Building Our Team - Explaining

In our Friday Wisdom session while we were having the company-wide meeting to explain a couple of new features added to Probench.

Photo by Rachel on Unsplash

A new feature Response Notification was getting explained to the rest of them. The feature was very important to Assessments that are conducted by the Analyst and the company end up responding with comments if they agree or not with the assessments. Since it was a complex feature from the standpoint of its use case. It was evident that it would be difficult to understand it completely in one go.

It was presented very well and explained with a couple of screenshots.

Listening is the key to Explaining well

The people who were explaining it are the ones who created it and the listeners are the rest of the company who had little to no idea about the feature. Empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. The real key is Empathy but it cannot be learned in 5 simple steps

Highlights of the explanation

1. It went quickly to the technicality of the feature
2. The edge cases and different outcomes were forefronts of the discussions
3. It was mostly a monologue
4. Listeners were confused and no one highlighted it
5. The next upgrade was quickly into the conversation

Until someone interrupted and asked a few of the members are they following the conversation. The team realised that no one was getting the context of the feature. Why was it requested in the first place? What was the business case we were trying to solve? Which clients were primary beneficiaries?

Photo by Redd on Unsplash

The person who was explaining was way ahead in the learning curve they knew everything about it. So they didn't wait and asked how to explain it in simpler words and listen to understand. If the listeners don't understand what's the point of explaining the stuff in the first place. We are so busy speaking that we don't pause to listen or ask questions to listen. It is important to prepare with good questions so that you know that you are doing a good job of explaining the concept to someone.

5 steps to listen better

1. Prepare with 5-7 good questions for your sessions to ask your audience
2. Learn to take a dramatic pause of more than 30 seconds after your question
3. Read the non-verbal cues on the video calls, there are sounds people make
4. Don't interrupt if anyone is speaking
5. In the end, ask the audience to explain the concept back to you

Share it with anyone in your team who explains things best to you. If you don't have anyone Tweet this article.