The Reason Communication Is Hard — and a Simple Trick To Fix It
Do a thought experiment with me.
Imagine I ask you to tap out the rhythm of Happy Birthday on a table with your fingers while a friend listens from the other room.
Your friend can only hear you tapping the table, but can’t see or hear anything else.
If you tapped this song and a few other popular ones (like Jingle Bells), what percentage of the songs do you think your friend could guess right…?
25%? 50%? 75%?
The tapping experiment
This experiment was conducted in 1990, and the song “tappers” predicted that the “listeners” would be able to guess 50% right.
What actually happened?
Listeners could only pick out 2.5% of the tunes — 1 out of every 40 songs — versus the tappers’ prediction of 50%. The tappers were so bewildered!
What explains the huge gap between tappers’ predictions and the results?
Go back to our thought experiment.
As the tapper, you can literally hear Happy Birthday playing in your head as you tap away on the table.
But your listener doesn’t have that mental soundtrack playing. Without that, the taps on the table just sound like jumbled Morse code.
In their New York Times Bestseller Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath call this the “Curse of Knowledge.”
The Curse of Knowledge shows up everywhere:
- When CEOs talks about “maximizing shareholder value,” they have a song playing in their heads that their employees can’t hear
- The same is true when construction workers, doctors, and technology professionals talk to homeowners, medical patients, and non-tech-savvy individuals, respectively
In the above examples, when the speakers (tappers) communicate, they find it bewildering when listeners don’t understand them.
But the listeners can’t hear the tune playing in the tappers’ heads.
So, how does this apply to making others understand our ideas?
We have to remember that other people can’t hear the song playing in our heads. They don’t have our exact life experiences that led to our understanding of what we’re communicating.
To overcome the Curse of Knowledge, we need to transform our message. One of the best ways to do that is to make your message “concrete,” instead of abstract.
Solution: Make Your Message Concrete
It’s 1998 and you’re at the movie theater. The smell of fresh-popped popcorn fills the air. Your mouth waters as you prepare to order a medium-sized bag of it.
STOP and imagine I tell you the following:
“A medium-sized movie popcorn has 37 grams of saturated fat.”
How much less likely would you be to order it?
You would probably want it less than before.
But imagine I told you the following:
“A medium-sized movie popcorn has as much saturated fat as a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner — combined.”
Which statement would make you less likely to order the popcorn?
The second statement.
But why?
The value of concreteness
The second statement is concrete. The first statement is abstract.
37 grams of saturated fat is an abstract concept. You understand it intellectually, but you have never experienced it directly with your senses.
For something to be concrete, you must be able to examine it with your senses, such as to touch it, see it, or taste it.
Does bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries, and a steak dinner meet that criteria?
You bet it does.
If you want people to “get” your message, you need to communicate it concretely, not abstractly.
Yes, abstract knowledge can help people who have the exact same education and experiences communicate complex ideas to each other (e.g., doctor to doctor). But those conditions are much rarer than we think.
Your colleagues don’t have the exact same education and experiences as you. Your significant other and friends don’t either.
It’s no wonder we all feel so misunderstood!
The solution?
Stop using abstract, intellectual language to communicate your message.
Speak in concrete terms and your messages will be understood. Concreteness is the universal language of communication.
How To Communicate Concretely
Here are easy ways to apply the principle of concreteness.
“Relate it to something that someone could experience in daily life.” For example:
- When a company in the 1990s was deciding whether to install wireless routers in their office, the cost averaged out to $500 for every employee. So they figured if they can get back $501 in added productivity from every employee, it’s a good decision. But how do they know if they can achieve $501 per employee? By making it more relatable: “If we can get at least 1 minute/day of added productivity from each employee, the wireless routers are worth it.”
- “A medium-sized movie popcorn has as much saturated fat as a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner — combined.”
“Translate statistics to a human level.” For example:
- After Steven Covey shared statistics about employee engagement in a book — for instance “60% of employees say they are not clear on their company’s top priorities” and “20% of employees are actively disengaged” — he translated them to a human level.
- He asked the reader to imagine these statistics apply to a soccer team of 11 players. If these statistics were true, 6 would be unsure which goal to run towards. 2 players would be doing the bare minimum and actively hurting the team.
“Break large numbers down to a more concrete size.” For example:
- The Nature Conservancy wanted to protect around 2,000,000 acres of land in California per year. Instead of trying to raise money for a large, and thus abstract, number, they grouped the acreage into just 5 “landscapes” they wanted to protect. Thus, their pitch to donors was to help protect these 5 landscapes this year, which is easier to grasp than 2,000,000 acres.
“Distill abstract details about a group down to a single individual.” For example:
- The Saddleback Church in California has grown into one of the largest churches in the US, with a congregation of thousands. They need church leaders and their many volunteers to make decisions independently and consistently. To enable that, they created a “persona,” a detailed picture of the person they want to reach. By describing two individuals — Saddleback Sam and Saddleback Samantha — rather than a list of demographic information, their volunteers can easily remember the target market and use the information to make aligned decisions.
Conclusion
Communicating effectively is hard. You can improve your effectiveness by using the concreteness techniques discussed above.
If you forget them, all you have to remember is the line “Let me give you an example.” Make that a part of your daily repertoire — use it all the time. When you say it, you force yourself to provide a concrete example to your listener.
Call To Action
If you want to eliminate resistance and put great behaviors on autopilot, I highly recommend doing the short exercises in my free Action Guide about Atomic Habits, James Clear’s #1 New York Times Bestseller.
