Verständlichkeit Archive - Page 3 of 8 - The Art of Communicating

The art of saying what you mean

One of the most frustrating experiences about writing a computer program is when the computer just doesn’t do what you want it to do. This is why one of the earliest lessons you learn as a computer scientist is that there really is no use in getting angry at the computer about this.

The computer does what you tell it to do. Exactly that. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It doesn’t do what you meant. It does what you said. When something doesn’t work the way you meant it to work, it means that what you said was not what you meant.

The computer is always right.

There’s really only one way of getting a computer to do what you meant: Write the code so that it says what you mean.

This is also a great rule to apply when talking to humans. Granted, you might not want to speak to humans just the way you write a program. Your audience might consider you crazy. But, you can invest just as much care in making sure that what you say is what you mean.

(Although when talking to humans, things get even more complex because communication is not about what we say but about what our audience hears.)

Juggling with thoughts

Almost anyone can juggle two balls. Many can do three. Four is rather difficult. More is impossible for most.

Juggling thoughts by keeping several things in mind at the same time is quite similar … Two? That’s easy. Three? Still easy. Four is more difficult, and then it quickly gets really difficult. The more complex the things you have to keep in mind, the more difficult it is to keep multiple things in your mind.

Of course, that’s also true for your audience. If we juggle too many balls in a speech, it will be difficult for our audience to keep track. Sooner or later they will drop a ball … and while they’re still busy picking it up again, the next thought balls are already falling to the floor.

Unfortunately, most topics – especially those worthy of being the subject of a presentation – are rather complex. Usually, three balls just won’t get the job done.

Fortunately, though, thoughts have a property that physical balls don’t have. Thoughts can combine to form larger thoughts. Thoughts can trigger other thoughts.

Apples, pears, and bananas become fruit. Fruits, vegetables and grains become vegetarian food. Vegetarian diet has effects that you first illustrate through a story and then abstract to derive a specific dietary recommendation.

Yet, at any given time, we kept a maximum of four thoughts in the air so that everyone could follow along effortlessly.

Complex in nature, yet simple in narrative.

With a clear story and a great structure, we can get extremely complex things into the minds of the audience. We just have to make sure to build the complexity step-by-step.

The people changing business

When we write a report about something, our task is not to write a text but to inform the reader.

We must not stop at correctly and completely describing all aspects of the topic at hand but lead our readers to understanding. It’s vitally important that the reader of our report understands that the product will fail if we don’t manage to bring the tolerance down to .03%. It’s not sufficient to simply describe what we see. We must make sure that our reader sees it, too.

It’s always about the reader, never about the paper. The goal of a report is not to be written but to be understood.

The same is true for communication in general. Our job is not to write a speech, design a website, or create slides but to change people’s minds.

We are in the people-changing business, not the text-writing, website-designing or speech-giving business.

What’s the ideal number of slides for a presentation?

Martin Luther King didn’t need a slide at all. Dick Hardt used 50 slides – per minute! Both used the ideal number of slides – for the story they wanted to tell on that day to that audience.

Rather than with a number of slides it’s much more useful to start with a story and then add slides as we need them. A slide is needed when it allows us to communicate something better with that slide than without it. Sometimes, we need a lot of slides, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes a slide needs a lot of time to explain, sometimes it doesn’t.

In essence, the simple (though, admittedly, not necessarily easy) answer to the question about the ideal number of slides is this: You need as many slides as you need.

Brain to brain

Speaking is a sequential process. We can only speak one word after another.

However, thoughts aren’t sequential. When I think something – let’s say the word “orange” – a network of associations immediately pops up in my brain. In yours, too. Most likely different than for me.

Thoughts form a network. One thought leads to other thoughts which lead to yet more thoughts, loosely connected and jumping from one to the other.

One of the major challenges for speakers is that our audience’s networks of associations are different from ours.

What’s worse: We can’t just tell somebody our network of associations because there’s no easy way of serialising the network.

Speaking is sequential. It requires a series of thoughts. If we want to tell somebody something it can only be done one word after another. My knowledge network has to be transformed into a linear stream of information.

The problem is that every thought (word, even) in this stream of information sparks a network of associations for our audience. And again for the next thought. Our hope is that it will fit into our audience’s knowledge net in a meaningful way – ideally, ending up with the same network.

But it’s far from guaranteed that it does. And there’s no easy way to find out.

A good start is to acknowledge this dilemma and take into account that our audiences might have a completely different set of associations than we have.

Misunderstanding is the norm

We tend to assume that our audience understands what we mean and that misunderstanding is an anomaly in communication. I think it’s much more helpful to assume the opposite.

Misunderstanding is not an anomaly but the norm. More often than not – even when it doesn’t seem so – people have a different understanding of things than us.

When we say “eager” they see something different than we do. When we say “2 billion” it might seem not much to them while it seems much for us.

It helps a lot to keep that in mind when communicating. If in doubt, assume that your audience will misunderstand what you say and increase clarity.

The things we see

The only reason to give a talk is that there’s a gap between what your audience sees and what you see.

The purpose of a talk is to make your audience see what you see.

Of course, it’s so much easier if you don’t worry about that. You just speak about your topic for 30 minutes and when everything is said, you are done.

Yet, the point of a talk is not to be delivered but to change minds. The only way to achieve that is to acknowledge the gap and see your audience first. Where are they coming from? What’s their worldview? How do they see things?

And then take them on a journey to see things from your perspective.

Turn on the light

You see things that I don’t.

The beauty of communication is that for most things I don’t need to be you to see them as well. I don’t need to make the same experiences as you did in order for you to let me in to your experiences. I don’t need to have the same education as you in order for you to make me understand the things that you’ve understood.

You can make me see through the power of communication.

Wouldn’t it be great if 2021 was a year in which we focussed on exactly that? I’d sure love it.

What would you want us to see? Turn on the lights and make us see!

10 eyewitnesses

If, after a car accident, you ask 10 eyewitnesses what they saw, you will hear 10 different versions of the same accident, possibly even contradictory ones. None of the 10 eyewitnesses is lying. None is trying to deceive you. Each one is merely recounting the truth in exactly the way they recall it.

Don’t expect that to be different for a speech. We shouldn’t assume that what we say will be recalled by our audiences in exactly the way we mean it. We shouldn’t even assume that what we say will be heard exactly like we say it. Or that what we show will be seen just like we see it. Or that what someone from your audience will say about your speech tomorrow, will correspond to what they are hearing today.

Each one of us has their own reality. We relate new information to this reality. Therefore, we may conclude different things from the same information than others do. Neither of us makes a mistake. It’s just the way that our brains work.

As a speaker, it’s a fact we have to deal with.

If they didn’t get it, they didn’t get it

End of story.

There’s really no point in insisting that you’ve mentioned it on slide 17. They didn’t get it.

Much better to just take the feedback to grow. Reflect your words and then, next time, try to make your point even clearer.

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