2272 - Overcoming the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Embracing Vulnerability for True Connection with Marianne Hickman

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0:58With us right now, it is Marianne Hickman. Marianne, you are a speaker coach, and I cannot wait to have this conversation. You are also, by the way, I'm going to point out you are a podcaster. You are the host of the Marianne Hickman Show. So to our friends, if you like this conversation, there's a whole bunch more. You can just search around your podcast app and find the top 1 % podcast in the world, Marianne Hickman Show. Just search for that, and we have a direct link in your podcast app as well so you can subscribe. But Marianne, it's so great to have you. By the way, your website, MarianneHickman.com.

1:33Yes, yes, that's the place. And Josh, it's so fun to connect with you. I think we took a lot of time in the green room. I want more. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's like, we got to get going here. For real. Marianne, before we talk about your superpowers, you know, I always love just kind of getting a glimpse of like, you know, what our guests are into in the moment. You know, if it's a hobby or something you're watching that you're really loving or geeking out on. Anything stand out in your world that you're having a lot of fun with? You know, if you had asked me a month ago, would not have answered the same thing, but I have been diving deep right now on this account that I found on Instagram called TheCulturist.

2:05I am nerding out so hard on architecture, Renaissance art. And like, I'm getting goosebumps, dude, like right now, because I'm just, I've been studying all of the history of art and how we're losing it, how we're losing the color in our world, how we're losing the architecture in our world. And it's making me want to, and I have to stop myself because it's not time yet. It's really me making me want to start like a whole Instagram about travel and history and, and all of the nerdy stuff that I enjoy, but I'm, I'm, I read all their newsletters. I rarely read newsletters that come to my email, but that one, I read the whole thing.

2:39I'm kind of a nerd. So it almost feels like, um, you know, are you saying like people are kind of craving like a, a real, real, or, you know, just, you know, something that's like, like there was a lot of like thought and creativity and effort that went into this thing. I'm going to share a YouTube video with you later, F-Air. I'm not going to be able to find it, but I think you're going to absolutely love it. About what I believe, I think you're not alone. I believe that in the age of AI, that's becoming a big part of our life, but yet we're still craving, like as humans, we crave connection and we crave and appreciate expressions of art and effort.

3:21And like, oh my gosh, this is someone who's taking their gift and bringing it to the world. And oh my gosh, like what they're doing is like, why God put them on the earth right now? Like when you see their expression of art or creativity or effort, um, I don't know. Is it, is any of that jiving? I'm getting goosebumps again, dude. Like I can feel my arm hair growing. It's bad. You're right though. Aren't we all disappointed when we get on a call and it's like an AI? We were like, Hey, not cool. Oh my God. I feel, I would feel so ripped off. So to, to anyone listening, do not ever do that to me or I'm going to, I mean, I would argue people not only are going to dislike that, they will hate you for that.

3:59That feels so gross and manipulative. It's a betrayal in some ways. I'm not against automation. I have a lot of that going on in my business. Automation is fine, but don't tell me you're real when you're an AI and don't make your AI pretend to be a real person. Like it's, it's, it's betrayal. It's, it's dishonesty in some levels. Yeah. Marianne, tell me about when you are on stage, what are you speaking to audiences is about? So it's interesting. I used to be what I call a garbage speaker and not in terms of talent. That also was true a long time ago. But I used to say I could speak on anything, which means no one can hear anything because that's just not true.

4:35What I find myself speaking on the most is leveraging the power of the instrument of your voice, right? When I was in choir, people used to say, what instrument would you play? And I say my voice. So leveraging the instrument of your voice in terms of storytelling, in terms of what it looks like to increase the vocabulary and really impact people. So the voice is like a brush to an artist. It is the ability to decorate space and time simultaneously with a story so impactful, not a list of traumas, but a story that's so impactful that it can change the stories of the audience. That's what we're going for.

5:14And when I teach people how to do that, I teach them how to do that and help it grow their business simultaneously. Yeah. Well, can you share, Marianne, just a little bit about the speaking industry right now? Where are we? Oh boy. So there's lots of facets to the speaking industry. There's the people that are up and coming. They're brand new. They haven't gone through a lot of training, but they feel like they have some level of experience and they want to share that with the world. Those people are, I'd say our largest group of people. And that gets whittled down so fast because of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

5:54Have you heard of this before? Oh gosh. Yeah. Okay. You know all about this. Are you kidding? We are living in a time right now that if you are fascinated by the expression of Dunning-Kruger, um, oh my God, social media, And I don't know how long we are going to be at this level, but I feel like because I think most people are unwittingly expressing where they are on Dunning-Kruger. And when you understand that, I'm so sorry to keep blabbing on about this. Oh, I love it. Marianne, preach it. So the Dunning-Kruger effect, for those of you that don't know, go Google it. I don't want to go into full detail, but what we're seeing right now, and Josh, what you're talking about is a massive and widespread peak of stupidity and high confidence.

6:42And this is where we get into a lot of trouble. This is where a lot of bros, if you will, are made. This is where a lot of influence are made when they experience that peak of confidence, either because their follower count is higher, because they have that six pack because they're 25 years old or whatever it is. They have that peak of confidence without the intellect, without the life experience to back it up. We're talking 18-year-old life coaches who don't have enough life behind their, under their belt to merit being a coach. And so this, this is rampant right now. And what happens, and Alex Ramosey talks about this too, and we, when we peak and then something slaps us hard across the face.

7:21And it could be something as insignificant as a comment on social media that really hits and really stings. Or it could be you built a business to$5 million,$50 million, and then your stupidity robs the business from you because you don't have the intellect to maintain it, even though you had the luck to build it. And when that slaps you, you plummet hard. You go down into the lowest confidence you've ever been. And this is where, I mean, you've seen this, right? It's absolutely dramatic. And influencers will disappear at this. you'll see the flash in the pan gone when this happened. And it happens in the speaking industry too.

8:01And what happens at the bottom here is either you bottom out and you start the humble pie journey of learning and letting your education justify your confidence, or you keep digging. Some people keep digging and they haven't bottomed out yet. And unfortunately, sometimes we never hear from them again, which is really a tragedy. Well, when we dig out and we find the education and knowledge, practice, experience that then justifies the confidence, what happens is we get quieter. We listen more and we talk less. And in the speaking industry, it looks like booking fewer gigs and smaller audiences, but the impact becomes so much more magnified.

8:50You'll start to see people making notes. You'll see notes collect. You'll see evidences of this collect. You'll see feedback come in. I've got a wall in my studio dedicated to letters of feedback because I did an experiment where I was like, I need to know God if I'm making any kind of an impact that's positive, but I can't tell my audience that I'm doing this because it'll ruin it. So then you'll start to get feedback and notes and saying, this changed my life. My son's life is preserved because of what you said this day. And then you start getting more and more confidence to keep going and you get the, it's worth it.

9:22Despite the crash out that I had, you get the, I can't pay my water bill by, by the skin of my teeth this month, but someone asked me to speak. And so I'm going to go do it because it's meaningful. And then once that, that ladder starts to climb, we, what I find is that most of us start to care less about the follower counts. We start to care less about the rooms of 7 ,000 compared to the rooms of seven. We start to care less about the fame and the grandiosity. And we care more about the person in front of us. And that means a business that is sustainable can now be built instead of a flash in the pan one time might even land you in jail joke.

10:04That shift sounds subtle. I believe, you know, with all of my experience doing this, I've done a lot of speaking, obviously done a lot of leading. I've interviewed over 2 ,200 people. I'll just say I truly believe, Marianne, your lips to God's ears. That is absolutely the path of true connection. Because when I think about, like, as a speaker, you know, we think about our role of I have to connect with this massive people. I don't believe that. Your job is to connect with each person personally. It's a human individual. You're forming a bunch of one-on-one relationships. And again, that might sound a little like, yeah, duh, but it can be very easily overlooked when we're thinking about big, oh, yeah, hundreds of people.

10:53Like you have to resist the urge to focus on the big deal-itis or, you know, just keep aiming for the big fish. And you're missing the fact that, no, no, no, we eat individual fishes. This is not a good analogy. I'll let Marianne, you've got better analogies. My big deal-itis, my big deal is inflamed. Yes. Marianne, can you share specifically how you work with your clients? Oh, yeah. So what I like to do is we, we meet in person. Well, not in person as often as we do on Zoom. We meet live though. So when I work with people, we have four meetings a week. So it's four hours of, of us together. And on Tuesdays, we talk about the brain and the mindset because that comes first and foremost.

11:38I know there's a lot of new age stuff out there about mindset training, but you ask anyone that you respect really. Notice I didn't say successful. I'm asking about people that you respect. People that you respect have something figured out in their operating system. So we talk about that. And I just got to say this. I was talking to my husband on the way to the gym yesterday about mindset and all of these things and mindset coaches. It feels like they're a dime a dozen. I mean, it feels like you can go and find them anywhere. And I'm not going to say that that's necessarily a bad thing, but keep in mind the stunning Kruger.

12:09But when I was talking to my husband about was people who use these superlatives in terms of their mindset, meaning I always do this and I'm always waking up and I'm always doing in my ice bath. And I'm like, oh, absolutely. You're lying. You can't because I don't know a single person that does that consistently. And so when I'm talking about mindset, I'm learning right along with our group. And what I say is this is what I do when I'm at my best. This is what I have done that I know works. But keep in mind, I'm not always at my best. I won't pretend to be. I have my low points. I have the tools to get out of it that I use, but I'm not going to say that I do my eyes bath every day.

12:51And when you accept that, right. And when you accept that, that is the reality for you and for everybody else, regardless of what you read on social media, I feel like that's when we can let go of a lot of the unfair pressure that we put on ourselves. And when you let go of that, I agree with you. I think you're going to be a far better speaker. Well, yeah. And when you're also not afraid to share your vulnerability, you know, Marianne, like your vulnerability is like, it makes me feel safe around you. Because I know you're not just putting on an air to protect whatever your insecurities are. It's so true.

13:30And so it's like, wow, you're being real with me right now. And again, you don't have to go overboard on this, but I'm telling you that, you know, we were talking about this authenticity earlier in the conversation. Audiences are craving it. We are. We really are. We want what's real because we want what's relatable. We want to know that this person across the table from us can help us. We want to know the person across the camera from us understands enough of what we're going to. They may be a couple steps down the path, which is why we're following them, right? But we want to know that they remember what it's like to be where we've been.

14:03And it's not so that we can, I always like to tell people, we don't walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I learned this with a lot of therapy. it's like when we're walking through the valley of shadow of death we do we do walk through it but we don't unpack our bags and set up camp that level of authenticity is is what's called the cartman drama triangle we just stay in our victimhood right we don't want to do that we want to walk through it but we're walking through it together like seriously together i i real briefly i just want to share this this experience that i had i was at a have you ever done those leadership retreats with like the ropes courses and, and the, the, the high jumps and the climbing walls and all those, those things.

14:43Have you seen those before? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And specifically in your neck of the woods. Yeah. Oh yeah. So there's one right down the road from us. And I was doing this, this course with our leadership group. We were actually four leadership trainers for the public speaking. We were doing this together and I watched one of our leaders, one of the person, what we had to do is one person was blind and the other person had their sight and we had to get to the top of the wall. That was the only instructions. And we did this and I watched the person ahead of me. There was one of the leaders who significance was something he could never get enough of.

15:14I'll put it that way. So we got to the wall first and then was using his top down perspective to guide the climber, which didn't work. The climber made a jump and missed and had to have the harness catch him. I saw that and I was like, well, that doesn't work. So I I climbed up next to you. I didn't have the blindfold. My companion did. And as I was climbing with them, I stayed with them. And this is the, from the side in the trenches leadership that I find that is so effective. I'm not ahead of you looking down on you. I am next to you. I'm telling you where to put your hands. I'm moving your foot to the right position until you get a feel for the wall.

15:49And then when we climb a mountain, we both reach the top. And that, that is the kind that I respect so much. And that's the kind that works best with the people that I work with my speakers. Yeah. All right. Uh, Marianne, we've got about 30 seconds left.

16:08Let's make sure that folks know how they get more Marianne in their life and how they could potentially work with you. Yeah. So go to Marianne Hickman.com. All my good stuff. All my juicy stuff is there. I I'm really active on Instagram. Uh, if we do want to work, just send me a message there and I put on my phone number if people just want to ask me I like to do that if that's okay with you Josh we'll put that all in the show notes as well okay okay you're welcome to share that yeah yeah it's 801-509-5495 just send me a text happy to just answer any questions that you have or we can you know hang out on social media and podcasts and do all the fun things nice Marianne Hickman again your website Marianne Hickman.com podcast the Marianne Hickman show So Mary, it's been a great conversation.

16:48Thank you so much for this. It's been an honor, Josh. Thanks.

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