Technical Communication: Speak the Language of Business

A quick intro to the topics covered in section 1 and what you'll learn.

Grab the quick guide PDF to get a 1-page overview of the concepts in this section of the course.

Discover why getting your message across starts with understanding the audience.

In this video, you will learn about the importance of considering the audience's perspective when communicating a message.

I’ll explain how understanding the audience helps make the message relevant, relatable, simple, and jargon-free.

You’ll see an example of presenting a case from both the speaker's and the audience's perspectives, highlighting the audience's priorities and goals.

By making the message about the audience, you will increase the chances of getting their attention and achieving successful communication.

In this video, you’ll learn the importance of considering three key characteristics when creating and preparing a message for your audience.

To communicate effectively with an audience - whether that's one person or one hundred - you must understand three characteristics that impact your message:

1. Perspective

2. Expertise

3. Organisational position

   
   

The video explains why these characteristics are important and how they can help you tailor your message to be well-received and understood. It also introduces the four types of perspectives that people can have at work - business, customer/user, expert, and neutral.

By the end of the video, you’ll have a clearer understanding of how to identify and adapt a message based on the audience's perspective, expertise, and organizational position. This will help you to effectively communicate with them.

The most important audience characteristic is "perspective". If you can't tailor your message to the audience's perspective you are unlikely to communicate successfully.

In this video, you will learn about the importance of considering perspective when creating a message, as well as the impact different perspectives can have on understanding and communication.

The video explores the four key perspectives we have at work: the business perspective, customer/user perspective, expert perspective, and neutral perspective. Plus how they can vary based on roles, seniority, and priorities.

You’ll hear how different perspectives shape the questions asked and the answers given, and provides insights into blending multiple perspectives.

Additionally, the video emphasizes the significance of matching your message to the perspective of your audience to make it more relevant, relatable, and easily understandable.

In this video, I’ll show you the importance of considering the expertise of your audience when creating messages.

Expertise can be determined by factors such as knowledge, experience, and recency, and you’ll learn how these factors impact the audience's understanding of your message.

The video offers tips on tailoring your message based on the audience's level of expertise and introduces a visual tool to assess their expertise.

Additionally, you’ll get guidance on preparing and adapting your message when discussing a particular topic with someone, whether it's a colleague or someone outside your company.

You'll learn how to assess the expertise level of the people you are talking to and determine the effort needed to adapt your message to the audience.

In this video, you will learn about the importance of considering the organizational position of your audience when delivering a message. I’ll explain how the level of seniority and distance from the team can impact the relevance and understanding of the message.

Using examples and visual aids, you’ll see the different levels of effort required to tailor a message for audiences at various positions within the organization. I also discuss the use of a chart that combines seniority and organizational position to determine the level of effort needed to tailor your message.

Throughout the video, you’ll see why you need to adapt your message to meet the audience's position and expertise.

Expanding on the three previous characteristic lessons, this lesson gives you a framework and a series of questions to help evaluate your audience and prepare a message that connects with their goals.

By the end of this lesson you'll have a simple checklist to help you understand just how much effort you'll need to put in to tailoring your message to the audience.

This activity will help you prepare for your next important message by understanding your audience.

Use this worksheet to prepare a message you need to deliver soon at work. The activity worksheet will help you identify and record the key information about your audience’s goal, perspective, and more.

NOTE: The activity isn't "homework" that you must submit to receive a grade. It is a practical way to apply what you've learned and to produce something valuable for your work. Keep the worksheet and use it any time you want to prepare to deliver an important message at work.

Up to this point the lessons have focused on audiences with a single purpose. In this video, you will learn about how to effectively understand the different perspectives, expertise levels, and organizational positions within a mixed audience.

I’ll show you strategies for analyzing the audience and tailoring your message to address the needs of different groups.

The video explores the options of having separate conversations or addressing all the audience's needs in one go, while providing tips on finding common ground and starting at a high level to ensure everyone understands the message.

A quick introduction to Section 2: Relevant.

• What makes a message relevant?

• How to show relevance using:

  • Goals & objectives

  • Effort

  • Outcomes

  • Time frames

• Increase the relevance using the audience perspective

Grab the quick guide pdf to get a one page overview of the methods in this section.

If your message isn't relevant to the audience they are less likely to pay attention - they are less likely to care.

In this lesson you'll find the key to making any message relevant. The one thing that, above all else, will make your audience sit up and pay attention....IMPACT!

You’ll see an example of an Internet upgrade to demonstrate how impact plays a crucial role in making a message relevant.

You will also discover the key elements that people care about, such as goals, effort, outcomes, and time frames.

In this video, you will learn how to make your message relevant to the audience by showing how it is connected to their goals and objectives.

You'll see various methods and examples of linking topics to audience goals.

By understanding this concept, you will be able to make messages with more impact, gain the audience's attention, and achieve your desired outcomes.

The audience will care if your message changes the effort they are expecting to put in.

In this video, you’ll see how to make your messages relevant to your audience by using effort.

You’ll see the different types of effort most people care about most of the time, such as money, time, resources, mental energy, or physical energy.

I’ll show you how to use these types of effort to make the impact, and therefore the relevance, of your messages more obvious to the audience.

If your message changes an outcome the audience cares about the relevance is easy to show. This video gives you a framework you can use to describe all outcomes in a way any audience will understand. Discover the exact words you can use to show relevance using outcomes.

I’ll show you different outcome categories that you can use in almost any situation. Outcomes such as financial, speed, efficiency, quality, compliance, safety, reputation, and satisfaction.

The video also provides examples of how to effectively communicate the impact and relevance of ideas, projects, and options in various situations. By understanding primary and second-order outcomes and considering the audience's priorities, you will learn how to make your message relevant and impactful.

In video, you will learn about the importance of time frames and timelines in conveying relevance in communication.

I’ll share examples and discusses how the impact and relevance of efforts and outcomes change based on different time frames.

You will also learn about the questions to ask and answer when considering time frames in order to effectively convey information.

Just because something is relevant to us doesn't mean it is relevant to the people we are talking to.

In this video, I’ll explain how connecting the audience's goals with your own goals can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your communication.

The video provides examples and a script structure, including goals, problems, solutions, efforts, and outcomes, to help craft messages that resonate with the audience.

By tailoring your message to incorporate the audience's perspectives and priorities while highlighting the relevance of your own perspective, you can effectively communicate your message and gain appreciation from your audience.

You stand the best chance of getting your point across when your message is tailored to the priorities and perspectives of the audience.

Any gaps between your point of view and that of the audience make it harder to show relevance, harder to keep the audience attention, and generally make communication less effective. The bigger the gaps between your priorities and those of the audience, the more work you must do to create a message that is right for the audience.

Answer the questions in this worksheet to find any gaps in priorities and perspectives between you and your audience.

You can do this for a specific audience and message you must deliver, or for an audience you regularly communicate with. For example, your boss, project stakeholders, a regular client, or your team.

NOTE: The activity isn't "homework" that you must submit to receive a grade. It is a practical way to apply what you've learned and to produce something valuable for your work. Keep the worksheet and use it any time you want to prepare to deliver an important message at work.

This short video provides an overview and introduction to section 3.

In this Section, you will learn about the importance of making your messages relatable in order to enhance your communication skills. This section focuses specifically on the third part of the 5-part framework. You will learn why relatability is crucial for message understanding and how it impacts the success of communication.

The difference between relevance and relatability will be explained, highlighting the significance of both.

Furthermore, you will learn practical strategies to make your messages relatable, regardless of the topic, audience, or situation. By the end of the section, you will have the tools to make your messages clearer and more understandable by incorporating relatable content.

Grab the quick guide pdf to get a 1-page summary of the methods covered in this section.

Describing things in our own words isn't always the best way to help people understand us. For someone to understand what you are saying they must be able to relate to the content.

In this video, you will learn about the importance of making messages relatable in communication. I explain why it can be challenging for an audience to relate to new ideas, rare experiences, different industries, new cultures, and expert details.

By the end of this video you will understand how the gap in knowledge and experience between the speaker and the audience affects the relatability of the message.

The video also emphasizes the impact of relatable messages on understanding, empathy, support, and buying into ideas.

Find out what happens if you can't make your messages relatable and why this is so important.

In this video, I’ll show you how to make your messages relatable. With a few simple techniques you can explain anything to anyone (well, almost).

The following techniques are described in this video along with examples.

• Showing relevance from the audience's perspective

• Using familiar words and labels

• Making comparisons and analogies

• Adapting based on feedback.

By making your messages relatable, you can enhance understanding, increase audience engagement, and effectively communicate with different teams, industries, or expertise levels.

This worksheet will help you think about how you describe the specific details of your work in ways that are relatable to people in other teams, and who don’t share your expertise.

Making our work relatable to others is a key part of communicating clearly between teams. Use this worksheet as often as you want - it will help you practice the techniques taught in this section of the course.

NOTE: The activity isn't "homework" that you must submit to receive a grade. It is a practical way to apply what you've learned and to produce something valuable for your work. Keep the worksheet and use it any time you want to prepare to deliver an important message at work.

This video introduces 11 methods you can use to simplify a message, an idea, or a description.

Each method has it's own video in this section that explains the method, demonstrates how it works, and provides examples for you to practice with.

By the end of the section you will have a better understanding of how to make your messages simpler and more easily understood by your audience.

Grab the quick guide pdf to get a 1-page summary of the methods covered in this section.

Complex messages are harder to understand. This is just one of the reasons why you should know how to simplify your messages.

In this video, you will learn about the importance of creating simple messages and starting with simple messages when communicating with their audience.

You’ll see how simple messages are quicker to deliver, easier to understand, and lead to fewer assumptions and mistakes.

I’ll give you tips on how to simplify a message without dumbing it down along with an example of how to explain a complex idea in a simple way.

The video also highlights the need to confirm understanding, ask questions, and observe body language to ensure effective communication. It emphasizes the significance of gradually adding more layers of detail to convey a message successfully and concludes that simple messages are better messages.

The first step in simplifying a message is to do everything you learned in the course up to this point.

In this video I’ll show you how assessing your audience and making your message relevant and relatable will lead to simpler messages.

We will recap the importance of describing things in a way that relates to what the audience already knows and understands. By doing so, you will be able to simplify your message and tailor it to their perspective and expertise level. The video also covers how to tie your message to the audience's goals, express ideas in terms of effort and outcomes, and make your message relatable using analogies and comparisons.

NOTE: This video doesn’t teach new methods – it reinforces the lessons you’ve already learned in this course. You can skip the video if you’re in a hurry, but seeing as it’s less than 4 minutes it won’t take long to watch and you will benefit from the quick recap.

Summaries are shorter, simpler versions of larger topics.

In this video, you’ll see the importance of using summaries in communication at work as well as how to create effective summaries using the Goal Problem Solution (GPS) framework.

There are three parts of a great summary and I’ll show you how they help in conveying information efficiently.

Additionally, the video discusses how summaries prevent backward conversations and provide a complete story to the audience.

By focusing on the goal, problem, and solution, you can avoid overwhelming your audience with unnecessary details and ensure clear understanding and efficient communication.

How often do we get caught up in the details when talking? telling people how something works instead of what it does for them.

In this video, you will learn about the importance of focusing on "what" instead of "how" when simplifying your message.

I’ll show you how starting with a high-level description of what you are trying to achieve can make your message more clear and understandable.

You’ll see examples, get practical tips, and see template scripts you can use to effectively communicate the "what" without getting into unnecessary details.

This video will help you improve your communication skills and convey your message in a simplified and concise manner.

This is without a doubt my favorite way to simplify my communication. Watch this video to find out why I like the Magic Box method so much. I am confident you'll like it too - plus you'll discover the single sentence that can stop your audience asking detailed questions they don't need the answers to.

In this video, you will learn about the concept of the "magic box" and how it can be used to simplify complex messages and ideas.

By the end you will understand the importance of focusing on what the magic box does for the end user or audience, rather than getting caught up in explaining the inner workings.

The video provides examples and tips on how to effectively communicate using the magic box concept, as well as a useful technique to determine whether the audience wants to know the details of how something works or simply what it does.

By putting the details into the magic box, you will be able to effectively communicate the key points of you message without getting lost in the details.

Common words make it easier to communicate clearly. Unfortunately we spend our time focusing on the expert words related to our work. Breaking that habit and using common words instead will greatly improve your communication.

In this video, you will learn about the importance of using common words in your communication to effectively deliver a message.

I explain how complex words can reduce understanding and require more mental effort to process. You’ll see examples of common words in various contexts, including scientific descriptions and terms and conditions.

The video also offers practical steps to help you find common word equivalents for expert language and simplify your communication for better clarity.

If you want to be confident you are communicating clearly without dumbing things down, try using the grandparent test. It's a quick and simple way to test if you're talking in too much detail or losing the audience.

In this video, the I introduce the concept of the "grandparent test" as a tool for simplifying and effectively communicating ideas.

The test is an improvement over the "six-year-old test" proposed by Albert Einstein.

By using the grandparent test, you can draw on the life experience and broader knowledge of your audience, making comparisons and using a wider vocabulary to explain complex topics.

The Grandparent test will help you think about how to communicate ideas simply, effectively, and without being patronizing.

Visual aids (images, charts, diagrams, etc.) are great at simplifying messages ... except when they are not!

In this video, you will learn the difference between a helpful visual aid and one that makes your message harder to understand.

I’ll show you situations where visual aids may not be helpful and explain how to create effective visuals that support the message without overwhelming the audience.

The video also provides examples of using visuals to simplify complex topics, explain processes, and save time in conveying information.

In this video, you will learn about various techniques and strategies for simplifying their message to ensure clear and effective communication.

The video covers four more ways to create a simple message.

1. 3-Part structures

2. Trends vs data

3. Clarity over accuracy

4. Avoid big jumps between ideas

By following these tips, you will be able to deliver a message in a way that is easily understood by your audience.

Jargon-free communication is the ultimate outcome!

Discover how you can be 80 percent jargon-free by using what you've already seen in this course. Then choose whether to take the steps to get the last 20 percent to become jargon-free forever!

In this video, you will learn that while jargon is necessary in expert fields, it can be a barrier to clear communication with non-experts. You will discover practical tips and techniques to avoid jargon and make your message more relatable, relevant, and simple.

The video emphasizes the importance of understanding your audience and using plain language, visuals, stories, and analogies to effectively convey your message.

By following these strategies, you can significantly reduce jargon and improve the clarity of your communication.