Speaking Concisely

I would call myself a certified yapper. Coworkers will remember me talking for hours during long assessments. I would talk about anything just to fill the time during the hours of data collection. Even before I graduated, I had started a podcast, and to this day, I still have my podcast studio set up for me to record every now and then.

Big update coming to the podcast soon!

By talking so much, I have developed a skill for explaining and communicating things clearly. This has helped me present complex topics clearly. In both my ABA career and my marketing career, my clarity of explanation has helped significantly.

Clarity is Good, but Concise Clarity is Better

In one of the marketing books I was reading (probably a Hormozi book), they were talking about the grade level of the communication that they use for ads. Essentially, their point boiled down to “Why say more words when few words work” (shoutout Kevin). That stuck with me, and I began listening to myself as I spoke. I was a good explainer, but I used a lot of words. Many of those words, in my opinion, were simply to boost my ego.

Let me give you some examples from caregiver training sessions:

“When we utilize reinforcement contingencies—like making sure they get X when they do Y—we will see an increase in the future probability of the behavior occurring—essentially ensuring they are more likely to engage in that behavior again.”

“The key to getting them to communicate is to shape echoics, like copying a word, and encourage them to use it under the stimulus control of their motivation—or, said differently, when they want something.”

Can you catch the pattern? I would explain a topic by first using a jargon-heavy explanation before shifting to layman’s terms. To me, this was the best way to communicate because it demonstrated my expertise while also explaining my words.

As a side note, it is important to note that I was a BCaBA supervising cases at 22 and a BCBA at 23. I was pretty young to have people entrust their kids’ care to, and that made me want to impress them with my jargon and expertise. Many of my early career decisions can be traced back to that insecurity.

What I realized is that while I was “bringing them along” with my jargon and explanations, my language was doing one of two things:

• Best-case scenario: They were trying to catch my jargon and missing my follow-up explanation.
• Worst-case scenario: They saw through the thinly veiled ego play and could tell I was full of it.

After continued failure to communicate, something had to change. I needed to drop the jargon and speak as simply and concisely as possible.

By speaking more concisely, the people I am speaking to understand and buy in to the process. Any expertise I was getting with jargon, I now gain when they see my strategy produce results. I explain the system to get their trust, then get them results to reinforce that trust.

This was a win-win for me. After all, would you rather someone think you are an expert by your words, or see you are an expert by your results?

Ways I’m Practicing Speaking More Concisely

This is an ongoing challenge for me, and even something I have been considering during this writing challenge. I am aiming to write at a middle school language level—preferably grade 5 and below—and it has been really challenging. I am averaging around grade 7 or 8 after editing, but there is definite room for improvement.

I have also begun analyzing past sales calls and getting feedback from current clients. My goal is to assess their understanding of the marketing topics I am explaining. If I am speaking clearly and concisely, then they will be able to repeat the topics back with no errors. If I am clear but scattered, they will be too.

The other main way I have been trying to speak more concisely is actually just to talk less about a variety of subjects. For a while, I wanted to be the ABA generalist—pretty good at everything. Now, I am striving to become an expert in one topic, nail my communication (and results) for that topic before moving on to the next one. This has also represented a significant shift in my businesses, and hopefully one that leads to plenty of profit later on.

To end, I will leave it at this…

If you cannot explain your services to a 5-year-old, you do not understand your services well enough.

I do not think I am there yet, but I hope to get there soon!

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