The pratfall effect explains why admitting a mistake can make people trust you more — and how to tell a failure story in 60 seconds without losing credibility.

In 1966, psychologist Elliot Aronson found that a brilliant quiz contestant who spilled coffee on himself became more likable. An average contestant who did the same became less likable. That fine print is the whole episode. In part two of the Humanity Leads storytelling series, Tanner Bechtel shows why opening with your wins makes people quietly root against you — and why opening with a healed scar builds trust faster than any success story.

You'll learn:

- The pratfall effect, and the competence catch almost everyone leaves out

- What Harvard Business School research found when successful people shared their failures

- Sara Blakely's dinner-table question: "What did you guys fail at this week?"

- The Four Lines: what broke, what it cost, what I saw, what I do now

- How to answer "Tell me about a time you failed" in a job interview

It works in a team meeting, a one-on-one, a job interview, or at the kitchen table.

What's one scar you'd be willing to share? One sentence in the comments.

RESEARCH MENTIONED

- Aronson, Willerman & Floyd (1966), "The effect of a pratfall on increasing interpersonal attractiveness," Psychonomic Science

- Brooks et al. (2019), "Mitigating malicious envy: Why successful individuals should reveal their failures," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

- Sara Blakely on her father's dinner-table question (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/03/self-made-billionaire-spanx-founder-sara-blakely-sold-fax-machines-before-making-it-big.html

- Johannes Haushofer's CV of Failures, inspired by Melanie Stefan's 2010 Nature column (Times Higher Education): https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/princeton-academics-failure-cv-sparks-debate-success

THE STORYTELLING SERIES

Part 1 — How to Communicate Better Using Steve Jobs' Rule of Three → https://youtu.be/uiRHZd4MnUY

Part 3 — You Are Not the Hero of Your Story → coming next week

Subscribe to Humanity Leads with Tanner Bechtel for weekly episodes on leadership, intentional living, and technology worth your time → https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTtBdPZ5DHO4NdiAiEVbC1w?sub_confirmation=1

#HumanityLeads #Leadership #PratfallEffect

How to communicate better? Steal Steve Jobs' most powerful tool — the rule of three.

In this episode of Humanity Leads, Tanner Bechtel breaks down how Steve Jobs used three simple ideas to launch the iMac, introduce the iPhone as three revolutionary products in one, and deliver the unforgettable Steve Jobs speech at Stanford. You'll learn why our brains remember threes, how to simplify any message, and how to use this for public speaking, presentations, and everyday leadership.

If you want stronger communication skills, better presentation skills, and messages that actually stick in a world of endless scroll — this is your playbook.

What are YOUR three? Drop them in the comments.

Subscribe to Humanity Leads with Tanner Bechtel for weekly episodes on leadership, intentional living, and technology worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/@HumanityLeadsHQ

When someone doesn't understand your explanation, adding more detail can make things worse. Here's how to explain complex ideas clearly without losing the accuracy people need.

In this episode of Humanity Leads, Tanner Lee Bechtel draws on Steve Jobs's communication examples to explore a practical leadership skill: giving people a familiar way into a complicated subject.

We work through three questions:
• What's familiar?
• What's different here?
• Where does the comparison stop working?

You'll learn how to replace jargon with a concrete example, use an analogy without making a false promise, and recognize when a simpler explanation has left out a detail that matters.

The goal is to help people understand an idea well enough to question it, contribute their judgment, and use it responsibly.

Try this before your next meeting: explain one thing you know well without using its specialist name. Add one limitation your listener needs to understand. Then ask, “What would you expect this to do?” Their answer will show you where to revise.

What do you explain often that people still find confusing? Share it in the comments.

Subscribe to Humanity Leads for practical conversations about leadership, executive presence, and communicating with care.

#CommunicationSkills #ExecutivePresence #Leadership