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CTDO Magazine

Cutting Through Complex Topics

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

How to communicate complexity with confidence and ease.

As the chief talent development officer, you often are required to explain abstract and complicated workforce issues to the rest of the C-suite. Maybe you need to connect the myriad puzzle pieces of a new performance improvement strategy or clarify context so you can accurately depict the real problems plaguing your company's culture. Whether you're talking about employee engagement, performance management, corporate culture, change management, or organizational development, your authority will rise quickly if you can make these core talent development topics accessible to your fellow leaders. They will be knocking on your door to work with you—and learn from you. Here is some guidance to help direct your discussions.

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Make it matter to stakeholders

Know the WIIFM (what's in it for me?) for every player seated at the table. When you're trying to explain a complicated topic to someone, it's a good idea to play on this egocentric behavior. In other words, to get people interested in a complex issue, you need to start with the question "Why?"—even when the answer seems obvious.

Of course, other leaders should care about employee engagement. But maybe they don't realize how many sales reps walk out the door because they are disengaged. If that's the case, they also likely don't know how much it costs to get new people in place and up to speed. So, before you go into the next strategy meeting, find out their talent-related measures for success and uncover any pain points.

Use details leaders already know

The idea of connecting complicated ideas to what someone already knows is a common teaching technique—and should already be familiar to professionals involved in talent development. The key is to take what they know and expand on it in such a way that makes it meaningful and accessible.

Maybe the sales manager already knows how many reps leave for another company each year, but does she know the reason why or how that number compares with other internal functions or national averages? This simple statistic can be your opening to delving deep into the ins and outs of the impact employee engagement can have on the organization.

Say it with pictures

We're all familiar with the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words." This sentiment is effective when discussing talent development trends in the boardroom because basic visual cues can guide your audience through logical connections that would otherwise require verbal explanation.

Once you've decided what information to convey, you should consider how you can use graphs, icons, and even photographs instead of words to explain your message. For instance, when discussing disengaged employees, an image that colors six out of 10 stick figures gray has an immediate impact. Or, if you need to show the effect emerging technologies are having on corporate learning, you can use color, arrows, and brackets to differentiate between groups and tools to show impact.

Infographics Made Easy

Infographics can never fully replace the role of detailed research and explanations, but they can do a superb job summarizing ideas and data. An infographic can make it easier for an audience to understand a topic quickly—and it can be the difference between having your point heard or ignored by essential decision makers. Fortunately for talent development executives who are not graphically gifted, there are a few tools that can do the heavy design work for them.

Piktochart is easy to use, and offers categorized icons, a resizable canvas, design-driven charts, and interactive maps for users to incorporate into their infographics. All the information you need to get started with Piktochart is provided in its tour.

The focus of Easel.ly seems to be primarily based on infographic design, whereas other programs offer more design project options. Select a theme, drop in some data, and voilà, you're all set. If you're just looking to design an infographic, this program will work well.

Visme enables users to create interactive presentations and infographics by using its library of templates, shapes, and icons. The free version offers limited access to charts and infograph widgets.

Know what to omit

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CTDOs often are overloaded with more information, more data points, and more variables than they can handle. But when you're trying to explain a complicated concept to someone else, you should probably leave certain details out. Your main objective is to get a point across and help someone understand a difficult concept. Strange terminology, names, or specific processes rarely matter. Also, the people you're talking to may lack your specialized knowledge, so use readily understandable terms and keep jargon and acronyms to a minimum.

Still looking for a sure-fire way to convey your content and build buy-in—without dumbing down the message? Try one of these three hacks.

Hack #1: Become a sandwich king

To maximize understanding of a complex topic, Anett Grant, president of Executive Speaking and columnist for Fast Company, recommends organizing your ideas in a multidimensional format. Specifically, she advocates a "sandwich approach" in which different levels of knowledge receive different levels of explanation. Here's how it works:

  • Sandwich level: Not everyone wants the same level of detail, so begin your discussion with the big picture. What kind of a sandwich is it? "Introduce your idea in the broadest possible terms so that even those who know nothing about what you'll say next can understand the concept," explains Grant.
  • Meat level: Next, you have stakeholders who want more detail. They want to know what kinds of meat are on the sandwich. Grant advises people to explain some of the larger elements of the topic to draw in people, but don't get too technical—just yet.
  • Condiment level: At this level you can start to spread on the nitty-gritty details of a complex subject. The condiments are the technical details that may not be of interest to a general audience, but are nonetheless essential for your now expert audience.

Hack #2: Make ADEPT explanations

Kalid Azad, math scholar and author of the Better Explained blog, offers a simple acronym to help CTDOs explain complex or complicated topics: ADEPT. Although Azad developed this approach to help students get new math concepts to click, the same ideas can be applied to discussing talent development issues.

  • Analogy: Tell me what it's like.
  • Diagram: Help me visualize it.
  • Example: Allow me to experience it.
  • Plain English: Describe it with everyday words.
  • Technical definition: Discuss the formal details.

Hack #3: Follow Feynman's five steps

Richard Feynman was a Nobel prize-winning physicist. The Feynman Technique promises to help users understand, recall, and explain anything in less than 20 minutes. By applying its five simple steps to communicate complex talent development issues, it follows suit that you can explain anything in under 20 minutes.

  1. Choose a concept. The first step is to choose the concept you want to explain to the C-suite. You may need to break down your broad concepts into more narrow ideas.
  2. Explain it for a five-year-old. Prepare your explanation as if you were talking to individuals who doesn't fully understand the subject—because they probably don't.
  3. Pinpoint knowledge gaps. If you cannot find the words to describe your concept in layman's terms, go back to your reference materials. Making a simple explanation pushes you to really understand and interpret the data at your disposal.
  4. Use an analogy. When working with abstract concepts, try using an analogy to link the concept to something most people already know. This has the advantage of connecting old and new knowledge.
  5. Simplify the concept. If in the end, your concept is still too hard to grasp, try simplifying it once more. Sometimes it is better to lose some details if that makes it easier for people to understand.

Read more from CTDO magazine: Essential talent development content for C-suite leaders.

About the Author

Ryann K. Ellis is an editor for the Association of Talent Development (ATD). She has been covering workplace learning and performance for ATD (formerly the American Society for Training & Development) since 1995. She currently sources and authors content for TD Magazine and CTDO, as well as manages ATD's Community of Practice blogs. Contact her at [email protected]

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