To Help People Understand What You’re Talking About Faster, Give an Example Sooner
I just saw a great example of a mistake a lot of us make when explaining our Big Idea or a key concept.
The video below is a great example of how you can be a brilliant thinker and writer, and still forget to make your ideas more instantly understandable to your audience.
In this brief interview with Youngme Moon, author of Different, she describes three different types of brands:
- Reverse Brands
- Break Away Brands
- Hostile Brands
As you watch the interview, notice that the interviewer asks her for an example after she describes each brand type.
When she gave an example of each brand type, didn’t you get more of a sense of what the different terms meant?
I don’t know about your experience, but as I was listening to her definitions, I found myself paying close attention, but not feeling confident I got what she was talking about. But then when she gave an example of a company that embodied the brand and why, the light bulb went on. Oh, that’s what she means!
So…here’s the take away, and something I learned from Klas Mellander, author of Power Learning. When you are explaining a concept, do NOT make this common mistake:
Name the concept , explain it, and then give an example, or worse yet, move on to the next concept without ever giving an example. (BTW, notice how in the video, the interviewee followed up after each of Youngme Moon’s explanations with a request for an example.)
Instead, when you present a key concept:
- Name the Concept (e.g. “Hostile Brand”)
- Give a Concrete Example (e.g. She shared an example of a company with a Hostile Brand)
- Explain Your Concept (e.g. What Youngme did in the interview)
By giving the listener something concrete to attach your abstract words to, they can grasp the abstract far more easily than if you simply try explaining something abstract with more abstractions.
So…give examples; make your abstract ideas concrete…and your audience will love you for it!
