Day 14: The Simplest Way To Become An Articulate Communicator

Digital health is a multiplayer sport. Not only that, but each player speaks a "different language". Clinicians. Patients. Developers. Managers. Each person comes from a different world with its own norms and jargon.

Often, the success of a project depends on effective communication - bridging and translating across multiple worlds.

I haven't always been a great communicator, but I've worked hard at becoming better. Here's what I've learned.

The biggest thing that changed for me was to take time to prepare. And as soon as that clicked, I started to understand getting better at explaining my ideas wasn't that hard—I was just doing the wrong thing.

I was putting great pressure on myself to just be effortless articulate at a critical moment.

Here's what I should have done instead:

Take time to prepare

I learned that many people who seem effortlessly natural when speaking, in fact, aren't speaking off the cuff at all. All I needed to do was take 10 minutes to follow 3 simple steps:

1. Organize my thoughts logically
2. Structure how I want to say it
3. Think about the specific words that convey the idea well for the audience

Over time, I was able to do it faster with practice and need less prep time.