Words Matter. That's Why They're So Hard to Get Right.
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In this Q&A with PUGS, instructor Lyndal Frazier-Cairns explains what her course is about and why the ability to explain big ideas is a world-changing skill.
Q: Your course promises to teach us How to Explain Complex Things. What is a complex thing?
FRAZIER-CAIRNS: It may seem strange for a writer to use a word as inexact as "things" but I wanted the course to be open to anyone who was struggling to articulate their big idea - whether it is a product or service, concept, intervention, or movement. The problems that climate scientists have articulating the threat to livability on earth are the same problems teachers have explaining to their students the intricacies of the Cold War. Engineers struggle to outline how their app works, nonprofit founders falter with their fundraising pitch, and we are all poorer for our lack of understanding. Words matter. That's often why the right ones are so hard to find.
Q: What do you do when you don't know what to say?
“Sometimes the act of trying to explain something to someone you know is the breakthrough you need to be able to understand it yourself. Frequently, what we think is a content problem is actually an audience problem.”
FRAZIER-CAIRNS: A couple of decades ago when I was a newspaper cub reporter, I would frequently come close to the deadline for a story, and, despite all my research, I'd be stumped about how to start. Being able to figure out the main point of a story is really 90 percent of a reporter's job, so it would frequently be the cause of a late-afternoon freak-out. One day, a senior reporter gave me a tip: Call your mom. I thought it was strange advice but out of desperation, I took it. My mother said hi, how are you, and then the clincher: "What are you working on?" And I was able to tell her, every time. "Well, it's this story about an electrical apprentice who died on a live line because the forklift had a fault. It turns out the company knew all along but they didn't want to buy new trucks," I said. Then it dawned on me. "Wait, that's my nut graf! Gotta go!"
The senior reporter knew what I was yet to learn: The hard part isn't poring over the facts - it's articulating what's really going on with a story. After a few months of practice, I didn't even need to pick up the phone because I could "call my mom" in my head and get to the point. Sometimes the act of trying to explain something to someone you know is the breakthrough you need to be able to understand it yourself. Frequently, what we think is a content problem is actually an audience problem.
Q: Is that why you say defining audiences is important?
FRAZIER-CAIRNS: Exactly. The more you know about your intended audience, the easier it is to explain things to them. Imagine you're explaining fig pollination at a dinner party with friends: You might talk about the co-evolution of fruit and wasp, and the rarity of the fig as an inward-facing flower. You could reference figs in art and literature as a metaphor for fertility since it is the womb for both the tree and the wasps, as well as a vital late-summer food source for the first agricultural communities.
Now imagine you're instead explaining it to the 12-year-old who lives next door. You still remark that it's an inward-facing flower, sure, but instead of co-evolution and literary metaphor, you tell the kid that wasps lay their eggs in it and the wasp babies that don't make it out become part of the fruit. He thinks that's gross but also exceedingly cool.
To either audience, you've conveyed that fig pollination is novel, but by centering your audience and their values, you've tailored your message in a way that makes it more likely to be remembered. Centering your audience paves the way for more effective communications.
Q: What are you hoping participants will take away from your course?
FRAZIER-CAIRNS: At the very least, participants should get some tips for efficient research and breaking big ideas into their component parts. However, my hope is that they can put into practice an entirely new way of approaching tricky problems and complex concepts that leverages critical reasoning and an appreciation for how people absorb information. Oh, and I also hope they think fig pollination is the coolest.