"If you work in a technical field, there is an automatic stigma about you: You are incapable of communicating technical concepts to the lay person."
Wait what?
I've always defined my level of expertise in an area in relation to how easily I can explain it to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it. The more easily I can explain it, the more likely it is that I understand it really well.
Explaining is all about knowing what parts are relevant to my listener and what parts are either irrelevant... or go into too much detail for me to actually explain in context.
You don't have as good a sense of relevance/irrelevance unless you are an expert. A completely tangential problem is technical jargon, which you have to remember to avoid (and use synonyms for) if your audience isn't versed in it. Knowing the technical jargon well enough to pick accurate layman's terms is another part of being an expert.
Blowing this off as saying that 'its too technical' is the same as 'I'm bored,' seems completely ass backwards. More likely, I'm bored because I don't understand WTF you are talking about, because I didn't even take undergraduate biology.
It's really about the perception that you don't know how to communicate. You also have no dress sense, don't date, have poor personal hygiene, talk gracelessly and have weird hobbies. This allows people to return to their default view that they are vastly superior to you, even though you are demonstrably smarter than many of them.
I wrote a one-line email last week to tell people: "Double-click the Connect Network Drives icon on your desktop or you won't be able to get to your files." I'm still getting phone calls about inaccessible shares, over a week later. People tell me "it's too technical" or "I don't have time to read emails like that!" So OP is quite correct: they've decided it's not worth their time and effort to understand.
That is too technical for a lot of users. What is an 'icon'? Where is the 'desktop'? How do I 'double click'?
I usually include screen shots with red-circles for where to click when trying to communicate stuff like that.
I'd do something like, 'With the left mouse button double click the connect network drives icon on your desktop. (screenshot of desktop with icon circled).'
A lot of people don't think about what they are doing when they use a computer. It is more like speaking your first language. I can write to you in English fairly effortlessly, but if we were having a discussion about grammar, I might not know all of the terms.
"You don't have as good a sense of relevance/irrelevance unless you are an expert." -- there is actually another skill here, which is the ability to model how other people think. You may be gifted with this ability. Communicating facts within the context (relevancy, language, etc) of the person you are talking to is difficult for many people.
Most people use "I" statements, and communicate the details from how they see the world.
> I've always defined my level of expertise in an area in relation to how easily I can explain it to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it. The more easily I can explain it, the more likely it is that I understand it really well.
I agree with this and here is something I have read which is related to this principle albeit different subject matter:
"It is true intelligence for a man to take a subject that is mysterious and great in itself, and to unfold and simplify it so that a child can understand it."
And an example from just an hour ago — my dad asked why is that RAM is used, which loses its contents, as opposed to something like USB flash stick? I had learn this past semester about this and explained it to him and asked if it was clear and he said yes.
It's an awesome feeling to explain something you've learnt to another and have them understand it though usually in a simple manner.
One thing I've noticed though is sometimes people explain something technical to someone and claim to simplify it, especially through using analogies, and in the end the person understands a near 'incorrect' version of whatever principle/idea was being explained.
> I've always defined my level of expertise in an area in relation to how easily I can explain it to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it.
That's right. As my teacher used to say - if a professor cannot explain the essence of his work to an elementary school student, he doesn't understand what he's doing.
Two of my roommates are in the medical field. Hearing them talk about hospital business really gives me a perspective on how I myself can sound when I talk about technology in the presence of "normal" people. In those cases I comfort myself, with the thought, "Hey, at least when I talk about technology, I don't cause other people's stomachs to turn and make them run to the nearest bathroom."
Honestly, medicine is much worse than technology with sounding "technical" (technology usually doesn't have the "gory" or hypochondria-inducing aspect to it like medicine often does). The only thing that medical people have going for them is the higher percentage of women in the field, who tend to be more sensitive as to how they come across to others.
1. Some technical people deliberately explain things in an overly technical way as it boosts their ego. "You don't understand this => I am superior."
2. All communication must be for the recipient. You must bend over backwards to help them understand. This is what good communication is. If it's hard work for the recipient it's poor communication.
That idea was from a concept I came across somewhere on the web; "No one wants to read your s--t" . I think it's something of a mantra in the advertising world.
It struck me at the time as I was working with a CEO who thought length == quality in communication, both writing and discussions. I think that he wrote things for his own gratification, it probably gave him a feeling of productivity. Sadly a lot of what he wrote wasn't read, or not a carefully as it should have been. It takes effort and generosity to write for the reader.
Yes. I'm amazed at how many people I deal with have little or no ability to consider they're audience's viewpoint. Everything from inside jokes in front of larger groups that have no clue what's funny to coworkers that walk up to me and rattle off an update on something they've been working on / thinking about all day when I have no idea what they're talking about. The ability to think outside of your own context is very helpful and a key "people" skill.
All this, including the TED talk, falls in to the category of "how to sell". I agree with my friend Tom that sales skill is more important than most folks realize:
"...and it's kind of the "slowest" part of the speech where he starts talking about biology and the lymbic system and blah blah blah science whatever (that's literally how I remember that section of the talk in my head)..."
This was the most interesting part of the article for me-- where you switched roles and became the listener that was deciding not to take the time or effort to understand.
Is deciding not to make the effort there really what you felt like you were doing? Or could the speaker have communicated in a different way to make the "blah blah blah science whatever" more accessible or interesting to you?
I'd be interested to read about your experiences putting yourself in your listeners' shoes rather than speculating about what it's like for them.
Haha I definitely decided not to make the effort to understand that part of it :) I could have gone back over that bit but I felt as though the conclusion was really the most important bit and the precursor to it was really only there to give credence to the conclusion as being something he hadn't just plucked out of thin air.
I guess it's the equivalent of blinding me with science - but see by that point in the speech I was already "sold".
He'd whipped me into a frenzy so when I didn't get something and the speech slowed down (from my perspective) I didn't close the window and stop altogether, I just tuned out a little until he came to the conclusion.
This is true for any time you're explaining something--technical or not. You begin by engaging the listener/reader--giving them context, piquing interest, making them care. Often times you can do this in one sentence: are you X? Do you use X? Or are you tired of having to do X? Etc.
For detailed info, you'll need to break up the message into parts and reengage them at the start of each part.
I've always felt that it's socially ok to say that you don't understand technical subjects. Might be this is the trace of the nerd thing : people don't really want to be seen understanding technical things because that would require showing interest into it.
It's interesting that we always hear business types (in a very general meaning ) say that technical people are unable to explain things clearly, but never hear them asking how they could understand technical subjects better. Should we really be expert at communication, business, marketing to explain to everyone in it's own jargon ?
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." --Einstein
This post assumes that people on the other end are dealing with you fairly.This is not always the case.
Some times people want to label you as technical and refuse to accept that you can do everything they can do because you can actually go and implement what you are talking.
Their interest is best served when you are implementing and they are doing the talking so they deliberately wants to keep you out of the loop by labeling you too technical.
The problem is that not every true, important concept is an item of common experience, nor necessarily relatable to common experience. And, even in the case where it can be explained using common terms, the explanation can often be too long for most people's limited attention span.
Not that I'm pointing any fingers other than at myself. I can probably count on one hand the number of meetings I haven't fallen asleep in.
I think economists grapple with some of these problems under the heading of "rational ignorance".
The idea being that bothering to understand your pitch, product, technology or problem has a cost. It can be a quite high cost. Most folks will take a short taste and then decide quickly that it's too expensive: they have chosen to be ignorant.
Your job, as a pitcher, is to a) simplify the pitch and b) find out the connection between you and their interests and emotions.
The part that seems still-to-come: how did you change your marketing & product communication after adopting Sinek's theory? Did it work out better for you?
I'd be very interested to see that post if/when you make it - comparing the before & after videos & pages, and some stats on how well the change worked.
That'll certainly be on the agenda. I've only just started this journey myself really so still doing lots of learning and figuring out the best ways to gather data and store it for later comparison.
I got part way through the article and started to turn off. I forced my way to the end, and I've decided - he still hasn't learned the lesson.
That is really badly written from the point of view of trying to engage and retain the reader about something he thinks is important, but the reader might not.
I'd place this post more in the category of "shambolic musing" that "carefully crafted marketing communication" but I would be interested to know which parts of the writing you found turned you off - it will certainly help hone my craft.
Hmm. I don't think this is exclusive to IT workers. Finance workers are as bad, or worse.
Having read and listened to a lot of finance training classes/materials recently, I can say that much of this is not just a lack of effort put into explaining things, it's shockingly sloppy standards of epistemology. Concepts are blurred constantly, terms are reused for different things, procedures are introduced with little attempt to ground them in related ideas. Much of the time I suspect people have learnt in a very ad hoc manner, and don't really know what they're doing, just enough to get things working.
I get that sort of lazy vibe from a lot of Unix culture too, although it's a bit more superficial.
The times that you are accused of 'talking too technical' (let alone sounding too technical) aren't the important ones. Then at least you have a pointer to go on, whether rightfully or not.
What's important are the times when don't hear that, but you catch the eyes of the other glaze over (though he may still be unaware of it and trying to follow as best as he can). That's when you need to backpeddle for a bit and explain things in a different way. I notice this with clients a lot: they are technical, but use different terminology and have different backgrounds. 'Different' is not necessarily 'less technical': sometimes you just need to substitute some terminology and presto, understanding dawns.
Right - yeah the "not hearing" can be bad - especially if the "conversation" isn't actually a conversation so much as marketing exercise.
I guess I haven't made a clear enough distinction in this particular post between those two types of "conversations" and how they correlate.
I notice this with clients a lot: they are technical, but use different terminology and have different backgrounds
This is key I think - when someone tells you you're being too technical and they don't understand what the product "really does" but they're not a layman in the sense that they are technical people themselves, it's easy to get confused about what "really does", really means!
My thinking after seeing this TED talk is that "what does this really do?" can be translated as "why did you build this?" and thusly "why should I care?".
This may seem obvious but to me there is a subtlety there that I feel as though I've been missing all along. When people say "what does this really do?" my instinct is to say things like the list of TiVo features he talks about - not "sell with a vision" of how much better it's going to make their life - a vision based on my belief in the product and on why I built it in the first place.
If the submitter is the same as the poster, I'm curious about something, do you experience this same degree of generalised apathy and intellectual laziness with audiences outside of Australia? And if so, is the extent smaller, greater, or exactly the same?
Hello, yes it's me. Firstly I'm not saying it's anything anti-intellectual or lazy on the part of those I'm attempting to explain things to, it's just that the decision is being made by a part of their brain that's not charged with doing the understanding.
Also I've not found any significant difference between folks outside of AU and within it - although I couldn't claim to have any sort of statistically signficant sampling of either. It's mostly one-to-one personal communications I'm referring to (not necessarily face-to-face but also limited to the maybe 20 people or so that I've had discussions with recently).
I understood you weren't actually saying that, merely that I've personally found it to be far more pronounced in Australia than elsewhere. But yeah, if your experiences are limited to mostly Australians not a very valid question. Thanks for the feedback.
Wait what?
I've always defined my level of expertise in an area in relation to how easily I can explain it to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it. The more easily I can explain it, the more likely it is that I understand it really well.
Explaining is all about knowing what parts are relevant to my listener and what parts are either irrelevant... or go into too much detail for me to actually explain in context.
You don't have as good a sense of relevance/irrelevance unless you are an expert. A completely tangential problem is technical jargon, which you have to remember to avoid (and use synonyms for) if your audience isn't versed in it. Knowing the technical jargon well enough to pick accurate layman's terms is another part of being an expert.
Blowing this off as saying that 'its too technical' is the same as 'I'm bored,' seems completely ass backwards. More likely, I'm bored because I don't understand WTF you are talking about, because I didn't even take undergraduate biology.