Advice:

Struggling to get your point across? Discover the art of explanation

Written by Ros Atkins Tuesday 16 July 2024

Managers need to give clear explanations. In an extract from his new book, BBC analysis editor Ros Atkins explains how to do it

Jargon, communicate with technical word or hard to understand language, complicated conversation

We all know the feeling. If it’s a presentation, maybe people’s eyes are drifting, or their phones are coming out. If it’s an essay, it’s a gnawing sense that the words are there but you’re not sure what they add up to. If it’s an email, it’s no reply – or one that doesn’t address the questions that you asked. For whatever reason, the information we want to communicate is neither hitting the mark nor delivering what we were hoping for in return.

Explaining yourself well does not guarantee your desired outcome. You could do it perfectly and still not get the job, make the sale or win the argument. But when you convey what you mean with clarity and impact, you give yourself the best chance of being understood and achieving whatever goals you may have.

When done well, explanation helps us establish what we want to say, to find and distill the information that we need to say it – and to calculate the most effective way to give it to people. Explanation is all of this. It encompasses what we say and how we say it – and everything that comes within those ambitions.

The anatomy of a good explanation

This leaves us with ten vital questions to keep in mind whenever we’re explaining ourselves. At first, you ask them consciously. In time, they simply become part of how you approach communication in all its forms. Rather like playing a sport, being good at explaining is about learning skills but also about being sure to keep sharpening them.

1. Simplicity

In our pursuit of simplicity and our hunt for “obstacles to understanding”, there’s a risk we aim for the wrong target. This isn’t about brevity. This isn’t about “short” being good and “long” being bad; or detail being bad and less detail being good.

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?

2. Essential detail

I often ask myself: what is the detail I need to include to properly explain this? If someone is struggling to explain something, often not enough time has been given to working out what the essential detail is – and then making space for it and explaining why it’s essential.

Detail for its own sake is not good. It doesn’t make us look clever nor is it helpful. Including most of the interesting detail on a subject can be seductive but beware the law of diminishing returns. Every piece of non-essential information makes it harder for the essential information to be communicated.

Ask yourself: What detail is essential to this explanation?

Want to discover eight more steps to explanation excellence?

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