Have you ever felt embarrassed when you were in a meeting and you
wanted to explain yourself, and this was a high level meeting, but
somehow you were misunderstood.
It was clear inside your head, but you were misunderstood?
If you've ever experienced that embarrassment and you want to improve
your communications to explain yourself more clearly than today in
this video, I'm going to share with you five very cue tips on how you
can explain things more clearly.
And I'm also going to give you an understanding of why
misunderstandings do occur in these explanations.
So if you like what you're hearing, give me a thumbs up and remember
to subscribe to my channel as well, because every single release,
every single week, I release videos on this topic and so much more,
let's go.
Five tips on how to explain yourself clearly.
And by the way, when I share these five tips, I'm going to share it in
terms of ABCDs.
So every tip will begin with a letter of the alphabet in alphabetical
order.
So let's start with the first one, A A is to align yourself with
their values.
And what do I mean by that?
Whoever you're communicating with it doesn't matter how high they are,
higher up stakeholders, prospects, clients.
It does not matter every individual you're going to be communicating
with, they had their own priority of values and they have a hierarchy,
a system of what's most important.
So whenever you're in communicating, you want to explain yourself
clearly, remember clarity of explanation comes from their opinion.
They must receive.
They must be able to perceive that clarity.
So it is their opinion, not yours.
So when it comes to them, having clarity on what you are explaining,
if you, the moment you can understand how to align, what you're
explaining with their highest values, this is where it's going to be
utmost clear to them.
It will be most clear to them.
And the reason why is because anything that is aligned with a person's
highest values, this is where they can have the longest attention
span.
This is also where they can retain what you've shared them the
longest, whenever it is aligned with their highest values.
If you think about in your own life, you're going to realize it's true
when someone's explaining themselves.
And what they're explaining is aligned with what you value most, you
have a longer attention span as well, and what you learn from them,
what they explain to you, you retain it, you retain that information
for longer periods of time.
So this is why it's important to understand how do you determine
someone else's values?
Now, every time, the biggest mistake that I, that I hear professionals
making when they're explaining their ideas is that they have such an
urgency.
They have such a, a training to tell people everything that they know.
And so this is the biggest mistake that I hear because when it comes
to being in meetings, we want to be perceived as authoritative.
We want to perceived as intelligent.
We want to be perceived as somebody with really good ideas.
And so in that moment, it can be very tempting to share with that,
with that other person, everything that you know, or all the details
that you know, and this is what causes the confusion, because if it's
not aligned with their highest values, they're not going to see how
the details are relevant.
They're not going to be able to retain or attain what you have
explained, and that's where the miscommunications happen.
Right?
So in order to understand what another person values, the first step
is to understand what you, yourself values as well.
Because through that process, this is where you can develop the
vernacular and the clarity on how to know what somebody values
genuinely, right?
So if you are somebody who's listening to this and you really do see
that, yeah, it's true.
You are noticing that even in yourself, right.
When, when someone's explaining something to do, and it is aligned
with your values, if you're noticing that yeah, that's true.
And this is where I have my clarity.
This is where in those conversations that I understand things more
clearly.
If you're seeing this and you're seeing the value of it, then I invite
you to work with me every single week I show people I train on
communications.
I train on how do you determine someone's values.
How do you understand how to position your ideas in accordance to
their values and therefore ensure maximum delivery and maximum
perceptivity as well.
So if you are serious about achieving, achieving these results in your
career path, then I invite you to send in your applications.
Below this video, the very first link is an application to really
understand, and it's just the initial phone call with either myself
or someone from my team.
And just to explore whether or not it's the right fit for you.
And of course, if I can truly help you with what you're looking for.
And if you're serious about it, so that you can step up into higher
levels of leadership, then I look forward to speaking with you on the
inside.
Tip letter B is benefits and payoffs.
When it comes to articulating your ideas, expressing yourself, clearly
your audience will not be interested in hearing every details about
your methodology or your process until they know exactly how it's
going to benefit them.
Right?
Think of it as having a lens in terms of what's in it for me, how was
what's the pay off?
What is the outcome that we're going to be producing from this?
What is the benefit?
How can I enjoy the payoffs from really understanding what you are
articulating?
So sometimes it is the onus is on you in terms of understanding and
being able to articulate how they're going to benefit from the ideas
that you are sharing.
And sometimes it requires you to be able to help them to see how it's
benefiting them from them, how they're going to benefit.
You might need to help them to see it through your articulating and
through your positioning as well.
Because when it comes to articulating benefits and payoffs, the
benefits are their opinion that they genuinely see that it's going to
benefit them.
And when they look at and they see whether something is beneficial to
them, whether or not the payoff is something they'll enjoy, it's going
to be through the lens of their own values.
So this goes right back to tip letter A, when it comes to aligning
with your values, it goes right back there, right?
So two tips so far A is aligned with their highest values and B is
benefits and payoffs articulating that through your explanation.
And these two tips will help you to elevate the clarity of your
explanation through their perspective.
Tip letter C clarity trumps cleverness, right?
We have been programmed ever since elementary school, high school,
college, and beyond.
We've been programmed that it is important to sound intelligent
because we've been programmed to believe that if we don't sound
intelligent, it means that other people perceive us as uneducated or
that we don't know what we're talking about.
And so this urgency to sound in front of our audience is causing us to
want to use words or want to sound a particular way, or want to dump
out and tell and share everything we know so that we can demonstrate
the depth of our knowledge.
The problem with that is that when we focus on cleverness, instead of
clarity, oftentimes we lose our audience or we bury the lead and they
don't really see the essence of what we are sharing.
So rather than sharing everything that you know, because remember tip
letter A and tip letter B, this follows through from that, rather than sharing
everything you know, strive for a basic understanding from them, a
basic understanding on what you are clearly, what you are explaining,
or the idea that you are sharing.
And after a basic understanding has been achieved, if they want to
know more then definitely, you can share more, but share more
depending on what else they want to hear in alignment with their
highest values and tip letter B as well, articulating the benefits and
the payoffs to them, right?
Because when it comes to really, if you're holding tight to, I need to
sound intelligent.
I need to be impressive.
I need to demonstrate my knowledge.
If you're holding tight to that, the more you are addicted to sounding
intelligent, the more that creates or breeds the nightmare of sounding
unintelligent.
And that creates a lot of pressure because now the pressure, the focus
is on yourself.
So that's why as soon as you are focused more on cleverness and these
sounding intelligent part of it, it breeds that nightmare.
And it creates even more pressure because the focus is on self.
The focus is on, how am I going to look?
How am I going to sound and how am I going to be received?
And that's always makes the conversation a lot more difficult because
now the focus is on you and the benefits and payoffs to yourself
instead of the benefits and payoffs to your audience.
But the moment you are able to make that shift in terms of I'm going
to strive for clarity instead of comprehend, instead of cleverness,
then what happens is that you can establish an understanding and a
connection with your audience because now the shift is from you.
And now the shift is on them instead of you, right?
So that is point letter C.
And by the way, point letter C follows through from tip A and B as
well.
So now let's go to letter D let's go from there.
Tip letter D is to draw out what's familiar because chances are
whenever you are articulating something to an audience, one person or
many people, you have some sort of intention behind why you're sharing
this, why this is important to you to explain it.
And it could be because you want to get buy-in or it could be because
you want an idea approved, or it could be, you want to move something
forward.
But the essence of your intention is you want to create some sort of
change.
You want to create some sort of movement, which is a change and change
is hard.
The biggest reason why change is hard to create with other people or
with teams is because of something called the status quo bias.
And what the status quo bias means is that individuals have a tendency
to keep things in the familiar, to be familiar with what they know.
And therefore it's more predictable and it's safer and it's secure and
it's reducing the risk.
And that is the essence of why change is so hard.
So if you understand the status quo bias, and that's why you're
noticing that people resist change, people resist things that require
them to think differently, do things differently, or introduce
different routines or processes.
That's why there's that there's a level of resistance.
So if you want to overcome the status quo bias and make the change you
want to make through your explanation and through identity and through
really positioning your idea, then it's important to anchor to what's
familiar because when you anchor to what's familiar, that's what
breaks down the status quo bias.
Now you're positioning towards the idea you're changing.
The idea that you are sharing is familiar to them on the grounds of
now I know what to expect.
There is a greater amount of predictability and there's a greater
amount of perceived familiarity.
So that is why this one is really important because let's face it.
You're not just explaining something for the sake of explaining it.
You're explaining it to create some sort of positive change, a
positive change that you're passionate about a positive change that
moves towards the vision that you see happening in your industry as
well.
Right?
So tip letter D is draw out what is familiar and anchor your
explanation to that.
Final tip is tip letter E.
And this is to embrace a dialogue because let's face it whenever
you're explaining an idea or trying to explain yourself clearly it is
not a one-sided conversation.
It is not a, not a monologue.
It is a dialogue.
And whenever you invite dialogue, which means that you invite others
to contribute.
You invite others to share their perspectives, even though sometimes
other people's perspectives might challenge yours.
But this is where you got to change your relationship with
challenging.
When someone challenges your perspective is an opportunity to, for you
to refine your craft for you to refine your offering through your
explanation.
So invite a dialogue.
And when you invite a dialogue, here's what it does.
When you invite a dialogue.
Now the other people or the other person feels included.
And when they feel included, they're able to also share their
perspectives.
They're able to feel acknowledged and in the process and in so doing,
they can eventually come to their own conclusions about why this idea
is important, or they can come to their own conclusions about why,
what you're explaining is important and why it's beneficial and how
it's going to help them to achieve what's highest on their values.
So with that in mind, as you're communicating them, you might be
thinking, well, how do I do so in a way that is assertive?
Because you might be noticing that, well, sometimes I feel hesitating
some times sometimes I'm a little bit too passive, or maybe I'm a
little bit too aggressive.
How do I be more assertive in this dialogue?
Then if you are serious about understanding the process of coming more
towards assertiveness, then watch the next video.
This next video that's coming up is going to share with you all the
tips and tricks on how to be more assertive.
That's coming up next.
So I'll see you there.