There’s a strange thing that can happen when you become exceptionally good at something.
You forget what it was like to know nothing about it.
Spend 10, 20 or 30 years building expertise and things that once required enormous concentration become obvious.
Language becomes familiar.
Patterns become visible.
Connections happen automatically.
You develop shortcuts in your thinking that somebody encountering the subject for the first time simply doesn’t have.
Then one day you’re standing in front of a room trying to explain what you know and find yourself saying:
“Surely everybody knows this?”
Do they?
Are you sure?
Because there’s a name for one of the problems experts can run into here.
The curse of knowledge.
Once you know something, it becomes surprisingly difficult to imagine what it’s like not to know it.
And that’s why expertise doesn’t automatically equal influence.
Sometimes expertise actually gets in the way.
Some of the smartest people I’ve met were terrible communicators
I saw versions of this long before I became a speaker coach.
Back when I worked in outdoor guiding, we had guides and we had the safety people.
Now, the safety people were important.
Very important.
These were exactly the people you wanted noticing that something wasn’t clipped in correctly or that conditions had changed.
Hawk-eyed.
Methodical.
Serious.
From our perspective as guides, we occasionally suspected their broader mission was to systematically remove all joy from our lives.
But they knew their shit.
The problem was that knowing your shit and getting somebody else to understand your shit are two completely different skills.
A safety briefing that could potentially have taken three minutes could become ten.
More information.
More detail.
More scenarios.
More instructions.
More things to remember.
All delivered with the best intentions.
Except somewhere around minute four, you’d watch people’s eyes start glazing over.
By minute eight, the person delivering the briefing was technically providing more safety information.
But how much was the audience actually retaining?
That’s an interesting question.
Because communication isn’t measured by how much information leaves your mouth.
It’s measured by what arrives.
Too much, too fast, won’t last
A guy called Rich Allen used to describe this beautifully:
Too much, too fast, won’t last.
I’ve never forgotten it.
I’ve experienced the problem myself plenty of times.
Think about a scuba-diving briefing.
Someone pulls out a map.
Here’s where we’re entering.
Here’s where we’re exiting.
Here’s the current.
Here’s the depth.
Here’s what we’re doing when we descend.
Here’s the pressure we’re turning around at.
Here’s what happens over here.
Here’s what happens if this happens.
Here’s the route.
Here’s another thing.
And another thing.
And another thing.
Eventually you’re standing there thinking:
Holy shit. What are we doing again?
Every individual piece of information might be correct.
Every piece might even be important.
But collectively, we’ve created a cognitive traffic jam.
Expertise has been transferred.
Understanding hasn’t.
More information isn’t necessarily better communication
This is something I think leaders, technical experts and subject-matter specialists can easily get wrong.
We assume that if something is important, we need to explain all of it.
Right now.
But sometimes the better approach is:
What do they need to know now?
What can I tell them once we get moving?
What will make more sense when they have context?
What can I reinforce later?
What information is essential?
What information is merely interesting to me because I’m an expert in it?
That’s a much harder discipline.
Because experts are often fascinated by the details.
Your audience might not be.
At least, not yet.
Sometimes the safest thing you can do is give somebody enough information to successfully complete the next stage, then provide the next piece when it becomes relevant.
Get them moving.
Build context.
Add complexity.
Reinforce.
Repeat.
Too much, too fast, won’t last.
The curse of knowledge changes your starting point
Imagine expertise as climbing a mountain.
You’ve spent 20 years climbing.
You know the tracks.
You know the terrain.
You recognise the landmarks.
You’ve developed strength.
You’ve got equipment.
You’ve been up and down dozens of times.
Then somebody arrives at the bottom for their first attempt.
And you begin teaching them from halfway up.
That’s what experts can accidentally do with communication.
We start from our current level of understanding rather than their current level of understanding.
Then when they struggle to follow us, we sometimes make an even worse mistake.
We assume they’re the problem.
They’re not technical enough.
They’re not strategic enough.
They’re not sophisticated enough.
They don’t understand the terminology.
Maybe.
Or maybe we started halfway up the mountain.
“Surely everyone knows this”
Whenever I hear that phrase, my ears prick up.
Surely everyone knows this.
How do you know?
Have you asked them?
Have you tested it?
Or does it simply feel basic because you’ve known it for 15 years?
That’s the curse.
Your baseline has moved.
Something you consider embarrassingly elementary could be the exact piece of information somebody else needs before everything else you’re saying makes sense.
This doesn’t mean treating your audience like they’re stupid.
Quite the opposite.
It means respecting them enough to meet them where they actually are.
“But I don’t want to dumb it down”
This is the objection I hear from smart people.
And I understand it.
If I simplify this too much, won’t the experts in the room think I’m dumbing it down?
Possibly.
So who are you trying to communicate with?
Only them?
Or the whole room?
Because simplifying an idea and making an idea simplistic are not the same thing.
One removes unnecessary complexity.
The other removes necessary meaning.
Great communicators learn the difference.
Your job isn’t to demonstrate the maximum complexity you’re capable of understanding.
Your job is to help the audience understand something they didn’t understand before.
Sometimes that means using the technical term.
Sometimes it means translating it.
Sometimes it means a metaphor.
Sometimes it means a story.
Sometimes it means drawing a bloody picture.
The measure isn’t:
Did I sound clever?
It’s:
Did they get it?
Expertise can create distance
There’s another problem here.
The way we communicate expertise affects how people experience us.
If I begin with complicated terminology, long explanations and constant reminders of my credentials, I may establish authority.
But I may also create distance.
And influence requires more than authority.
A lot of my work comes back to three things:
Liking. Trust. Respect.
Can I build enough liking, trust and respect to say the right words, in the right way, at the right time?
Because influence isn’t just about possessing the right information.
It’s about creating the conditions where another person is willing and able to receive it.
That’s where charisma becomes relevant.
Not charisma as showmanship.
Charisma as audience awareness.
Can I read the room?
Can I simplify?
Can I use a story?
Can I change my language?
Can I make an abstract idea concrete?
Can I recognise that they’re confused before they have to tell me?
Can I adjust?
That’s communication.
Your PhD isn’t under threat
I sometimes see experts protecting their complexity as though simplifying an idea somehow diminishes their expertise.
It doesn’t.
Your qualifications don’t disappear because you used words a 14-year-old could understand.
Your 30 years of experience don’t evaporate because you explained something with a metaphor.
Your technical knowledge isn’t under threat because you removed an acronym from a slide.
In fact, genuine expertise often becomes more visible when somebody can make complexity feel simple.
You need to understand something pretty bloody well to explain it clearly.
Complexity can hide gaps.
Clarity exposes them.
Start where they are
This connects to something I wrote about recently:
Don’t tell me where you want to be. Tell me where you are.
I use that idea when I’m coaching speakers.
But it applies equally to audiences.
Before I design a message, I need to know where you’re starting.
What do you already understand?
What language do you use?
What assumptions are you carrying?
What matters to you?
What do I need to explain first?
Where might I lose you?
Only then can I start building the bridge.
And that’s ultimately what communication is.
A bridge between what I understand and what you understand.
If I build my end beautifully but never make it across to yours, it isn’t much of a bridge.
Influence requires restraint
Maybe that’s one of the hardest lessons for experts.
Sometimes influence requires you to leave things out.
That fascinating detail?
Maybe not today.
The seven additional pieces of evidence?
Perhaps three will do.
The 42-slide appendix?
Keep it in the appendix.
The technical explanation you’re desperate to give?
Maybe wait until they’ve got enough context to understand why it matters.
Knowing what not to say is part of communication mastery.
That’s not withholding expertise.
It’s sequencing it.
It’s asking:
What does this person need from me right now to take the next step?
Then giving them that.
And when they’re ready, giving them more.
Expertise gives you the information. Communication makes it useful.
I love working with experts.
People who have spent decades understanding something at a level most of us never will.
That knowledge is incredibly valuable.
But knowledge trapped inside somebody else’s head isn’t particularly useful to me.
It needs translation.
Structure.
Stories.
Examples.
Metaphors.
Clarity.
Timing.
Humanity.
Sometimes humour.
And occasionally the discipline to stop talking.
Because expertise and influence aren’t the same skill.
Expertise is what you know.
Influence is your ability to help somebody else do something with it.
And if the people you’re communicating with can’t understand, remember or act on what you’ve told them, giving them more information probably isn’t the answer.
Maybe give them less.
Make it clearer.
Meet them where they are.
Then bring them with you.
Too much, too fast, won’t last.
