Help others understand you

While some travellers are born storytellers, others do their utmost to avoid the opportunity to share their experiences. They doubt what they remember, they worry that they get ideas mixed up, and they are uncertain if what they have to share is even interesting enough to fare well with the audience. Then again, if they found part of their journey impressive, it can be useful for them not to try to tell a story, but rather try to make their audience understand why it seemed impressive to them—try and share what moved their minds.

Consequently, if giving presentations—to provide information—is not your forte, why not set out to enable your audience’s comprehension of your ideas—to help them succeed in understanding you? This approach works in the same way as the old saying, ‘To truly learn something, you have to attempt to teach it.’ Instead of performing a presentation, make it your goal to enable your audience to follow you. If you present and speak about material you only have limited insight into, it is easy to run into problems with it. If you aim to make an audience understand, on the other hand, you will have at least one additional level of quality assurance implemented—you will ask not only what you can speak about, but also how you can make your audience understand (which leads to testing your own understanding).

Research, to a degree, also means communicating with people. Often, this communication is too readily equated to ‘speaking’, and it is too seldom thought of instead as ‘enabling others to comprehend and learn with you’. Not only that—it seems a more purposeful way of thinking about communication, and it also slightly repositions and strengthens the role of the speaker—she is not just talking, she’s actively trying to make sense to others.

(This is a preview section. The full chapter on this topic continues with the sections “Rough coordinates”, “Train of thought”, “In essence”, “To reflect”, “Two travellers’ tales”, “Devil’s advocate”, and “How to tackle”.)