Giving your audience the complete picture can be a difficult task. A slight shift in perspective makes it way easier … 

Read more thoughts on the art of communicating week-daily at https://michaelgerharz.com/blog

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Especially in the technical domain, many communicators struggle with the challenge

to convey a complete picture of their topic when speaking to an audience.

After all, it's often quite a complex topic, especially

if you care for the details.

Yet, the actual challenge might be much simpler than that.

Rather than to convey the complete picture it might be all

about telling me only one thing.

Because effectively, what you really need to do is to tell me one thing that

makes me curious to hear the next thing.

And when you've achieved that, it's the same challenge again.

All you need to do is to tell me one more thing that makes me

curious to hear the third thing.

Step by step.

When you do this repeatedly, eventually you'll have told me everything,

but it doesn't feel nearly as tedious as we are used to from the

usual approach to communicating.

When you want me to understand the complete picture of your ideas, the

challenge is not to tell me everything.

It's not to give me the complete picture.

The challenge is to figure out what's the one thing, the one thing

that makes me want to know more.

In other words, if you want me to get the complete picture, get

me to want the complete picture.

It's a much simpler approach.

And much more related and informed by what matters to your

audience rather than to yourself.