Explain It One More Time?

I've been working at LinkedIn for over a year now, and the constant struggle I keep facing every time I go back to Lebanon to visit my family is trying to explain to my dad what the company does.

My dad, like many of our parents did not grow up around DVD players, laptops or even smartphones, so you can imagine why the whole idea of a purely online company might seem absurd.

Every time I am back home; my dad and I always have these long talks, where we talk about everything that has been happening in both our lives. I tell him about my business trips or how life is treating me and he talks about golf or his days as a judge. And no matter what we are talking about there is this one topic that seems to always pop up "Zeina, I still don't understand what you actually do".  Every time he says it; it really makes me smile because he is determined to understand; and I truly want him to.

With that question popping in my life frequently, I thought I would write this post as I feel that many of you might be struggling with the same issue, (you might not be working at LinkedIn but your company might have some similar aspects) and I wanted to share with you some ways I figured that might help you solve it.

Tip 1: Keep it short and simple

Complicating things is your worst enemy, so keep your explanation short and simple. Focus on the WWWH. Don’t worry; I just totally made that abbreviation up; what I meant was start by talking about WHAT the company does, WHERE this is done, to WHOM is it done for and finally HOW it is done. Remember, the WWWH should be as simple as one sentence explaining each. In my case I had to explain LinkedIn from a consumer perceptive and from a customer perceptive making sure to only talk about these 4 things each time; this will allow you to set the stage for your explanation. You can consider this like the first act of a play where all the main characters are introduced and the background situation becomes clear.

Tip 2: Avoid using your company’s slang

Move away from those words you hear over and over in the hallways of your office, your parents will not understand them, just like you didn’t when you first joined. I will definitely not tell my dad about the “economic graph” that will help LinkedIn create a “digital representation of the global economy”; there is no need for that kind of level of detail. You need to talk to your parents using words that they will understand, for example instead of saying LinkedIn “Pulse” I would say an online newspaper that only shows you relevant content.

Tip 3: Relate it to something they are familiar with

Try to find something in your parents’ lives that will help them understand your company more. My dad was a judge as I previously mentioned; so for him the law library was his one stop shop and single source of truth. I took that example and related it back to LinkedIn.  I explained to him how LinkedIn is a one stop shop that serves different purposes for professionals; where they can find ways to make them more productive and successful at what they do just like a law library.

Tip 4: Go back to the basics

During my last visit to Beirut my dad asked me “Zeina, is there a book I can read that will explain it all to me?”. Just to give you a bit of background, my dad has always had a passion for books; he even started understanding the basics of golf by buying every single book that was ever written about the topic, so his question was reasonable. I went online and started researching book titles such as “LinkedIn 101” and so on; but I wasn’t able to find what I was looking for. This led me to decide to go and get articles that were published about “what is LinkedIn?” and got them printed. In my most recent trip back home I went up to my dad and gave him all these articles and said “this will be your homework for these coming few days, and once you are done we can have a conversation about them”. After a few days my dad came back and I can happily tell you that he now knows what I do. I won’t say he knows everything because I still have a lot to explain but he got the general idea; it was just a matter of finding the right way to communicate my message.

LinkedIn is one of the companies that identified this issue early on, and it created the “Bring In Your Parents Day” that has become a yearly event ran in all the offices worldwide. Its main purpose is to allow parents to come in and understand where their children spend most of their time and what they do.

As a final note I would like to tell you don't give up on your parents, just try to speak their language no matter what the topic is.

PS: I will definitely be printing this post for my dad to read as well.