Your team ignores your message until an outside speaker says the same thing. Brian Gubernick explains why: familiarity breeds invisibility, external authority shifts perception, and adults learn through rediscovery. He offers four fixes: detach your ego from being the source, bring in outside voices to reinforce key points, link concepts to consequences, and tie repetition to concrete actions.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. I want to start today's episode with a question. Assuming that you are a leader or you're running a team or whatever it may be, Have you ever said something to your team, something to your people, something that you believe to be important, maybe even something you've said multiple times before, and they look at you and they, you know, maybe nod politely, act like, you know, maybe they're listening. And then a couple weeks later, someone outside of your world, maybe it's an outside speaker, comes into your office. And says the exact same thing that you had just said a couple weeks prior. And when your team hears it, they totally light up. They're taking notes. They're all fired up. They're acting like they've just discovered a cure to cancer or discovered electricity. And you're sitting there thinking, I've been saying this same thing for the past 3 years. If that's happened to you, um, well, good news, you're in a, a very, very large club. You are normal. You are not crazy. And it's not that you're a bad communicator. You, just like me, are having this experience because you're human and so are the members of your team. So today, I want to explain why this happens, why your people hear something from an outside source that you've been sharing many times in the past and why they act like it's a novel new idea. I want to share why it happens and more importantly, how to use it instead of maybe fighting it. Now, before I continue on, if you're listening and you think, well, I don't have a team. Well, you do have a family. And maybe you have some young people in your life, kids or nieces, nephews. I promise you the same exact thing is going to happen at home. So, why is it occurring? Well, first, familiar— familiar— familiarity, sorry, breeds invisibility. What do I mean when I say that familiarity breeds invisibility? When people hear you often, your voice actually starts to become part of just the background noise. It doesn't mean that they don't respect you. It means that their brain categorizes your message as something that's known. And the brain is wired to conserve energy. So, new information is what gets attention. Repeated information tends tends to get filtered, even if that repeated information is important. So, think about your drive home each day. You stop noticing billboards and signs that you pass every day. But suddenly, if a new one goes up, you see it immediately. Just like your voice here. Your voice as a leader can become the billboard that you've driven past 100 times over. It's not new, so it doesn't trigger urgency. That doesn't mean it's not valuable. It just means the novelty matters. So first, that sort of familiar voice, it breeds invisibility. Next, external authority changes perception. See, there's something powerful about an outside voice. When someone from the outside says what you've been saying, it actually feels like validation. It creates this sort of psychological distance, and the distance reduces the resistance. So, when you say it, it may feel like an expectation, but when an outsider says it, it feels like an insight. Even though it may be the same words, there's just different emotional impact. Humans are wired to, to value perceived objectivity. In other words, an outside voice feels unbiased even when it's not. That is just how we are built. Next, third, history creates filters. What do I mean when I say that? Your team doesn't hear you in a vacuum. They hear you through past accountability conversations you've had. They hear you through past performance reviews. They hear you through past wins and past frustrations. They hear you through history. An outside speaker has no baggage attached. There is no history. So, the message actually travels cleaner. If you've ever tried to give your teenager advice and then watch them repeat it a week later like their coach invented it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're giving the advice, they repeat it as if it's like a genius idea coming out of their coach, and you're like, "I just said this to you." Now, as much as it may feel like disrespect, it's not. It's just psychology. Again, that history creates these filters. Fourth and finally, adults have a tendency to learn through rediscovery. What do I mean about that? I mean about that most adults don't learn by being told. They learn when they feel like they discovered it. Ownership tends to create that sort of buy-in. So, when someone else says what you've been saying, it often hits at the moment they're ready to receive it. And when it clicks internally, they say, "I just realized," like that's the phrase going on in their mind. "I just realized." No, you didn't just realize, you just finally accepted. And that's different. And that difference matters. So, given all this, here's where I think a lot of leaders go wrong. They get offended, they get frustrated, they maybe pull back, or actually worse than all of this, they stop repeating themselves. And that's a— I think that's a pretty big mistake because culture isn't necessarily built on originality, it's built on consistency. You don't say something once, you say it until it shows up in behavior. So what should you in fact do? If this is you. I think first you got to detach your ego from being the source. Your job is not to be credited. Your job is to get the message embedded into your team, no matter how it gets there. If your team executes on something because someone else reinforced it, guess what? You win as the business leader. So first, detach your ego from being the source. Second, orchestrate reinforcement. What do I mean? Bring in outside voices intentionally. Share books, send podcasts, invite speakers. Not because you are not— you're not capable of teaching it, but because layered messaging increases absorption of the message. I think the best leaders don't fight this phenomenon. Instead, they weaponize it. Third, in terms of what you should do, increase emotional clarity when you teach. What do I mean when I say that? If something matters, don't just explain the concept, explain the consequence. What happens if we don't do this? What happens if we solve this? See, this urgency that you create, it sticks more than the theory. So sometimes when we're saying something, there isn't a lot of emotional clarity behind it. So increase that emotional clarity whenever you're teaching a concept. Lastly, in terms of things you can do, tie repetition to action. What do I mean? Don't just say the principle. Instead, ask, "How will we apply this in the next 7 days?" In other words, lock in that execution. Like when you, when the execution occurs, it locks in everything that you're saying. It locks in that learning because when there's not application, the lesson will definitely fade. So let me challenge you with this today. What message have you stopped repeating because you assume that your people have already heard it? What principle defines your culture but hasn't fully shown up in behavior yet? If it hasn't shown up in behavior, then it likely hasn't landed. So say it again and say it again and say it again, not necessarily louder, but clearer and sharper and maybe more connected to results. Leaders are repeaters. You don't need new content all the time. You just need to reinforce that content. And I think the best of the best are repeating these things over and over again, but they're also getting strategic around how to create that outside voice to reinforce the message or make it, air quotes here, heard for the first time. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
