The journalist and language teacher Wolf Schneider famously said: “Someone’s got to suffer, the writer or the reader.”
The same is true for speakers and audiences.
Either we let our audience do the hard work of understanding. Of getting the point. Of looking for what we mean.
Or we do the hard work to make it easy for our audience to understand. To get the point. To see and feel what we mean.
The good news is that as a communicator you get to choose.
Yet, depending on your choice it means that we need to go the extra mile to think and re-think of ways to come up with better metaphors, visualizations, and stories. With easier words and ways to interact with our audience. It means that we need to invest the time to practice until our story works. But it also means that it’s so much more likely to resonate with our audience.
How do you choose?
