How to Explain Anything To Anyone (Even If It's Complex!)
VVinh Giang
ManagementAdvertising/MarketingAdult Education
Transcript
00:00:00i'm going to show you how to explain anything to anyone no matter how complex the topic is
00:00:04i'm talking when you're trying to explain technical workflows to non-technical stakeholders
00:00:08walking a client through changes they don't fully understand or trying to pitch a complex idea to
00:00:13your team and after 15 years of coaching communication to fortune 500 companies and
00:00:17millions of people around the world i see this one pattern constantly the smartest technically
00:00:23brilliant people they tend to struggle the most when it comes to communicating things they know
00:00:28and look if that's you it's not your fault because nobody ever taught you how to translate what's up
00:00:33here to come out of here in a clear and concise coherent way so today i'm going to teach you how
00:00:39to do just that using what i call the clear filter and i'll walk you through this in a second but first
00:00:45let me explain why people feel the need to use complex language when i was younger i used to explain
00:00:51things in a really really complex way and it wasn't because i didn't understand the topic it was because
00:00:55i wanted to appear smart and by making it sound complicated i felt smart and that made me feel
00:01:00good for example i used to talk about tax with my friends i was studying accounting at the time yes
00:01:05i was fulfilling the asian prophecy and my friends were studying pharmacy and medicine also fulfilling
00:01:10the asian prophecy and they didn't know much about tax and because i felt less smart than them when i
00:01:16showed them how to do their tax returns i deliberately use big words and acronyms to sound clever i'd say
00:01:22something like this based on your accessible income and carried forward deductions will maximize your
00:01:28concessional contributions and apply the available offsets to minimize your taxable income which is
00:01:34just a complicated way of saying you earn this much and you can claim a few things so we'll set it up so
00:01:40that you don't pay more tax than you need to but i didn't say it like that i said the unnecessarily
00:01:45complicated version and i felt great saying it like that because i knew none of my doctor friends would
00:01:50get it and it made me feel better than them and would end up in this weird situation where i was
00:01:56over complicating everything to feel more important and confident and they were pretending to follow
00:02:00along because they didn't want to seem stupid two people having a conversation that's a complete
00:02:04bloody waste of time and if you do what i do because you lack confidence or if you just speak in a
00:02:10complicated way because you don't know any better then let me tell you what it's going to cost you
00:02:14people won't understand you which then causes them to disengage but most professionals you know
00:02:20what they're really good at pretending they're still engaged when in actual reality they've already
00:02:25mentally checked out thinking about the movie obsession and how bloody brilliant it is great movie curry
00:02:31parker well done mate no no no don't do that and if you don't fix this problem over time people start
00:02:38avoiding interactions with you because they see you as somebody who's confusing overly complicated and
00:02:43way too technical to actually talk to you'll be stuck in that technical role as the cog in the machine
00:02:49which brings us to the first part of the clear filter the c stands for calibrate before you explain
00:02:57anything to anyone you need to first know your audience how much do they already know about the
00:03:01topic you're about to speak on most people skip this completely if you assume they know everything
00:03:06you know you'll speak at a level that loses them immediately if you assume they know nothing then
00:03:10you can come across like you're speaking down to them so this first calibrating step involves
00:03:14asking qualifying questions to determine how much your audience already knows so you can meet them
00:03:19where they are if for example you're in a one-on-one situation with someone you might say something like
00:03:24this before i go any further how familiar are you with this topic however if you're preparing for a
00:03:29speaking event email the organizer ahead of time and ask on a scale of beginner to expert where would
00:03:34you say most of the audience sits with this topic i'm going to speak on and if you're opening a group
00:03:39session impromptu and you had no time to prep then ask the group directly a question ask something
00:03:44like this quick question before i start raise your hand if you have had a year's worth of experience in
00:03:49this area okay raise your hands if you've had two years okay now raise your hands if you had three
00:03:54years and sometimes if you already know you're walking into a group of specialists go deep use the
00:04:01technical language use the jargon have the in-depth discussion but you need to know where they're at
00:04:07first one simple question asked up front tells you everything you need to know know your audience before
00:04:12you speak to your audience the second part is link connect what they don't know to something they
00:04:20already know you do this by using either an analogy a metaphor or a simile i want to show you what this
00:04:26looks like from someone who's extraordinary at linking dr michelle thaler she spent her career at
00:04:32nasa understands astrophysics at a level that would make most people's heads spin but let me share with
00:04:36you a clip where she takes something really complicated and makes it easily digestible by
00:04:41using an analogy the human brain is just as far away from perceiving the way the universe really is
00:04:47as a grasshopper is perceiving quantum mechanics isn't it wonderful what she just did even though you and
00:04:52i don't have a deep understanding of astrophysics like she does we were still able to understand the
00:04:58concept she was sharing now imagine she didn't do that and imagine she read something like this to you
00:05:04i mean look at it can you even get past the second sentence no no i mean seriously try to read it
00:05:10try it's crazy huh no one could do it not me not you and no don't you go pretending in the comment
00:05:16section that you knew exactly what that meant because none of us did learning how to link the unknown
00:05:21to the known is a powerful skill set now let me give you my own example i do a lot of corporate
00:05:26trainings with engineering teams very technical teams and when i'm pitching my two-day communication
00:05:30workshop to a tech company instead of walking through the full curriculum and speaking in a
00:05:35complex way like this on day one we separate vocal image from visual image and then we deconstruct a
00:05:39vocal image into five core concepts first we've got rate of speech then we've got volume tonality
00:05:43pitch and melody and then the strategic pausing which combines all together into vocal archetypes that
00:05:48each trigger different listener responses and then on day two we formalize the narrative structure by
00:05:53breaking stories down into discrete incidents built around peak emotion peak action or the key lesson
00:05:58learned and then we derive a single governing point so the story actually holds their attention
00:06:03yeah that's how i used to do it because i thought that would make me seem like an expert and normally
00:06:08when i do this the clients look confused and i can literally see them disengage and then i end up not
00:06:14winning the business whereas what i do now is i use a simple metaphor music and then i link it to
00:06:20communication which is something most people don't usually understand fully again the linking the known to the
00:06:26unknown that's the magic and this is what i say now on day one i'm going to teach your engineers how to
00:06:33play their instrument being their voice and their body language then on day two i'm going to teach them
00:06:38how to write great music and that's how to structure their ideas so that they're clear and compelling and
00:06:43if you want a more detailed breakdown of the two-day syllabus i'll send you the pdf that's it two full
00:06:48days of content in under 20 seconds and every single time i watch another person nod and then they say
00:06:54oh then that's exactly what my engineers need so learn how to use analogies metaphors and similes
00:07:00find the link between the known and the unknown and make it simple for people to understand by the
00:07:04way if you want to learn how to go deeper into frameworks like the clear filter that i'm walking
00:07:08you through right now i've put together a free two-hour training where i'll teach you the top three
00:07:13communication frameworks i use in professional and personal conversations to help you speak with more
00:07:17structure clarity and confidence so you stop rambling and speak more coherently just click the link in the
00:07:24screen to get access it's completely free let's keep going the next part of the filter e is for envision
00:07:31some ideas are too hard to just describe with words alone and when you hit one of those draw it
00:07:36literally i mean draw a shape a triangle a circle a rectangle draw a simple diagram and in this example
00:07:42with envision i'm going to be a little bit cheeky here i'm going to combine envision with the next part of
00:07:46the filter which is a for abstraction and abstraction is taking a complex idea and boiling it down to its
00:07:55simplest form one of the questions that people ask me all the time is they say vin how do you actually
00:08:00get good at public speaking when you're starting from zero and if i was to answer that without envisioning
00:08:06and abstracting it sounds something like this first you're unconsciously incompetent then on your journey
00:08:13you move to the next point where you become consciously incompetent then most people get stuck there however
00:08:18if you continue the journey then you move into conscious competence and very few get to the final
00:08:23step where they reach unconscious competence which is a state of mastery that once again most never get
00:08:28to oh you see what the problem is when you explain it like that the listener's brain has to work
00:08:34harder to understand you and remember what you're talking about but the moment you envision it by drawing
00:08:41it out as a contextual model and you abstract it by simplifying the language watch what happens so the
00:08:46question is well what does it look like when you're on the journey of improving your public speaking
00:08:51ability well the first part of your journey you start here unconscious incompetence here you simply
00:08:58don't know what you don't know and that's okay everybody starts there we all start by not knowing
00:09:04anything about anything but then when you watch a video like this and you subscribe to a youtube channel
00:09:08about public speaking then you begin the learning journey and you move to the second phase and you
00:09:14move to conscious incompetence in other words what this is is now you know now what you don't know
00:09:22for example you now know that in order to get rid of the ums and the ahs
00:09:28you need to learn how to pause more and the reason you um and ah is simply because you're uncomfortable with
00:09:34silence that's all now you know how bad ums and ahs are you know how bad filler words are using like so
00:09:43do you know what i mean using them excessively you now understand destroys your clarity which then now
00:09:48moves us to the next stage of learning which is conscious competence and what this stage essentially
00:09:54means is that you're doing it but you still have to think about it
00:10:00here you know now to get rid of the ums and the ahs you just replace it with a pause so you're
00:10:06doing it already but you still have to cognitively think about it because your brain is in
00:10:10overdrive trying to replace so many different types of behaviors which now moves us to the final stage of
00:10:16learning which is unconscious competence this is where you reach a state of mastery you no longer
00:10:22have to think about it because the behaviors become automatic so if you go back to the pause example
00:10:29originally when you're learning it in the conscious competence phase that you're doing it but you still
00:10:33have to think about it the pauses will still seem a little bit unnatural but once you get to unconscious
00:10:41competence now here the pauses are automatic and they come across completely natural wasn't that way easier
00:10:49to understand and i know what you're thinking then by simplifying the language and dumbing it down for
00:10:55other people like this doesn't it make you seem dumb well let me ask you this at any point in this
00:11:00video while you were learning with me did you feel like i didn't know what i was talking about did i seem
00:11:04dumb or were you more engaged because you were able to follow along here's a trap that most
00:11:10experts fall into experts don't realize that there's a difference between being a great expert and
00:11:15actually being a great leader being a great expert means you personally have deep knowledge on a
00:11:20subject good for you but if you want to be a great leader you have to develop the skill of teaching
00:11:24because great leaders create other great leaders and they do that by passing on what they know
00:11:30through the skill of teaching and to be a great teacher you need to be able to simplify your ideas
00:11:35which makes the transfer of knowledge more effective and that's the best part about great leaders
00:11:40they grow other leaders whereas most of the time a great expert who doesn't know how to become a
00:11:45great leader they only grow themselves einstein famously said if you can't explain it to a dog
00:11:52then you don't understand it wait wait wait sorry peter was that the right quote
00:11:57actually then what the quote actually is if you can't explain it to a six-year-old you don't
00:12:09understand it well enough that's the quite silly billy that's what it was nice work peter and to the
00:12:14last part of the filter r stands for repeat this one's simple but never skip it at the end of your
00:12:21explanation close the loop come back to the shape of your idea one more time let me show you what i
00:12:27mean and right there my friends is the clear framework first you've got c for calibrate here's
00:12:33where you need to know your audience before you even start ask the qualifying questions then you've
00:12:38got l for link connect the unknown to something they already understand by using an analogy a metaphor
00:12:44or a simile then you've got envision here's where you draw it make it visible use contextual models
00:12:50then you've got abstraction this is where you distill the message to its simplest form and then r repeat
00:12:57what i've literally just done to you in this segment of the video being able to simplify something is one
00:13:03of the most important traits of a great communicator and therefore a great leader it means you understand
00:13:09what you know so deeply that you can translate it for anyone so pick one complex idea this week that you
00:13:15need to explain to someone and run it through the clear filter and watch what happens and if you want
00:13:20to keep building on what you've been learning today click on the link in the description for my free two
00:13:25hour training to learn more about communication frameworks or just scan the qr code to access it right there