How to Explain Anything To Anyone (Even If It's Complex!)

I'm going to show you how to explain anything to anyone, no matter how complex the topic is.

I'm talking when you're trying to explain technical workflows to non-technical stakeholders, walking a client through changes they don't fully understand, or trying to pitch a complex idea to your team.

And after 15 years of coaching communication to Fortune 500 companies and millions of people around the world, I see this one pattern constantly.

The smartest, technically brilliant people, they tend to struggle the most when it comes to communicating things they know.

And look, if that's you, it's not your fault because nobody ever taught you how to translate what's up here to come out of here in a clear and concise, coherent way.

So today I'm going to teach you how to do just that using what I call the clear filter.

And I'll walk you through this in a second, but first let me explain why people feel the need to use complex language.

When I was younger, I used to explain things in a really, really complex way. And it wasn't because I didn't understand the topic. It was because I wanted to appear smart.

And by making it sound complicated, I felt smart and that made me feel good. For example, I used to talk about tax with my friends.

I was studying accounting at the time. Yes, I was fulfilling the Asian prophecy.

And my friends were studying pharmacy and medicine, also fulfilling the Asian prophecy. And they didn't know much about tax.

And because I felt less smart than them, when I showed them how to do their tax returns, I deliberately used big words and acronyms to sound clever.

I'd say something like this. Based on your accessible income and carried forward deductions, we'll maximize your concessional contributions and apply the available offsets to minimize your taxable income.

Which is just a complicated way of saying you earn this much and you can claim a few things.

So we'll set it up so that you don't pay more tax than you need to. But I didn't say it like that. I said the unnecessarily complicated version.

And I felt great saying it like that because I knew none of my doctor friends would get it. And it made me feel better than them.

And we'd end up in this weird situation where I was overcomplicating everything to feel more important and confident.

And they were pretending to follow along because they didn't want to seem stupid. Two people having a conversation, that's a complete bloody waste of time.

And if you do what I do because you lack confidence, or if you just speak in a complicated way because you don't know any better, then let me tell you what it's going to cost you.

People won't understand you, which then causes them to disengage.

But most professionals, you know what, they're really good at pretending they're still engaged.

When in actual reality, they've already mentally checked out thinking about the movie Obsession and how bloody brilliant it is.

Great movie, Curry Barker. Well done, mate. No, no, no, don't do that!

And if you don't fix this problem, over time, people start avoiding interactions with you.

Because they see you as somebody who's confusing, overly complicated and way too technical to actually talk to.

You'll be stuck in that technical role as the cog in the machine.

Which brings us to the first part of the clear filter.

that the C stands for calibrate before

you explain anything to anyone you need to first know your audience how

much do they already know about the topic you're about to speak on

most people skip this completely if you assume they know everything you

know you'll speak at a level that loses them immediately if you

assume they know nothing then you can come across like you're speaking down to them

so this first calibrating step involves asking qualifying questions to determine how much your audience already knows so you can meet them where they are if for example you're in a

on one situation with someone you might say something like this, before I go any further how familiar are you with this topic?

However if you're preparing for a speaking event email the organizer ahead of time and ask on a scale of beginner to expert where would you say most of the audience sits with this topic I'm going to speak on?

And if you're opening a group session impromptu and you have no time to prep then ask the group directly a question.

Ask something like this, quick question before I start Raise your hand if you have had a year's worth of experience in this area. Okay.

Raise your hands if you've had two years. Okay, now raise your hands if you had three years.

And sometimes if you already know you're walking into a group of specialists,

go deep, use the technical language, use the jargon, have the in-depth discussion. But you need to know where they're at first.

One simple question asked up front tells you everything you need to know. Know your audience before you speak to your audience.

The second part is link. Connect what they don't know to something they already know.

You do this by using either an analogy, a metaphor, or a simile.

I want to show you what this looks like from someone who's extraordinary at linking, Dr. Michelle Othala.

She spent her career at NASA, understands astrophysics at a level that would make most people's heads spin.

But let me share with you a clip where she takes something really complicated and makes it easily digestible by using an analogy.

The human brain is just as far away from perceiving the way the universe really is as a grasshopper is perceiving quantum mechanics.

Isn't it wonderful what she just did? Even though you and I don't have a deep understanding of astrophysics like she does, we were still able to understand the concept she was sharing.

Now imagine she didn't do that and imagine she read something like this to you. I mean, look at it.