Smart and trustworthy

Make sure audiences come away with the right message

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that effective communication means your audience understands your point,
and the point should not be that you are an

(00:25):
extremely smart person. I mean you are, but usually we're
best off trying to convince people of something different than that,
so it's best to keep our eyes on the ultimate goal.
Today's tip comes from a webinar from Emily Oster of
parent Data. The webinar was about science communication, but her

(00:46):
perspective is broadly relevant for people in all fields. Oster said,
effective communication means the other person leaves not thinking that
you are smart, but that they are smart and you
are trustworthy. She explained that this means that they need
to understand what you're saying. The goal should not be

(01:09):
to show how much you know about a topic, but
instead you want to focus on communicating in a way
that is accessible and relevant. I think this is good
advice as you are thinking about presenting or writing in general,
could consider a few things about your message. First, why

(01:30):
is this content important for my audience? Why should they care?
People are busy, There's a lot going on in the world.
For people to be convinced of your point, they usually
need to feel that it is relevant to their lives. Also,
consider exactly what you would like your audience to take

(01:51):
away from this communication. With my talks, my goal is
always to have my audience try a few things that
I think will help them manage their time better. Anyone
who has been studying a topic for a long time
knows a lot of arcane details that we probably find fascinating.
I would love to talk about historic time diary use sometime,

(02:14):
but most audiences won't. If the audience remembers nothing else
or does nothing else afterwards, what would you like them
to leave with? As Ostar said, you also want your
audience to think that you are trustworthy. This means that
your audience needs to trust your communicating for their benefit,

(02:35):
for them to take away something good from this, not
for any other reason. So explain to how you reached
your conclusions in a way that makes sense and is straightforward.
A lot of evidence of your expertise will come across
naturally when you do this. The goal is that the
audience feels smart afterwards, which generally means that they leave

(02:58):
thinking something like, oh, I'd never thought of it that
way before, and here's what I'm going to do, rather
than Wow, what a clever speaker, or for written communication,
wow what a clever writer? That will come from thinking
the first part. But everyone's time is limited. The goal
of communication is generally to change something in the world,

(03:21):
which means inspiring other people to do something. Being clever
is awesome, but it is a lot less than half
of the equation. In the meantime, This is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.

(03:48):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(04:10):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.