I love the notion of connecting before going into the complexity, helping the audience relate to and understand. So that taking a pull the telling a personal story, what a great way to prepare the audience for the complex information. The leveraging of that extended analogy really helps the audience to take the perspective of the overall information. And so generally in speaking and communication, we have the rule of three. Audiences are pretty good at digesting three discreet buckets of things.
As communicators, we often need to take complex information (e.g., financial, technical, or scientific) and make it more understandable for our audience – we’re experts and they likely aren’t. But having so much knowledge on the topics we discuss can often make the job more difficult: we dive in too quickly, forget about our audience's needs, or use jargon that goes over their heads.
In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, strategic communications lecturers Matt Abrahams and Lauren Weinstein explore the “curse of knowledge” and offer specific techniques you can use to be more successful in getting your point across.
Connect: