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Ten smart ways to communicate complex ideas | Cutting Edge PR Insights: Boost Your Career
Pictures
Pictures, visuals and images offer your audience an invaluable way of remembering the relationships between different variables. The right visual offers an easy way to see, internalize and later recall even complicated information.
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IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
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Key Ideas
Data
It comprises the facts without necessarily showing clarity to a situation.
- What do the numbers mean and why should you care? Go past the data to capture the imagination or interest of the audience.
- Make the data actionable. Facilitate cooperation between technical people and communicators.
Logic
Carefully check that the logic of your case is clearly explained. Observation or even intuition can create an initial structure for explaining a complex problem such as an issue.
Pictures
Pictures, visuals and images offer your audience an invaluable way of remembering the relationships between different variables. The right visual offers an easy way to see, internalize and later recall even complicated information.
Infographics
Information graphics or data visualization (infographics) are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly to a live or online audience.
Infographics are making a big impact in communicating about complex topics, making information eye-catching, shareable and easily digestible.
Stories
Stories that summarize certain logics or relationships between variables are perhaps stickiest of all.
When thinking up stories, don’t be afraid to channel the ridiculous. The dopier the story, the more people may groan—but years later they remember it.
Participation
Tools like data or equations or even stories are of limited value if an audience feels they can’t push back, disagree, or ask for clarification.
The higher the status of your audience, the more important it is to actively create pauses or other spaces where misunderstandings can be voiced and clarification requested.
Metaphors and analogies
See if you can simplify important concepts by using metaphors.
“Think about a cake,” says Scott Johnston, senior vice president of product at Docker, likening the cake part to a server and the icing to a program. “You want to be able to change frosting from chocolate to vanilla. If there’s paper between the two, you can lift up the frosting and replace it.”
Find ways to make it matter to them
We tend to learn best when we’re interested in something – and we’re interested in topics when they relate to us directly.
When you’re trying to explain a complicated topic to an individual, you should seek to find out what matters to them, and then base your approach on those angles.
Use details they already know
Find related information people already know, and expand on that.
The more you can pull from information people already have and analogies they already understand, the better they’ll understand the core concepts you’re showing them.
Leave out unnecessary details
When you understand a concept, you can find it’s all-to-easy to fall into the trap of thinking every detail is important.
Your immediate objective is to get the main points across to help others understand a difficult concept. Describing too many details to others unnecessarily complicates the picture. You can always come back to those details later.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
What you say, and how you say it
When trying to explain complex information to an audience, the first task is to get the content of what you're saying right.
How we communicate is also cr...
How much technical detail to include
Try not to use technical language. If you do, make sure it is absolutely necessary in order to help the audience understand or appreciate your point – and ensure that you explain the word or term immediately afterwards.
Keep your words as simple and clear as possible, and use real-life examples and illustrations where possible. But don’t patronize your audience.
How to use body language
If you look alert but relaxed, your audience will mirror this and feel the same way. Stand up straight, but relax any tension or stiffness in your body.
It’s a good idea to gesture with your hands in such a way that helps to make clear what you are explaining – but only do this if it feels natural, and try not to wave your arms around unnecessarily.
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Signs of poor communication skills
- People only approach you with questions or feedback when they absolutely need to do so.
- If you walk away from a conversation or meeting and can’t remember what the other person said or...
Do a Self-Assessment
- Take an honest look at how you communicate. Are you thorough, clear, and factual in how you convey yourself? How consistent are you in how you communicate?
- Look at how clear you make your expectations—and how open you are to understanding what others expect of you.
- Assess how do you handle “crucial conversations” that can be emotionally or politically charged.
Ditch Your Assumptions and Ask
To be effective in information gathering, you need to let go of assumptions and be aware enough to recognize when you’re jumping to conclusions, making judgments, or using labels.
Asking curious, open-ended questions encourages dialogue instead of dictating what other people should do or think, And the best communicators listen more than they speak.
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Enjoy intelligent company
Being in the company of intelligent people will indirectly make you want to continue developing your own intelligence.
Read
Well-read people aren't just articulate--they also have a vast pool of knowledge and an always-evolving mind.
Reading improves your vocabulary, expands your communication skills and develops your analytical abilities.
Rest
A lack of sleep, relaxation, and excessive stress can diminish your brain's capacity. The brain requires plenty of energy to function, so if you're exhausted all the time, your mind simply won't have the ability to learn and improve.
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Ask Them If They Want to Learn
Generally speaking, if they're interested, they'll learn better, focus more, and actually take something away from the conversation.
Some people want you to do the work for them and can...
Find Ways to Make It Matter to Them
When you're trying to explain a complicated topic to someone, it's best to show what's in it for them. For technology, you can usually play off of people's desire for security, privacy, or simplicity.
You want to find the hook that catches them and go from there. Keep fishing until you find what matters and the rest of the explanation is easy.
Use Details They Already Know
Find related information people already know and expand on that. For example, understanding what a blog is can be described as "it's a magazine, but online." That's incredibly simplistic, but it gets the point across.
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Simple rules
They are shortcut strategies that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we process information. The rules aren’t universal- they’re tailored to the particular si...
Boundary rules for better decisions
They guide the choice of what to do (and not do) without requiring a lot of time, analysis, or information.
They work well for categorical choices, like a judge’s yes-or-no decision on a defendant’s bail, and decisions requiring many potential opportunities to be screened quickly.
These rules also come in handy when time, convenience, and cost matter.
Prioritizing rules for better decisions
They rank options to help decide which of multiple paths to pursue.
They are especially powerful when applied to bottleneck activities - pinch-points in companies, where the number of opportunities swamps available resources, and prioritizing rules can ensure that these resources are deployed where they can have the greatest impact.
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