The Art of Explanation: How to Communicate with Clarity and Confidence - By Ros Atkins
Date read: 2024-02-29 How strongly I recommend it: 6/10(See my list of 150+ books, for more.)
Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.
Written by a seasoned BBC journalist, he shares his approach for writing and speeches so that they are clear and easy to understand. Overall good advice, but I found other books on this topic much more useful.
Contents:
- SIMPLICITY
- ESSENTIAL DETAIL
- COMPLEXITY
- EFFICIENCY
- PRECISION
- CONTEXT
- NO DISTRACTIONS
- ENGAGING
- USEFUL
- CLARITY OF PURPOSE
- KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
- SEVEN-STEP EXPLANATION
My Notes
There are ten attributes that I am looking for in an explanation:
- SIMPLICITY
- ESSENTIAL DETAIL
- COMPLEXITY
- EFFICIENCY
- PRECISION
- CONTEXT
- NO DISTRACTIONS
- ENGAGING
- USEFUL
- CLARITY OF PURPOSE
- I want to provide all the information that someone needs from me or that I would like to give them.
- And I want to give them that information in a way that gives it the best chance of being consumed and understood.
‘Simplicity is the key to understanding. Short words in short sentences present the listener or reader with the fewest obstacles to comprehension.’
Our pursuit of simplicity is about clarity of language and the removal of distractions and unnecessary information. This may mean brevity, but it may not.
ASK YOURSELF Is this the simplest way I can say this?
ASK YOURSELF What detail is essential to this explanation?
ASK YOURSELF Are there elements of this subject I don’t understand?
A great explanation will include the essential details and the essential complexities – and do so in the simplest language possible.
If you can be efficient in your explanation, you can both improve the clarity with which you explain yourself and ensure you have as much space as possible to do this.
ASK YOURSELF Is this the most succinct way I can say this?
‘If your sentences are too long, your writing hasn’t been disciplined enough. If your writing hasn’t been disciplined enough, your thinking hasn’t been disciplined enough.’
ASK YOURSELF Am I saying exactly what I want to communicate?
- ‘The reason this matters is...’
- ‘To understand this, we need to remember that...’
- ‘All of which connects back to...’
- ‘This is not happening in isolation.’
- ‘This is important beyond the immediate consequences because...’
In the case of partially known words, I often use the phrase ‘as some of you may know...’ It acknowledges to some people that you’re telling them information they don’t need, while informing those who do need it.
I only show pictures, graphics, maps or tweets if I explicitly reference them. And we only show them when I explicitly reference them. This greatly supports my explanation. If they are there when I’m not talking about them, it does the reverse.
The dial test is a constant reminder that to explain ourselves well, we need to remain acutely aware of whether we’re keeping the attention of the people we’re speaking to.
Whenever I want to explain something, I write a list of the questions that I think I’ll be expected to answer. If you can answer them all, there’s a good chance whoever you’re addressing will want to hear what you say.
All journalists are familiar with the two questions – what’s the lead? And what’s the top line? Meaning What is our most important story? And What is the first thing we want to say about that story?
I’m thinking of what the entirety of my telling of this story is trying to achieve. I want that purpose to run through every word.
Go through it step by step and ask of everything I’m planning to say – is it explicitly supporting the overall purpose?
These five questions are a useful start:
- The target: who am I talking to?
- Knowledge assessment: on this subject, what do they know and what would they like to know?
There will be others – such as a presentation at a conference that is open to the public – where you know next to nothing about the people you’re meeting or addressing. In these situations, I would ask questions in the meeting or presentation to help me better understand who they are. I can calibrate what I say according to what I’m told. People will rarely mind you doing this. You’re taking an interest in them and in making sure what you say is relevant to them. - Tailor it: how do they like to receive information?
- Make it personal: how best can you convey that this information is for them?
Often, we’d be talking about global issues like climate change. Again, instead of asking open questions, I’d say, ‘If you’re listening in the US, what do you want your government to do?’, ‘If you’re listening in Australia, how are you affected by rising temperatures?’ and so on.
I am often asked to speak at conferences or to a particular news organisation. With these audiences, there is certain to be a huge range of people and professions. In that situation, I’d first try to establish who was in the room and then address some of the different people there. ‘For those of you who make podcasts...’, ‘For those of you who work in long-form video...’, ‘For those of you doing live audio...’, or whatever the case may be. - Believing in the messenger: how best can you be credible?
I talked and listened to a lot of colleagues - build credibility through crowd-sourcing from existing experts.
I developed an editorial process - involve the experts as you build out the content.
I built credibility into each explanation
If I was going to bluntly assert that something was correct or otherwise, I’d position supporting evidence right next to the assertion.
This is what the process looks like:
- SET-UP
- FIND THE INFORMATION
- DISTIL THE INFORMATION
- ORGANISE THE INFORMATION
- LINK THE INFORMATION
- TIGHTEN
- DELIVERY
What do you hope to explain and/or communicate? Provide one sentence maximum.
Who is this explanation for? Give the answer in one sentence maximum:
- Is there a consistency of knowledge amongst those you’re addressing? Yes/No
- How do you assess their knowledge of this subject?
- How would you summarise what they’d like to learn from you?
- What specific questions will this explanation need to answer?
Are there ways you could find out more? Provide a few bullet points:
- Where will this be consumed? One sentence maximum.
- Is there a fixed duration? Specify a number of words or minutes.
- Is the duration strict? Yes/No
Where and how should I look for information? Before you launch into gathering information, it’s always helpful to have a rough direction of travel. You know your ‘purpose’, but you may not know the subject particularly well. Nonetheless, start with this question.
Which parts of the subject do I want to explain? Make a list of bullet points. Don’t worry if you include subject areas that may turn out not to be relevant. Or if you miss subject areas. That’s understandable if you don’t know the subject well. Just put down what you think are the areas where you’d like to start.
If some of the information you’re gathering doesn’t add up to you, don’t ignore that. For two reasons. First, if it doesn’t add up, it might be wrong. Second, if it doesn’t add up to you, it might not add up to someone you’re sharing it with. Indeed, you may want to acknowledge that when using it – ‘and, though you may find this hard to believe, it’s actually the case that...’
With each section that you decide to keep, ask yourself: what is it that is of value here? And then start to remove everything else. Focus on the information that has value and strip everything else out. You don’t need sentences around it. (Indeed, you don’t need any full sentences unless they are part of a quote or a passage that you explicitly want to keep in its entirety.)
Every piece of information you include needs to be doing a job. If it isn’t doing one, it’s a distraction.
Strands - I use it to capture the idea that you are dividing your information according to different aspects of the subject.
For a ten-minute presentation at work, I might have five strands. For a thirty-minute speech or a long article or essay, I might have between five and ten.
Create your strands and then add two more: One is for information that we’re unsure how to use. One is for high-impact information that could be useful at the start and finish of our explanation.
Before you start to write and when you think you’ve finished, take a few seconds to ask yourself: ‘What’s this story in five words?’ Have you conveyed that?
Re: telling a good story - If you have, say, five core strands marked out for your explanation, see if you can verbally outline how you’d talk through it all – starting with a different strand each time. Very quickly you’ll feel that most of them don’t work as a starting point. One or two might do, though.
On Constructing a Story: You’re explaining an issue or event. You establish what it is – and then say, ‘but you can’t understand this without understanding X’. Introduce a strand of the subject. Conclude it – and repeat. ‘But even if we consider X, that alone doesn’t explain this – because you can’t understand this without understanding Y.’ Bit by bit you build the context around whatever it is you’re explaining. If ‘zoom out’ wraps a wider piece of context around the explanation each time, ‘all context’ takes a thematic approach giving equal scale to several pieces of context.
Structure Technique #2: Along with ‘chronological’ and ‘solving a problem’, this is the one I turn to the most. If you can create a sense of constructing an explanation in front of your audience, you can create momentum and also curiosity about where you’re going. The idea being that each part of the explanation would not make sense without the part that has gone before.
At best, generic images do nothing; at worst, they distract and create a sense that you’ve nothing of great value to show.
I always recommend starting at the beginning. Humans tell stories from the start and I think you’ll find it easier to shape the story you want to tell if that’s where you begin.
If you get stuck, you could try starting the section with a different element first. Maybe that will feel easier. If you’re still stuck, try to identify why. Is it because you’re not sure exactly what you want to say? Or you’re not sure how to express it?
Previewing what's to come later on in your speech/writing: Trailing is very effective at marking your overall direction of travel. But it can only be deployed at major junctions in your explanation and, as such, you’re unlikely to use more than a few in any one piece of work.
Example of joining phrases with a hook: Our suppliers have found this new approach hard. One told me: ‘I just don’t see why this is necessary’. But while they don’t think this is necessary [the hook] – all the data on our supply chain suggests it is [the joining phrase]. Look at this from our industry body [the next element you want to introduce]... [go into chart showing the latest data].
Previous example explained in a structure:
- Introduction to some information.
- Share the information.
- Back anno to add context.
- Introduction to some more information.
- Share the information.
- Joining phrase with a hook.
- Introduction to some more information.
- Share the information.
Re: sentences, for any verbal explanation, I have a rule of thumb that I don’t want to go beyond fifteen words.
Reference the subject before you talk about it.
‘All of which’ - to be used when closing or concluding a section.
Watch out for phrases with redundant words:
- (all
- time) record
- collaborate (together)
- during (the course of)
- gather (together)
- postpone (until later)
I verbalise every explanation that I write, whether it’s to be read or heard. For me, however hard I concentrate when reading an explanation in my head, it doesn’t come close to being as effective as saying it out loud.
To try to address this, I started to experiment with using the same engaged tone but lowering the speed. I still sounded actively interested in the subject – but the audience had more space to take in the information.
I also traded speed for a focus on efficiency. If my language was efficient, then I would create more time for information even if I lowered the speed of my delivery.