I see that there is potential here and I want to be a part of it. And now I can understand what it takes for me to be involved in it. And I I do, I I would, I would look to you know, some of Jonathan Haites' work, for example, just the different systems that we live in, system one, system two, all of logic tends to follow emotion. So when we as presenters lead with information, we're speaking to the we're speaking to the caboose when we could have been speaking to the engine.

Sara Best 40:10

Oh, that's a great visual. I I think the I've heard a lot of leaders say, well, we talked about this. I told them this. Like I shared that in a meeting, as if that equates to buy-in, understanding, clarity, direction, and it doesn't. So all the more reason why we wanted to feature this campfire method so that leaders can start to own the results they're getting with their people when they're trying to move from here to there. And and any organization we encounter today is. There's there's so much change happening. We've got to move, but there's a way in which we do that effectively. And the campfire method helps us do that. Yeah. Uh, what's next for you? What what's what's on the horizon for you?

Book Next Steps And Deck Free Challenge

Eric Harris 40:57

So, what's next is I plan to do quite a bit of speaking because the the book is in the world. And in the course of writing this book, um, I may have accidentally written another one, which is should be coming on its heels. Uh, but you know, because this book really is all about the braver presenter in you. Yes. Um, but there were there was a series of chapters all about creating a culture of storytelling in your organization. And when I looked at the the total picture of the book and said, well, that feels like it's it lives near, but not directly with the the responsibility that we have as leaders to owe to be the medium for these, for the messages, for these ideas. And so I could I would imagine in the next couple of years there's going to be a companion book to the campfire method, all about creating a culture where this type of communication is not only tolerated, but it's encouraged.

Sara Best 41:57

I look forward to that. Eric, we want to say thank you for your contribution to uh connection, because this is really about leaders being more present to and aware of who they are and creating conversations and sharing information in ways that acknowledge and uh reverence who they have with them. That's how I'll say it.

Eric Harris 42:20

Yeah, well, thank you for that. That really is honestly what it's all about is just let's return to the essence of storytelling because that's what makes us human with one another.

Sara Best 42:32

And for our listeners, we'll throw out a challenge to you this week. What if you had a meeting and a conversation without the deck? Like you might have to do a little work to get ready for it. Um, they can use a flip chart though, right? If they needed to, Eric. Yeah, absolutely. Create a visual in the conversation, but what if you let go of the deck? Can you imagine a deck-free meeting? It's beautiful. Eric, thank you so much for your time.

Eric Harris 42:57

Thank you. I'm so glad to be here with y'all today. I appreciate it.

John Broer 43:01

All right, everybody. Good having you here, and we'll see you next time on the Boss Hole Chronicles.

Announcer 43:10

Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Fosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here.

John Broer 43:15

And if you have your own Fosshole story that you want to share with the Bostole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at my story at the Fossole Chronicles.com. Again, my story at the FossballCronicles.com. We'll see you next time.