Written by Jonathan Dunnett
5 minute read
In brief: Most people apply intuition to the relationships that matter most to their speaking business and hope for the best. Intuition matters — but it isn’t a system. The Pyramid of Understanding gives speakers a structured way to approach people before an engagement, during it, and over time. This post is the practical application of everything Parts 1 and 2 established.
Part 3 of the Pyramid of Understanding series. Start with Part 1: Information isn’t intelligence and Part 2: Context compounds.
The room that changed over a day
I walked into a training session once where the person leading on the other side was extraordinarily cold and unwelcoming. You could feel the disdain in the room the moment I arrived.
I hadn’t done deep research on her before the session. But it was very clear when I walked in that something significant was happening — and that she was not happy I was there. My read in the moment: there was a lack of trust present. Some territorial instinct. Why is this person on my turf? What is this about?
I stayed curious. I engaged, asked questions, stayed professional. And what was fascinating to watch was the warming that happened throughout the day. By the end, this person was smiling, engaged, and fully on board. Her posture, her language, her entire demeanor had changed.
Once she saw I wasn’t a threat — and that what we were doing wasn’t a threat to her — everything shifted.
That’s the Pyramid of Understanding applied in real time. Not from a research document, but from staying curious in the moment, forming a hypothesis, and adjusting as the picture developed.
In Part 1 of this series, we established that information isn’t intelligence. In Part 2, we looked at why context compounds — and why a single data point isn’t a picture. This post is about putting it to work: before an engagement, during it, and over time.
Before: research without the dossier
There’s a useful illustration of fact-level research failing in the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode “The Defense Rests.” Detective Jake Peralta researches his girlfriend’s boss, Geoffrey Hoytsman, before a dinner. He comes in armed with facts: skiing, Atlantic City, nature. He proceeds to fail to connect on almost every front.
The problem wasn’t the research: it was the assumptions about the facts and not asking what they meant.
Jake eventually clues in. Atlantic City wasn’t about Atlantic City: it was about gambling. He tested that hypothesis quietly, found an in, and the dynamic shifted entirely. They spent the evening making impromptu bets on everything around them. That’s the Pyramid of Understanding in motion: fact to theme, hypothesis tested, genuine connection made.
Here’s the clip for context:
But here’s what the facts never revealed: Hoytsman had a cocaine addiction. Jake thought he’d cracked the code. What he’d actually found was the curated version — a Potemkin village (a façade constructed to impress, with nothing of substance behind it). The outlier behavior, caught in a bathroom later that evening, changed everything. Jake arrested him.
The lesson: research prepares you to show up curious. It doesn’t give you the complete picture. And when something doesn’t fit the narrative someone is presenting — pay attention. Outliers matter. That’s often where the real picture lives.
An example of a Potemkin Village (credit). How often do we fail to look beyond the surface?
One more principle following your research: avoid big swings.
If you know someone is a cancer survivor and also plays tennis, when you engage with them, lead with tennis.
Let them choose where the conversation goes. You don’t want someone to feel like you’re reading from a dossier — the goal isn’t to display what you know, it’s to find a genuine point of connection.
Even if you specifically wanted to have a conversation about their cancer journey, context matters enormously: are they openly sharing that story, or is it something more private? Is the setting appropriate? Is there enough trust in the room yet? Walk before you run. The more sensitive the territory, the more trust needs to exist first, and the more cautious and careful you need to be in your approach.
During: hypothesis testing and adjusting
Back to the training session.
The read I formed in the first few minutes — lack of trust, territorial instinct, threat perception — was a hypothesis, not a conclusion. I didn’t lead with it. I tested it through how I engaged: open questions, professional tone, no defensiveness, genuine curiosity about her perspective.
It’s kind of like fencing: you try something and see how the other person reacts. You adjust based on what comes back. You don’t lead with your conclusion. You stay curious long enough to see if you’re right — and you stay open to being wrong.
Most people rush this, sadly. They want the connection to land immediately, so they push. And pushing — especially before trust exists — is usually what kills the very thing they’re trying to build.
The other thing worth naming here: what people present is often some level of a managed persona (the Potemkin Village).
People show you what they want you to see, especially early in a relationship. Your job isn’t to strip that away — it’s to stay curious about what’s underneath it, and to create enough safety that the real person feels comfortable emerging.
All of this is rooted in one thing: we’re trying to understand the person for a reason. No matter what that reason is (influence, persuasion, access, information or something else), we need to make the person comfortable and build trust and rapport.
That’s what happened in that training room. By the end of the day, I wasn’t dealing with some curt version of her: I had a warmer, more receptive version of the person.
Ongoing: relationship deposits and working the network
Understanding someone isn’t a one-time exercise. It compounds — or it decays, if you neglect it.
If you’re trying to build a relationship with someone who is genuinely busy and not particularly responsive, think carefully about how you show up. Going to them with small questions repeatedly is like being a yappy dog at someone’s feet. Annoying, not endearing — and it trains them to tune you out.
Instead: make positive deposits. A quick message about the baseball team you both follow. A note about something you know they care about. Short, genuine, no ask attached.
The more positive deposits you make over time, the more receptive someone becomes when you do need something substantive.
Think of it as a relationship bank account: every low-stakes positive interaction is a deposit. Every ask is a withdrawal. You want to be well in credit before you make a significant ask. Now, that doesn’t mean this is a transaction: this isn’t “I give you something, you give me something.” But, the underlying psychology here is useful: add more value than you take.
Now, if there’s information you need that a busy person can’t easily give you — find another route. A colleague, a mutual connection, someone else in the orbit. Not every question needs to go to the source. If you’re trying to understand what theme an event organizer is building toward for their next conference, and that organizer is notoriously hard to reach, there are almost always people adjacent to them who can answer a simpler version of that question — and who are far more accessible.
Sometimes the most respectful thing you can do for a busy person is to not ask them at all.
The honest truth about intuition
Most people do a version of all of this naturally. Intuition matters — it’s real, it’s useful, and it’s often right in the moment. The ability to read a room, sense a shift in energy, or pick up on what someone isn’t saying is genuinely valuable. Don’t dismiss it.
But intuition alone isn’t a system. Effective speaker business development requires both – the instinct to read a room and the methodology to back it up. And the moment you’re stuck — a connection that isn’t landing, a relationship that won’t open up, a key person you can’t seem to reach, or someone you know matters to your speaking business but you’re uncertain how to approach — that’s when having a structured approach makes the difference.
Three posts. One idea: intelligence that becomes actionable isn’t built from a single data point. It’s built from the discipline of staying curious long enough to see the picture form. It doesn’t mean people can’t change — they can, in a moment or over a lifetime. But the better you understand the picture, the more likely you are to show up in a way that actually works.
If you’ve read this far and you’re thinking about the relationships in your speaking business that matter most — and how well you actually understand the people behind them — that’s the right question to be sitting with.
Want to build this into how you work?
There are a few ways we can work on this together.
If there’s a specific person, organizer, or market you want to understand better — and you want a focused, one-time engagement to do it properly — a market intelligence coaching session is built for exactly that.
If you’re looking for something more structured — a systematic approach to your speaker business development applied over six weeks — the Speaker Growth Roadmap is where we apply this methodology directly to your market, your positioning, and the relationships that matter most to your pipeline.
Not sure where you sit? Book a listening call. Thirty-five minutes. No pitch. Just a conversation about where you are, where you want to be, and what’s standing between those two things.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Pyramid of Understanding?
The Pyramid of Understanding is a framework developed by Jonathan Dunnett that helps professionals move from raw information toward actionable intelligence. It structures how you gather, layer, and contextualize what you learn about the people and organizations you work with — moving from individual facts through themes toward a coherent narrative. It was developed out of 18+ years of applied competitive intelligence and behavioral profiling work.
How do you apply competitive intelligence to understanding people?
Applying competitive intelligence to understanding people means approaching relationships the same way you’d approach a research problem: systematically, with curiosity, and with a clear sense of what decision you’re trying to inform. Before an engagement, you gather what’s publicly available and form hypotheses about what matters to this person. During an engagement, you test those hypotheses through how you engage — adjusting as the picture develops. Over time, you make deliberate deposits into the relationship and stay alert to what doesn’t fit the narrative you’ve built. The goal is always actionable understanding, not a complete biography.
What does “avoid big swings” mean in relationship building?
Avoiding big swings means not leading with sensitive, personal, or high-stakes topics before trust exists. If you know something significant about someone — a health challenge, a personal struggle, a controversial opinion — that knowledge doesn’t give you permission to lead with it. Start with safer common ground, let them guide where the conversation goes, and build trust before you go anywhere that requires it. The more sensitive the territory, the more rapport needs to exist first.
How do you build a relationship with someone who is very busy?
With busy people, less is more. Make positive deposits — short, genuine touchpoints with no ask attached — rather than approaching them only when you need something. When you do need information they hold, consider whether someone adjacent to them could answer the question instead. Keep your communications brief, relevant, and appropriately personal. Over time, consistent low-stakes positive interactions build the kind of relationship where a substantive ask actually lands.
How does this apply to building a speaking pipeline?
A speaking pipeline is built on relationships — with organizers, bureaus, clients, and referrers. Every one of those relationships is with a person who has priorities, pressures, communication preferences, and a narrative you can learn to understand. Speakers who apply the Pyramid of Understanding to their business development stop pitching at people and start engaging with them. That shift — from broadcasting to understanding — is what turns a pipeline dependent on luck into one that compounds over time.
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is “the process and forward-looking practices used in producing knowledge on the competitive environment to improve organisational performance” (Madureira et al., 2023). It’s a structured methodology for moving from scattered data toward actionable insight. The CI Fellows have a comprehensive walkthrough if you want to go deeper — and it’s the foundation of how I work with speakers.
Jonathan Dunnett helps keynote speakers get booked on purpose. He is a Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellow and brings systematic, intelligence-driven frameworks to speaker business development. Serendipity isn’t a strategy.
