September 2, 2026 – Origin of a Leader Dr. Pam Manfredo Curtis and PATH to Strategic Impact Dr. Michael Gerharz

00:04 INTRO 1: In the AM, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion, Jim Beach.

00:24 JIM BEACH: Hello, everyone, welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there, making some money, learning to be a better entrepreneur, using all of the resources out there. That is one of the great things about our times. There are an infinite amount of resources for entrepreneurs on every single aspect.

00:47 JIM BEACH: We are certainly one of those, and we hope that you tell your friends about it. An amazing show today, 2 fantastic guests, really impressed with our booking group. Thank you, Frank. Today we have Dr. Pam Manfredo Curtis talking about the origin of a leader. She has origin of a leader.com. It is an amazing conversation on how family affects leadership.

01:12 JIM BEACH: I am obsessed with these ideas. It’s so interesting, how your genes, your genetic makeup and your background, your environment, affect everything. And your family background. It was absolutely fascinating. I am a middle child, but my elder brother passed before I was really, I was still a baby. And I’ve often wondered how that affected our family dynamics and me as a person.

01:38 JIM BEACH: So I can’t wait to talk with Dr. Curtis about it. After that, we have Dr. Michael Gerharz’s equally fascinating conversation on communications. He has a PATH method for better communications, and he’s also got a special tool out there for us at MichaelGerharz.com. Maybe Dr. Michael Gerharz.com slash startup-school. We will check that, of course, and put it in the description and in the show notes and stuff.

02:07 JIM BEACH: But his PATH method of communication is one of the best ones I’ve heard in a long, long time. And so I was really excited to speak with Michael. And now to share it with you. So, great show. I appreciate you being with us. Tell your friends, take notes. Remember, we’re transcribing all of the shows now, so it’s there for everyone, you know, in print form if you prefer that.

02:35 JIM BEACH: We will be right back to get started. No, no crying.

02:39 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: No I like to cry.

02:41 JIM BEACH: Good for you. We are back. And again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very exciting to introduce my first guest. Please welcome Dr. Pam Manfredo Curtis. She is the founder and president of Manfredo Curtis Associates, and author of a new book called The Origin of a Leader, transforming family patterns into leadership power.

03:04 JIM BEACH: She’s had a 35 year career helping C-level executives, become better leaders, have better relationships and achieve more. She focuses on this. This is absolutely fascinating to me. A leader’s early family experience and how those deeply ingrained patterns influence the way they communicate now, over the course of her career, she has worked with companies like General Motors, Cummins, Diageo, Harley Davidson, and my favorite company on Earth some days, the Walt Disney company.

03:35 JIM BEACH: She has her own Sirius XM show called Corner Office Confidential. Very excited to talk. Pam, welcome to the show. I mean, Dr. Curtis. I’m on the sofa. I’m laying down.

03:47 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Oh, I like that.

03:49 JIM BEACH: Corner office. Corner office confidentials. I like that. Very lovely.

03:53 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: It’s lovely to meet you, Jim, and I’m thrilled to be here.

03:58 JIM BEACH: Yes, we’ve just been talking for a few minutes before we came on the air and have a lot of background now, and this is going to be fascinating. Why does my family life affect my leadership or my ability to communicate now?

04:15 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Because the family environment that you grew up in was the first system that you lived in and where you got to see your parents and grandparents, role models, either effective behaviors, or ineffective ones. And so how you communicate, how you deal with conflict, how you build relationships, how affection is shown, when there’s sadness or trauma, how that’s dealt with.

04:39 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: All of those things are mirrored for you during the first 18 years of your life. And so you practice, you see that so often that you practice that pattern over and over again throughout your life, and by the time you’re an adult, it shows up at work, and as a human being with your family, friends, community, and so forth.

05:03 JIM BEACH: All right. I really don’t think I’ve heard anything like this thesis before. Hey, where did this come from? Was there an aha moment or where did this idea come from?

05:15 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Well, first of all, let’s start with my origins. Okay? Let me start with that because I think that funneled things for me. Um, when I, so there’s 2 parts to my origin. The first one is my personal origin and how it affected who I am as a leader. I was a performer and a singer, and I realized that you could bring a room along with you if you tuned into the emotions of people. I was also in student council, and I was president of student council, so I observed leaders and was a leader. [Unclear phrase about directing shows.]

05:54 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: So I practiced. Very early, moving the emotions of people and observing leaders. As the, the second part of my origin affects the world of coaching that I operate in. You know, my mother was a school, is a school psychologist. My father worked with United Airlines, you know, flight attendants. And people were always at my home.

06:17 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: And when there were, you know, people mattered. We would have long, deep conversations, and we would talk about things that mattered. Psychological safety. Did people feel safe to have conversations? So all of that, um, plus some traumas that were around us, that we would process a family, made me tune into empathy for other people. Even my father losing his father and his brother in the same 3 weeks in the summer or my mother losing her sister when she was only 16.

06:51 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: All of these kinds of things were talked about and important. What happened was then I started working with executives, presidents of companies, right out of college. And I would watch leader after leader after leader, and how they showed up, and I started to examine their child, you know, like, aspects of their lives, like, uh, what is my home life like?

07:15 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: What is you know, what is my vision for my life? How do I show up at work? And then there’s always a question, and I started to see patterns, and then I coached thousands of people in high performance teamwork in authentic leadership in, uh, you know, human resource, interpersonal facilitation. And so I have seen pattern after pattern after pattern repeated in these 9 common childhood environments.

07:42 JIM BEACH: Okay, so there’s 9 things, the 9 commonalities. I can make a list that we could talk about that?

07:50 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Yep, sure.

07:51 JIM BEACH: Oh, I have a list. I’m so excited. I’m writing that. Okay, nine. All right. I can, one of these should be me, right?

08:00 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: [Unclear short exchange.] [Unclear short exchange.]

08:03 JIM BEACH: Okay. Oh, I can’t wait. You have an idea which one I am from what we talked about before we came on in the air?

08:13 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Now remember, you told me you were just giving me 13rd of who you were. So I know from a third.

08:21 JIM BEACH: When I said that twice or 3 times.

08:24 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Very funny.

08:25 JIM BEACH: We’re both old enough to remember how Ronald Reagan did it, right? On the other third, on the other third and on the other… No, he did it with halves, didn’t he? He had the third half.

08:40 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: I love that. Really do. What I would say is that these are the most common environments that I have witnessed in the top leaders in the world. It’s very fantastic leaders, right?

08:52 JIM BEACH: Okay let’s go through it.

08:55 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: All right. So the first and by the way, aside from the environment, there is a strength that can emerge from that environment, if all factors are positive or you decide to change the way um you are showing up. So I’ll explain. But the first 3 are related to homes of stability. And they are named. So in the nest, I call it the nest.

09:20 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: There’s not no one more important than parents and they show unconditional love for their child. And this is an environment of high expectations, and, uh, you know, nurturing of others. People mattered. You had to deliver a lot. You had a lot of responsibility, and what I find is that this environment leads to what I call nurturing achievers. In business.

09:45 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Um, the second one is called the model home, and this is still a stable environment. This one is all about the importance of values of parents and grandparents for your primary caregiver. So, people model and nothing was more important than things like integrity or justice, freedom, love, family. And those parent and grandparents figure to model those continuously.

10:09 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: What I find is that leaders or human beings that emerge from that become, uh, value champions, values, crusaders, uh, people who make transformation happens. And the third one, one I’m from for sure is the matriarchy. Which is that there’s no one um more important than a strong mom, a mother who models. You know, uh, toughness and uh, independence and uh, taking care of the family while excellent.

10:36 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: What I find in the matriarchy is that men versus women experience different strengths that result. Women become drivers. They’re self-confident, focused, determined, and they use their power well. And men become champions of women. So these men, as I’ve experienced promote women. They move them into the top spots. They are not threatened by women.

10:59 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: So you’ll often see the leaders in companies from this, like changing the whole uh percentage of women that move to the top. So those 3 are what are called stable homes, does that make sense? Do those make sense?

11:15 JIM BEACH: Yes, so we have nurturing, achievers, model home with values, and a matriarchy is our first 3 and those all lead to stable, nice homes that, uh, yes, that makes sense.

11:27 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: They’re stable. They’re not, you know, not at all easy. Like that first one of the nest, which leads to nurturing achievers, it’s beautiful. Yeah, there are development areas that come from all of these. You know, just as an example in the nest. People almost feel guilty. If they had such a beautiful childhood that they get shy about sharing, what was so special about it.

11:53 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: And they tend not to share their personal stories as leaders, as human beings later, because they feel guilty. Make sense?

12:01 JIM BEACH: Yes. All right. Four, 5 and 6.

12:05 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Four, 5, and six. So this is about homes of complexity, it’s called. And this is really mental complexity. So in the shadows, it’s a child is, um, typically born of somebody who is more famous than them. So a father, a mother, is very well known in the community, in a company, they may be a president of a company.

12:29 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: They may be a coach, um, or teacher in the community that is beloved. And what happens is these children have to differentiate who they are versus the parent and they can um actually become uh what are called illuminators. They not only if they work really hard, learn to differentiate themselves from their parental figure, um, they can also illuminate for other people, like what is wonderful about them.

12:56 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: The nomad is another environment where children constantly move. They change cities, they move around the country, or internationally. And they can become chameleons. Um, if they address things, but they have other issues, they might have superficial relationships and feel lonely at times. And not feel as connected. So they have to learn how to tune into their own emotional needs and emotional needs of others.

13:23 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: In the third one is the phantom limbs. Which is that before the age of 18, you lose a parent, either through death or divorce, a sibling, you know, as grandparents, and this is significant unexpected loss. Uh, the strengths that can emerge from this, although it’s very hard because they have to deal with.

13:44 JIM BEACH: Pam what’s this one called? The phantom what?

13:48 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: The phantom limb, that famous scientific expression of people who lose a body part. Okay. Always there, right? You think it’s always there. So the phantom…

13:58 JIM BEACH: I have a phantom brain.

14:01 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: I doubt that. But the phantom limb does create resilient committed partners, you know, if, if they step into the vacuum. Um, that where they have to fill the whole of the person dying or weaving through divorce and deal with their own feelings of loss. So those are, you know, what happens with mental complexity is that you’re in your head a lot.

14:25 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: You might think about, am I good enough? You know, why did this person leave? Was it me? Um, do they not value me? Did they not love me? And why, because I’m so attached to, say, the other parental figurative divorce, you know, is there something about my mom or dad that’s, no, I don’t, that’s similar to me that they don’t love?

14:50 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: So there’s a lot of internal head games that can happen for people in mental complexity.

14:57 JIM BEACH: But that resonates.

14:58 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Yes. Okay, and the last 3 are about trauma. And the, you know, trauma is hard and so when people examine their lives and they see the trauma. You know, these come up. They may raise tough emotions within my readers as they read this book. So please, get additional support if you need it, please, keep that in mind.

15:22 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Um, the maze is a child must navigate like disorienting chaos. Of an alcohol-addicted parent or parents. And that is a very challenging environment, of course. Uh they can become consistent stabilizers. They go through, though, a lot of challenges. Slings and Arrows is verbal and emotional or physical abuse or onslaughts. So a child has to dodge those pieces, and they can become a sort of diplomat, but they have to go through a lot of work to get to that point.

15:55 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: And finally, Sounds of Silence is when a child suffers the shame of sexual abuse or sexual boundary crossing. And they can become vocalists. They stand up on behalf of other people. They use their voice really productively and super proud of them. They too have to go through a lot of, uh, transformational work. Right? So those are the 9 that I lay out and people may see parts of themselves in different ones.

16:24 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: They may not see themselves fully in one and so, but what I teach in the book is how to draw your own emotional timeline so that you can figure out what are the patterns, excuse me, that you see in your own life.

16:41 JIM BEACH: Okay. Boy, that sounds scary. And how do we use this to become a better leader and all of the subtitle benefit? Is this sort of part one?

16:52 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Oh, that’s a great question. So this is act one of a 3 act play of your life.

16:58 JIM BEACH: Okay.

16:59 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: The book, because I had that theater background, I think of a person’s life as three acts. One is zero to 18. Part 2 is the implications of those first 18 years, so it’s the rest of your life. And at 3 is once you free something that I can explain in act 2, You build what I call referent power. Um, which is about who you are, it’s uh, a character, with your integrity, and when people want to follow you.

17:30 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: You have incredible presence more than people who just hold a title of a very large position. So, Act 2 is is the important chapter about what are the implications of those first 18 years. Do you want me to explain that just to smidge?

17:48 JIM BEACH: Sure, please.

17:48 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Okay. So the book, right, with the three acts have it as the roles you were born into. Act 2 is the roles you’re in, and then at 3 is the role you’re destined for. In Act 2, the roles you’re in. I show readers how readers or listeners. That those childhood patterns are on communication, relationship building, and so forth, affect your values, your beliefs.

18:14 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Some personality characteristics, like your needs for inclusion, control and affection, which is modeled in your childhood. It affects your motivations. What is your purpose here on Earth? It affects the leaders you like to work with. They may remind you of parents that you beloved, or the leaders you hate working for, and I use that word intentionally, because they remind you of difficult parents or grandparents in your life.

18:43 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Even the types of assignments you get to do. For example, one of my favorite companies to work with is General Motors, and I love talking to the leaders there because so many of them played in the garage with their parents on cars, you know, you know, transforming them, building them, it was fun for them now. Something happens, though, when you start thinking about the implications and you look at this thing called your emotional timeline.

19:13 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Sometimes there’s what I call a block. And what that means is if you imagine, we all have this leadership energy, this human energy, like a river that, you know, goes really quickly through a national forest. And when boulders fall, they fall into the water and stop the water from moving. And so the energy shuts down. Well, when we’re children, and things like we were sexually abused and nobody stood up for us.

19:42 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Or both of my parents were abusive and they were drinking. Or even at work, something happened or in school, something happened, where, you know, where maybe I felt shut down, like my teacher told me, I didn’t have good opinions, and I shouldn’t talk. Well, those things stay with people for years, years and years and years. So when I get them, they may be standing behind a chair in the front of the room, wearing black, and not wanting to share their perspective.

20:15 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: And these people are paid a lot of money to lead. Yet they are quiet in front of the room. And I often know that something happened to them to make them feel that way. So we have to uncover what is the block that was in your way? And we do that in a certain way and go through forgiveness and it’s often involving having real conversations either with the person if they’re still alive.

20:45 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Or if they are dead, they can go to a grave or they can talk to other people about them. But you have to free that block in order to release this leadership energy. And in act three, it’s all about improving your referent power. Getting people to follow you in a much bigger way through. referent power.

21:07 JIM BEACH: referent power. Say spell that.

21:09 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: R-E-F-E-R-E-N-T. Okay. And referent power is about who you are as a human being. Your character. You know, often the most influential people in a room are not the ones who have the high level, you know, title or speaking the most. They are the people, listen, who make sure that everyone is heard.

21:33 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Who gives feedback to others because they actually care about that person being successful. So they do it with loving intent. [Unclear phrase about inviting constructive differences and different views of business issues.] They invite the conversational things. It’s safe for people to do that. So referent power is about our ability to influence as a human being, who creates the conditions for people to have real conversations.

22:00 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Does that make sense?

22:02 JIM BEACH: Yes, it does. So as a business leader. How do do I? How do I use this in 2 ways? How do I use this knowledge to make myself better as a leader? And then how do I project that into the company and make my employees happier and more productive?

22:22 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Yeah, thank you. So first of all, underneath all of this, um, if a leader does this for themselves, they build their self-awareness. Like, why do I show up the way that I show up, um, and when does it happen? When am I arguing? When do I shut down? Why do I do that? Because the question is why am I showing up the way I show up?

22:48 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: So they, they do this self-examination and we haven’t spoken about it, but emotions are data, and so my leaders have to constantly check what emotion they are feeling as they are going through this process to gauge and build their, uh, significant self-awareness of how they show up. Leaders also have to build high performing teams and create cultures that are engaging, that are satisfying, that are growth oriented, it’s different in different places.

23:19 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: And so they start with themselves. And many of the leaders I work with, in fact, 250, I have 258 executive teams in our companies’ database. These people have built high performing teams where the leaders go through a process for a minimum of 2 years, over 6 offsites, and in the first one, they are examining their childhood. Talking about the, the, strengths that emerge, the negative things that happen.

23:47 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: And they’re, you know, talking about how does that affect the way I show up, my greatest joy, my sorrows. They share that with others, authenticity and trust among team members. [Unclear phrase about a statistically meaningful result.] For the high performing team, and they learn how to have real conversations through conflict and feedback. They get aligned, they hold each other accountable.

24:12 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Uh, they do the real work of what I call having real conversation. It is also important to constantly assess the culture that is happening in the company. And whether people are engaged or not, I spoke about this briefly. But people are constantly examining this. In one company alone, recently 10,000 people……over a six-month experience examined their lives and different behaviors…

24:38 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: And to say, how do I show up as a human and being and a leader? So it is, you know, the interest, not only in who you are and how you can grow as a person, but also change the way you are having real conversations. Is powerful for cultural transformation and growth. Is that helpful?

25:00 JIM BEACH: Yes, very.

25:01 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Yeah. So, um, it also, what I will tell you though, Jim, is that my executives who I’ve worked with for years and years, they say to me, I only wish I did this earlier in my life because I raised children. And I need to think about the environment or I wish I had thought more about the environment I created to those kids.

25:25 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: I can’t tell you the number of people who wanna talk to me from the parenting world. Just to say, what am I doing? That’s correct and not correct here. But we want our children to have real conversations and build relationships in a really healthy way.

25:43 JIM BEACH: Yeah, there’s nothing worse than messing up the kid things.

25:48 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: It’s true. And of course, we all make mistakes and we’re not perfect. However, we can really try to do things better. And PS, while I say to people, the biggest changes happen between the ages of 35 and 55? You can do a lot of things earlier. It’s just that when we’re 35 or by that time, we are willing to look at our lives, like we’re not perfect.

26:15 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: [Unclear incomplete phrase about strengths.] There are weaknesses, we’ve made mistakes, have failed with some things. Let me understand why. When we’re first out of school or just getting on our way. We want to prove ourselves to other people. This work requires people to be humble, to be self reflective. And examine what makes me wonderful and why have I failed at something?

26:41 JIM BEACH: That’s a great place to wrap it up. Pam, how do we find out more, follow online, get a copy of the book. Listen to the show, all that please.

26:52 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Well, I’m excited to share it with everybody. It comes out September one. Um, which is.

26:59 JIM BEACH: That was yesterday, Pam.

27:00 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Yesterday, which was so exciting, and it’s available in any place that you buy your books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, but I do have a website. It’s called Origin of a Leader, and you will see all the places to buy the book. There’s also an audiobook. I recorded it myself You can hear me speaking to all of you.

27:24 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Uh, and so it’s available in a lot of places, and really my desire in all of this was to bring what I have learned with executives. To everyone. Why should just my executive group have an opportunity to examine themselves? Why can’t we all do that? So I hope it’s valuable for the readers more than anything.

27:46 JIM BEACH: And listen. Dr. Curtis, thank you so much for being with us. We’d love to have you back and congratulations on the book. Thanks a lot.

27:57 DR. PAM MANFREDO CURTIS: Thank you so much. I so enjoyed it.

28:00 JIM BEACH: And we will be right back.

28:02 INTRO 2: Well, that’s a that’s a wonderful question, actually. Oh, my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question.

28:32 SHOW BUMPER: School for Startups Radio.

28:34 JIM BEACH: We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest who can help us communicate better. Please welcome Dr. Michael Gerharz to the show. He is an author and a communications strategist, coach, and consultant who helps leaders find the right words to make their ideas understood and remembered.

28:58 JIM BEACH: He is the author of several books. First, The PATH to Strategic Impact, what great leaders understand about strategy communication and others don’t. And in another book called The Aha Effect. Michael Gerharz’s, welcome to the show. Are you doing?

29:14 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: I’m good. Hi Jim, how are you?

29:17 JIM BEACH: I am very well. Thank you. Why do people have trouble communicating our ideas?

29:23 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Because they are so much in love with them.

29:27 JIM BEACH: Well, just because I’m in love with it, why does that make it hard for me to communicate? I can’t wait to talk about it forever.

29:37 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Exactly, exactly. And that’s exactly the problem. Like, yeah, I totally get that. You don’t get bored talking about it for 3 hours, but your audience doesn’t have that same patience. Like, and the thing that happens, especially with passionate people, is that they are so in love with like all the nitty-gritty details, the features, the arguments, the charts, um, the, the nuances, that they have trouble to focus on something that really intrigues the audience.

30:08 JIM BEACH: Okay. But what intrigues the audience is certainly going to be how much horsepower my engine has. I mean, that’s what’s intriguing to me, why wouldn’t it be intriguing to them?

30:20 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Well, just look at one of my favorite ads, like, um, it’s a, it’s a Porsche ad from, from the 70s. Um, and they ran a headline that ran like this, honestly now, did you spend your youth dreaming about one day owning a Nissan or a Mitsubishi? And beneath it was a picture of a new Porsche 911.

30:44 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And so now tell me that even one Porsche has ever been sold due only to the technical features it has. Um, I’m not sure it has, like, because um, there are tons of good reasons for why it’s a better car than a Nissan or a Mitsubishi, but the other um, the, the same is true, vice versa, right? Like if you’re a family, what uses a sports car. When you’ve got 3 kids in the back.

31:13 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Um, and so that’s the real, the real um, task here to find out what’s the real reason someone buys. What’s the appeal that makes them really fall in love with your product?

31:27 JIM BEACH: Well, the car is of whether they’re going to get sex or not, right?

31:32 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Maybe. That could be one reason. Yeah.

31:35 JIM BEACH: Well, in America, I think that’s why people buy Porsche. So… All right. And I love the analogy. You’re right. We didn’t dream of, you know, owning a Mazda or a Mitsubishi. No one sat around and dreamed of that. So. Okay, so… I understand that, but why can’t the communicators, the politicians and the CEOs come out with a message that clear, they have incredible people helping them.

32:03 JIM BEACH: They should be able to make dry, boring cereal that sexy.

32:08 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Uh, they they should. And it’s a miracle that they don’t, isn’t it? Like, um, reverse miracle. It’s a bad miracle. What’s a bad miracle called? A reverse. Yeah, exactly. It’s actually a question that I’ve asked myself. I mean, these these consultants are paid high salaries. Well, why is no one telling them that this is not going to resonate?

32:33 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Um, I guess like. Like, one of the reasons is, like, what I, I think is a, is just a one letter flip. Like most people think, but when they think about why someone should buy my thing or vote for me or agree to my proposal, they come up with a 100 reasons why someone should buy. And in other words, they’re trying to persuade really hard why I should, why I should vote for you or agree to your proposal.

33:04 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Or buy your thing. But what if we flipped one letter, the S to the W? Like, what, what, what if, with all the good reasons that why I should buy? I we asked. So, yeah, of course, but why would I? Like, um, I know that you’ve got, that you’re convinced that you, you, your product is superior, that you’ve got a 100 good reasons, but which of those really resonates with me?

33:34 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And I think that’s a question that’s not very often asked. Like, um, we we try to make our case clearer and come up with ever more arguments and nuances while we are right and the audience must agree to us and and come over to our side rather than taking their perspective and finding that one angle.

33:56 JIM BEACH: Okay. How do I know what they want to hear? Um, it’s my…

34:01 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: I would like to challenge that question. Like, it might not be about what they want to hear, but more like what they need to hear. And, well, I guess that’s that’s one of the things that many communicators could get better at, and it comes down to listening, and like, first of all, plainly asking them, like having a conversation, paying attention to the conversations that you have, like asking your customers.

34:30 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: So, what’s going on in your world or like going on to social media and just observing some of their conversations and figuring out, so what’s going on in their world, what’s really, what are they not telling me that I can like somehow figure out in the way that they complain about things? And then finding words for that.

34:53 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: That is, I think, one of the things that opens many doors for you.

34:59 JIM BEACH: The cultures matter, you’re calling in from Germany today. Thank you for taking the time, your evening to do that. Does the culture mattered? How often do the cultures cross wires and we end up not understanding each other because of a cultural issue?

35:16 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Yeah, I think that, that, that’s a, that’s a crucial fact. It’s sometimes more important than others, but it doesn’t even have to do with like crossing country borders. Like the same thing happens inside big corporations. Like when the leadership team comes back from the strategy retreats and tries to communicate their new strategy and the workers on the line, just don’t understand the word of that consultant speak.

35:44 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Like, that’s a culture issue too. And, um, yeah, one of the best things that you can do is like try to find the words that your audience uses. Like so many communicators and so many campaigns are crafted in a meeting room thinking harder about like what would be the most fancy way to say that when the best way to find the right words is to listen better to what your audience already uses.

36:14 JIM BEACH: Okay. Tell us about your book, The PATH to Strategic Impact. What do you want us to learn from this? The, what is the strategic impact you’re hoping to deliver?

36:26 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Well, first of all, that your strategy has an impact, like has the impact that you hope it does. Like, I mean, I bet you’ve been through that same experience yourself. You’ve been to that strategy retreat that I’ve just mentioned. And maybe to together with the leadership team. And everyone comes back home, like you’re pumped, like this time we totally nailed it.

36:52 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Um, it’s like this time we’re going to crush the competition. And you like hire an presentation agency to design fancy slides, you print the posters for the walls, and you make the town hall to announce it. And then, like, yeah, people agree, like, this sounds great. Like what happens the next day or like 3 weeks after, nothing’s changed and 3 months later, like everything’s back to before and next year we’re going through the same loop.

37:23 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And so I was just wondering, so how many hours, how many, how much passion is wasted in those strategy efforts when all of it is like wasted because it’s not communicated in a way that the team can actually make sense of it? And that, like, that was one of the main things that I was working with my clients, um, that they wanted their strategy to survive those, those town halls and like actually make an impact.

37:53 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And I was looking at both what I worked, what I did for my own clients, but also like what the most successful companies did for their strategies, how they communicated it so that it could have an impact. And I found that beautiful acronym path. Like they, they, in a way, they lighted the path to strategic, to strategic impact, like a path that brings us to a brighter future, but it also like consists of those 4 core principles of great communication that help your strategy make the impact.

38:29 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And if you’d like, I can break it down for you.

38:33 JIM BEACH: Oh yeah, I love a little thing to break down. I love bullet points and stuff. Yes, go.

38:40 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Yeah, of course. P is plain and simple. Can you find words that everyone on your team truly understands? Like from top down, from the top management to the, to the workers at the, at the manufacturing line, people that they understand can make sense of and pass along among each other. A is actionable. So do these words inform the actions that people actually take.

39:06 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: So when I hear them, do I know what this means for my task, what I have to do tomorrow morning when the customer rings up or when a new project has to be set up? That’s a T is transformative. Do your words actually communicate that this is gonna change things. Do I believe you that this has the potential to actually move us forward in a significant way?

39:33 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And H? That’s the one that surprises many like business people. Is it heartfelt? Like, is it something that we truly believe? Not only from a business perspective, but does it also align with the personal motivations of the team? Like, does it align the business with a personal, with a personal goals? And if we have those 4 plain and simple, actionable, transformative and heartfelt, your strategy will have a much higher chance of making an impact.

40:05 JIM BEACH: I used to live in Japan, Michael, and worked for the Japanese government for several years. And one of the things that Japanese do so well is they have a conversation at the lowest levels and 2 or 3 people decide this is a good idea. You know, if we implemented this plan, it would be a good thing. And they don’t, uh, propose it to anybody until 3 or 4 people have already bought in, and then they propose it to people who have already secretly bought in, and then they work their way up, and by the time they get to the boss, everyone underneath is bought in.

40:47 JIM BEACH: And so when they get to the boss and make their proposal, everyone’s already on board. And they already have a plan and it’s already heartfelt, transformative, actionable and plain and simple because it starts with the average salary man employee and has this process of talking to each other and networking. They call it Nemawashi. Uh, they all buy in before anyone says anything.

41:13 JIM BEACH: What are your thoughts on that system?

41:16 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Yeah, I mean, that’s a brilliant way of doing things. Um, and um, and like, it’s kind of the ideal case, like that, that you let, let actions speak, because actions always speak, uh, speak more than, than any words can. Um, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the book The PATH to Strategic Impact tries to, to tackle is like the opposite.

41:41 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Like when leadership sees that like the market is shifting. We need to move the whole system around. Like, how do you get the people down doing the work? How do you get them to get what we what we need them to do, like to actually move the ship around because like that’s not the CEO’s job to actually like assemble the parts.

42:06 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Like, they have to, like, their job is not to create the, to, to create the strategies outcome, but like to paint it in a way that the team can actually bring it to life and that they can trust the team to be able and willing to actually bring it to life.

42:26 JIM BEACH: Well, shouldn’t I then, as the CEO of an American company, try to include people as much as possible so that they do tell, we do come up with a plain and simple plan that they understand that they go, oh, yeah, we get it now. I mean, if I had buy in… Earlier, doesn’t that help? What about including, maybe my question is this. Shouldn’t I include the salary, man, during all of the planning so that the, uh, announcement and all of the action after that go very well.

43:02 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Absolutely. I mean, that’s the best thing that you can do. Like, have those conversations, have those conversations, like, first of all, like make sure it’s a great strategy by, like, figuring out, like, is that something that our team can actually implement that they, that, that makes actually sense, like, in the projects, in on the manufacturing lines, that, that’s the first thing.

43:27 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: But also is it like something that, something that they, that they actually understand? But what happens in reality is that like we make… We ask a focus group, um, some artificial questions and then like we make a summary of their, that of their replies. And then we take this and put it in an analysis. And nowadays, perhaps like put it into an AI agent that like does some scrambling around here to come up with some clever sounding wording.

44:00 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And then we go on that retreat. And somehow the things that we heard in those conversations with while bringing the workers in earlier, gets fuzzier and fuzzier and fuzzier through the process. And that’s something that we need to remove, like, like, yeah, actually, actually use the words that they, that we heard in those conversations to bring it back to them so that they actually have the feeling.

44:27 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Yeah, this this leadership team gets me. This gets what we’re dealing with.

44:33 JIM BEACH: All right, I like that a lot. So, in the book, Do we have, uh, a way of measuring this or, uh, figuring out if we’re making progress, how do you score yourself after this?

44:46 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Um, Well, the, the, the book actually comes, comes with like, um, like in appendix where, where you can go through a set of questions and there’s a couple of resources, actually quite a number of resources on the books, uh, websites that help you do exactly um, that where you can go through a number of questions. But I think one of the best tests that you can actually do right now, right after this show, is to go through the floors, or like if you’re a remote company, like shoot some emails to like 5 random employees of yours, like from different areas, and just ask them, Can you tell me?

45:30 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: What you think our strategy is. And then just shut up. Don’t correct them. Just listen and suffer through what they what they mirror you back. And you’ll be surprised, how many different answers you’ll get, and you’ll be even more surprised if you started the exercise with writing down what you think they will respond or what they should respond.

45:54 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And so that’s going to be a devastating experience for most companies. But like, The good news is that now you know, right? Now you can now you know what you need to work on. Now you can figure out, so what did you, did they get from what what we communicated to them? What do we need to correct?

46:18 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: How can we adjust our communication so that we can align them?

46:22 JIM BEACH: How do you make sure this doesn’t just become a bumper sticker slogan? It seems like this would be, it could be bumper sticker really easily. You know what I mean?

46:35 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Um, a great test. For that is. Is it being shouted through the hallways? Is it being used to make a call in a meeting? Like, the, one of my, one of my favorite strategies that I also breakdown in the book is by Southwest, which I think can be, is great for for, for, um, showing what I mean.

46:58 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Um, in the 70s. One of their one of their core strategic decisions was that they need to increase efficiency. They figured that airlines, aircrafts only make, um, make money while while they’re in the, in the air. So what they needed to do was minimize the time that a plane stands at the airport: getting people off the plane, getting the plane ready, getting people on the plane, and taking off again.

47:27 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: So the way that most companies would communicate this strategy is something like, ‘Our top priority is to become the efficiency leader in the airline industry,’ something that no ground staff would know what to make of. What does that mean for me? Right. But they found a very different way of communicating the same strategy. I think that’s what that’s why they succeeded while many others in the industry who certainly had the same realization, perhaps didn’t.

47:58 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Like they communicated it using just 2 words. The way they communicated the strategy was wheels up. Like, and that like, um, and that is a razor sharp decision tool, like, um, the ground staff knows that, um, the wheels need to get get up as fast as possible. Whenever the wheels go up, we know the plane is flying in the air.

48:23 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And the measuring stick for the decision is like, does that lead to the wheels going up faster? Absolutely do it. Does it slow us down? Absolutely don’t. And only like if it’s unclear, like there might be secondary priorities. And that is something that you can use, that you can shout among staff. Then you can use in a meeting to shut down a proposal that would slow the, like the turnaround time at an airport, um, down, down.

48:54 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: And like, I think this is a great way to think about like whether it’s just a nice slogan on the wall. Like that, that, that sounds nice when a customer come, walks in and and, and, and thinks, oh, that, that sounds great, or whether it’s actually being used by the team to make decisions.

49:16 JIM BEACH: I love that example. I can imagine, you know, cargo loaders closing the door to the airplane and going, wheels up, man, wheels up, you know, and then get a high five, you know?

49:29 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Exactly.

49:30 JIM BEACH: Oh gosh. That’s my problem is finding something like that for, you know, your e-commerce business. What is it? You know, envelope sealed, man. You know, I don’t know what it.. What would capture that emotion. That’s just such a great example, Michael.

49:48 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Yeah, yeah. Um, Yeah.

49:50 JIM BEACH: Do they still use that? You know Southwest has kind of lost their way in the last year or two. And did they only use that internally because I’ve never heard that use externally in their advertising?

50:04 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: No, I don’t think that that wasn’t advertising slogan. And I’m actually not sure they’re using it still. I, I, I mean, the, the airline industry has changed so much in the last 50 years when, when, when Southwest rose to fame. Um, Compared to today, like it’s, I don’t think that, that, that, that, that’s a thing, like, uh, Another great example that has been used in in advertisements was FedEx is famous like when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight, right?

50:38 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: That’s the same, that’s the same way of saying, like communicating the strategy that every other, um, uh, every other company would probably have communicated something like we need to spearhead the, or we need to be the most reliable carrier in the industry. Like, it’s the same thing, but it’s totally meaningless to the driver, um, who’s or to the staff who who’s who’ve missed the last plane.

51:05 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: But when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight. Like there’s absolutely no doubt what you do when you’ve missed the last plane. You hire, you charter a private one to bring the, to bring the package there.

51:21 JIM BEACH: I think FedEx has changed too, since they use that.

51:25 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: But like, that’s the same category. Like that’s totally actionable. It’s totally clear what it means, and it’s even like customer facing, it tells the customer what to expect from this strategy.

51:38 JIM BEACH: So how early in my business should I implement this when I have 5 employees, 10 employees? Does my 11th employee put together my path plan? How early can I do this?

51:50 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Why not today? Like, regardless of how many employees you have, regardless of whether you’ve even started the business or whether it’s just an idea? Like, use it to speak to friends at the bar, like, can you explain it in a way that they understand it? So is it plain and simple? What they understand, what they need to do if they were an employee?

52:16 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Do they see how that makes how that changes things in your industry, how that benefits the customer? Is it something that they, like, that they could buy in because they, they think, yeah, that’s, that’s a worthwhile thing to, to, to, to improve. I think you couldn’t start early enough with that.

52:37 JIM BEACH: All right, very well said. Michael, how do we find out more? Follow online. Visit the website. See the resources and get a copy of the book.

52:48 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Um, yeah, head over to my website. I’ve created a special landing page for the show: MichaelGerharz.com/startup-school. And there you’ll find my new guide. It’s a free guide called The Best Talk of Your Life, which helps you like answer this and other questions so that it’s not only about strategy, but like whatever you need to communicate and get people behind for moments that count, and you’ll give a talk that actually changes things that people can’t stop talking about.

53:21 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: MichaelGerharz.com/startup-school. Download the guide, and you’ll find pointers to everything else that we mentioned today, including the book and the Clarity Lab if you want my personal help. Yeah, that will be the starting place.

53:37 JIM BEACH: Fantastic. We will tweet that out. Thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

53:47 DR. MICHAEL GERHARZ: Thanks, Jim.

53:48 JIM BEACH: We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back tomorrow. Be safe. Take care. Go make a million dollars.