speaker-0: The deeper something, the more the steps for doing it are just kind of ingrained. One way that I think is underutilized to explain concepts is the use of stories. Stop making assumptions and ask more questions. That is the gist of what it takes to be better at communication.

speaker-1: Today's guest is Jeremy Duran. Jeremy is a speaker, author, and communication expert who studies how people think and process information differently. In our conversation, we talk about why expertise can make you harder to understand and how to explain what you know in a way that actually lands. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Jeremy Duran. Jeremy, thank you so much for being here.

speaker-0: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

speaker-1: Absolutely. Me too. So, Jeremy, with every guest that I have on the show, I do a responsible amount of stalking on them to just listen to other episodes, other conversations that they've had, look into their work. And one thing that you said in another interview really stuck with me. Right. The things that you know most deeply can actually be the hardest things to teach. And I think a lot of experts, a lot of people who know their stuff really well run into that problem without realizing it, including myself. Right. I talk a lot about AI and I've for some reason I know a lot about the technology, I know a lot about how to apply it, but I have a hard time explaining it and teaching it sometimes. So why can knowing something really well make it harder to explain?

speaker-0: I think the deeper something, the more the steps for doing it are just kind of ingrained. And you don't think about what the steps are, so you don't have them to teach to other people. And I love the phrase an appropriate amount of stalking, by the way. A respectable amount is great.

speaker-1: Yeah. So when you know something really well, you kind of almost forget what it was like to not know anything about it and kind of the steps to learning.

speaker-0: Yeah, it almost feels like innate knowledge. And that's not something you can pass on because you don't recognize all the mechanisms. Like English, for example, if you ask a native English speaker to explain how our language works, we can't do it. We just know how to speak English. But if you have someone who took English as a second language, they understand much more about the structure of English because they had to learn it. And it to us it just feels innate.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, for us it's just intuitive and I can see how that translates into the other things that we just know really well, the things that we've just been doing for so long, we've built up so much domain expertise on a certain thing. People would ask us a question, it's like, well, why is that the thing? It's like just because it is, right? So we're not gonna be able to give a very compelling explanation because Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just trust me, just because it is. So that makes sense. So how would someone Maybe myself or other people who who do have domain expertise in a subject, how can they become more aware of those things that they might be leaving out and take that into consideration so that they can be a better teacher of the things that they know?

speaker-0: One way that I think is underutilized to explain concepts is the use of stories. If you talk to a lot of founders of companies, very often they're technology companies, they know it so well that they have a hard time explaining it and why it matters. And I will always tell them, try turning it into a story. And once you turn it into a story, all of a sudden it makes it so that the other person can grasp it.

speaker-1: Yeah, I love that. And I think, story has been a recurring theme here on the podcast and the value of story and why story really resonates and connects with people. It's it's fascinating. And being a good storyteller is one of those, another meta ability that we talked about early on. But I could also see how getting yourself to package your explanation up into a story or how you teach something into a story can also help you to consider the other characters that are involved or the the the the sequence of events. I could see how getting yours almost forcing yourself to explain what you do as a story can help you to cover the bases that you might miss if you weren't using story. Does that make sense?

speaker-0: Yeah, and it I like the way you talked about the different characters in it. Because when you're telling it as a story, you automatically are thinking about what's in it for the other person. Like why should they care? Not just what is the thing, but why does it matter?

speaker-1: Yeah. Right. The why it matters because, every great story has a big problem, right? it has a a mountain that you have to climb. Right. So you're gonna open up your story, your explanation by talking about the circumstances in which you had to learn this thing or where you came up with this idea, which typically is gonna revolve around some kind of problem that you had. So maybe I mean you I'm sure you do, but like do you have like when you're teaching this and when you're explaining this idea to maybe some of your clients or the people in your audience? And you're encouraging them to package up their explanation of what they do into a story. How do you guide them through that? what do you help them to take into consideration when they're when they're constructing that explanatory story?

speaker-0: One of the things you already talked about is that there has to be a problem. There has to be a thing that you overcame. You need to make it memorable. I use the I use MRI because everyone knows what an MRI is. but I use it for memorable, relatable, and it's sometimes inspirational or illuminating. But memorable, you need to start with the hook when you're telling a story of why should they bother listening to the story because our attention spans are so short that if you don't get them right away, they're not gonna pay attention. It needs to be relatable. If you're talking to a brand new investor about their four one K and you talk about what Warren Buffett does, it just doesn't relate. So they have a hard time grasping it if it doesn't feel relatable to them. And the thing that I like best in a story is when they guess at the lesson. So you may go through the story and it may be about business. I use personal stories. to teach business lessons very often. And people aren't sure why I'm telling the story about my personal life. And then when they make the intuitive leap of, this is how it applies to my business situation, that's when the best learning happens, when they have to kind of take the learning and jump for it rather than just being told what the lesson is.

speaker-1: Hmm. Love it. And something that I'm is just lingering and sticking with me right now is the the beautiful thing that if you use story as your package to communicate and explain, story is so dynamically expandable, right? To fit whatever situation you might be in and where you're explaining or where you're teaching, right? Maybe you're you have five minutes with like a new person on your team and you have to kind of teach them what the mission or the vision of the company is or teach them a certain thing in the business, or you can expand story to meet and fill an hour and a half keynote presentation that you're giving. Right. So I think that is a magical thing about story and is if you if you use story as your your vehicle for explanation, it'll give you it makes it really easy to expand and go deeper in the with that story. Is that right?

speaker-0: Yeah. And the great thing about stories is it makes it much more memorable for the listener. The amount that they retain is, depending on which research, twelve to twenty times more memorable than giving them data alone. But it also makes it easier for the storyteller to remember. If I'm I do a number of keynotes and they're basically built up of a number of my stories. And I'm never gonna forget my own stories. I may forget statistics, I'll never forget my stories. So if you build a presentation around your stories, then it's much easier for the audience to remember and for you to remember.

speaker-1: Love it. Yeah, I would I didn't even think about that. The fact that, yeah, obviously stories are going to be a lot more memorable for the people that you're explaining it to, the audience that's listening to you, but it'll be so much easier for you to remember as well. Like you could just have like one little thing on a slide and it's like, okay, yeah, I know. I just need to tell that story now. I love it. So I know I kind of asked maybe to ask this question from like a different angle to maybe uncover anything that we haven't discussed so far. So when you're working with a client or you're you you yourself are doing this work. to construct your story that you're going to use to explain a certain thing, what are the other things that you take into consideration where we talked about MRI, but what are the pieces of the of a of an effective story?

speaker-0: Well, it does always start with a hook. There needs to be an obstacle. And one of the key things is that you don't need to be the hero of your story. If you think of the hero and the guide in movies like Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is honestly not a great character for most of the movie. Yoda's a fantastic character because Yoda is the one guiding the hero. So you don't have to be the hero. I don't have to say how Awesome I am in my stories. Most of my stories are about mistakes that I've made. But use it as a way to guide other people. And the focus, whether you are talking to somebody one to one in a small group or in a very large group, always focus on the audience. It's never about you. It's about the listener.

speaker-1: Yeah. And that's another recurring theme. Again, beyond communication, beyond, you know, explaining things effectively. It's not about you, it's about the audience. It's about who you're serving, is one of those recurring themes that's applicable, one of those recurring principles, I think is probably the right way to call it, that touches, you know, philosophy, like almost like, you know, spirituality and then to business practices to communication, right? That idea of the service of other people is the focus, not not about you. I don't know if I explained that very well, but that's one of those recurring principles and I love seeing those pop up in these conversations. So when you're taking the audience into consideration, right? okay, from a novice point of view, if I was thinking about how to take the audience's perspective and the audience into consideration when I'm explaining something, I might think about, okay, what do I believe that they understand already at this moment that I could maybe connect my explanation back to? But I'll just ask you, what what things do you take into consideration about the audience or who you're explaining to?

speaker-0: Yeah, it so w what you talked about is great. What do they already know? And if you can confirm it either beforehand or during the conversation, it's great. What do they need to know? Like what is important for you to share with them and what do they want to know? What's important for them listening? An example that I use is I was at a company and they came in and they talked about another company that we were buying. And they gave us A ton of information that was important, but they never answered the one question I had, which was, How's this going to affect me? It's great that this company has this wonderful product and they have alignment with culture and everything else. But does this mean I'm gonna get laid off because now I'm redundant or I'm gonna become a manager or I get more resources or what is it to me? So that's always such a big one.

speaker-1: Yeah, and I could see how not taking into consideration those questions that the people you're explaining to you are gonna have bouncing around in their head, like you in that situation, right? okay, the question I have, does this mean they don't need me anymore? Right. That can almost like shut you off from hearing anything else that's being presented or said, right. So you really have to take into consideration the the questions that your audience is likely to have as they're listening to what you're saying. And then obviously you want to try and then answer those. Right. you want to predict the questions that they're asking themselves and then you answer those in your presentation or in your explanation. Is that right?

speaker-0: Yeah. That's that's exactly it. And one other thing that people there are a number of things about personality that change the way people process information. Some people like the big picture and some people want every detail. And it's amazing how few of us recognize which one we are until it gets pointed out, or you take an assessment of some variety. But I'm a very big picture person. So I want the story. I want to know why a thing exists. I don't want to know all the background, but some people, if you just give them the big picture, they feel like it's only half done. They don't know all of the steps along. But in reverse, if you are a detail person and you try giving a bunch of details to someone who doesn't want them, they're going to tune right out. And I see that with especially engineers talking to their managers. Engineers especially especially love to give the whole background of how they got to where th what they think and prove that it's right. And the executive just wants, What do you need from me?

speaker-1: Yeah. That's interesting. As you say that, I if I put myself in this seat of the person being explained to, I definitely am more like I like the just the hot big picture, the why, like why does it matter? Like I don't need all the background detail. But I also recognize in myself and thinking to the back to the presentations, the explanations, the things that I am teaching, I'm definitely more like the the engineer kind of where I give so much background context, like almost way too much detail. So that's interesting. So I almost prefer to learn with the big picture, but my natural tendency is to give way too much detail on the things that I'm explaining. Is that interesting?

speaker-0: It's I haven't seen it before. I'm not gonna call it weird.

speaker-1: Yeah, interesting. No. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. interesting. And I think it's just you know, like I just have to kind of get better. I could see it being just a natural tendency of me just over preparing and feeling like, okay, I want to be comfortable, like whatever. I just want to do the best that I can and I I in my head that means giving them all the information, but that's clearly not the case in the in the conversation that we're having.

speaker-0: But if you're talking to a group, there are going to be both types in the audience. And sometimes you need to let people know that you'll be doing both. Like if you let the detailed people know that I'm going to explain this at a high level first and then go into details, they'll be able to pay attention. And if you know that both are coming, then it allows both sides to pay attention to the thing that they're less tending to like, knowing that What's what's in it for them is coming up soon.

speaker-1: Yeah. So I think you can probably almost assume that most audiences that you're speaking to is gonna have be have a mixed bag. So if you're giving a kind of presentation, you should, you know, take that into consideration that you want to speak to both groups of folks. One thing I'd love to go back to is this idea that as you're explaining or as you're preparing for what you're going how you're gonna teach something, right? Or maybe in the act of explaining or teaching a certain thing, you want to be thinking to yourself, like, what are the questions that People that I'm teaching are going to be having, and how can I do my best to answer those questions? Right. I want, I don't want to leave any open loops, any open threads in my explanation. I want to help answer those questions. And then we talked about earlier to start the conversation, this idea that when we know something really well, we almost kind of forget like the things that just are super intuitive and innate to us. So how can someone who knows something really well think and like identify those questions, right? Where it's almost like, it's harder for us to remember those questions that people might ask. So how do you where when you're working with clients or in your own work that you do, how do you uncover those questions that the audience is going to be asking as they're listening to your explanation?

speaker-0: Yeah, I some of it is trial and error. You need to try it out. So if you are presenting to a group, you should always be practicing. And if you can run it by someone, did this make sense or is this too detailed? When you're in a one-to-one or a small group conversation, you get the feedback right away and you can either scale up or scale down as needed. When you're talking to a larger group, having conversations ahead of time is really, really useful, not just going in cold.

speaker-1: Hmm. Yeah, amazing. It's just the the feedback loop, right? There's no easy skip button. Which

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: especially Yeah, right. Don't we all? Amazing. So with this work, maybe put ya put you on the spot and using story. Like in this work, like how did you come across the need for this or what was your journey to doing this kind of work?

speaker-0: When I was growing up this is a little bit of a story, sorry. Math and science always made sense and humans never did. It felt like everybody got a code book that I didn't get and they were purposefully being difficult to communicate with. That's how it felt until I took the Myers Briggs MBTI when I was in high school and then had a three day course on it. And the teacher had all of our results. And when I walked in I said, I'm Jeremy, she said, good, you're here. I'm like, What? Does that mean? She said, You have really interesting results. I'm going to use you as an example a lot. great. And that made me realize just how differently people see the world. In the MBTI, there are four different dimensions. I happen to be like all the way on the ends of three of them. And when she would go through examples, you would see what made perfect sense to the people. who were just like me made no sense at all to the people who are our opposites. And that's when I started to really realize how challenging communication can be and how important it is.

speaker-1: yeah, at the end of the day, talk of me going back too far and giving too much detail, but effective communication is what made humans what we are, right? And effective communication is what, leads to the success of any organization, any entity, any individual, right? Is the ability to effectively communicate because if you're you can't do anything alone, right? And the only way to get other people on board and to do the things that you want to do, you have to be able to effectively communicate. And it's fascinating. How different we all are, right? How different we all are and how different we can see the world as you described it. And it sounds like that really hit you when you took that Myers Briggs assessment. And I think I've done some of that in like one of those personality tests in the past, but I don't think I have ever, you know, connected it to how we understand ideas. And it sounds like you kind of made that leap. So how does the I guess you talked about like more detail oriented, more high level? Is there any more Detail that you can add to that.

speaker-0: Yeah, s so I'm as introverted as a person can be. And one important thing about that is it's just a tendency. People that I work with do not know that I'm an introverted person and they don't believe me when I tell them. Because it's not that we can't do the opposite thing, it's just that it's more tiring. So introverted people get their energy from being inside of their own heads, which means alone time. And extroverted people get energy from other people. And a way that this shows up in the workplace is in meetings. If you're in a meeting, have you ever had the person leading the meeting ask a question or for feedback? And maybe three people will then take over the meeting and everyone else is silent for a while. What's happening is that the extroverted people want to talk out what they're thinking. That's how they come to their conclusion. So they'll jump right in. Introverted people like to have a very complete thought done in their head and baked before they want to share it. So they're not sharing because their idea's not fully formed yet. And by the time they're ready to share it, the topic has moved on. And the extroverted people are frustrated that those people never contribute anything. And those people are frustrated that they had good ideas that no one bothered to listen to.

speaker-1: Wow. Wow. So these ideas go well beyond just effectively explaining and teaching the things that you understand and your expertise, but it also goes into helping you to get the most out of your team and the contributors that you have and the people that are involved is the awareness of this idea. This is brand new to me. I thought maybe anybody who wasn't speaking up in a meeting or whatever is maybe just like I don't know, maybe they just didn't really have anything to contribute. But that sounds like it's just not not the case. Maybe they're just kind of a different personality type, if that's the right term. And yeah. So how can you, if you were talking to a leader, how would you help them to, you know, help those maybe more introverted people who aren't speaking up in the meeting, help kind of draw them out and kind of get their contributions out of them, if that makes sense.

speaker-0: Yeah, totally makes sense. And it's interesting because it initially feels to most people like the introverts are the problem. Right? Because they're not contributing. So I would tell whoever is running the meeting, let them know what feedback you want ahead of time, like the day before the meeting. That way they can process what their thought is. It'll be fully baked. And when you ask for it in the meeting, they are ready to jump in. And that's what I thought the benefit would be for the introverted people. It was just as beneficial for the extroverted people because they got a chance to hang out with their friends and talk through their ideas so that when the meeting comes, the introverted people are ready to give their answers right away. And the extroverted people are ready to give a concise answer because they've talked it through. They they think while they're talking many times. They've already thought, so now they're just sharing. The meetings are faster, everyone contributes and they're far more productive.

speaker-1: Yeah. And another thread on that everyone contributing piece is that everyone's going to be more invested and bought in. one thing that I remember from Patrick Lancioni's work, and I'm sure a bunch of other people have talked about this idea, maybe including yourself, is this like how do you get buy in? how do you get people to commit, maybe disagree and commit is people just need the opportunity to voice their opinion, contribute. Right. So when you do that work, that work ahead of time of, preparing more thoroughly and letting everybody know, hey, this is what we're going to be talking about tomorrow. This is the feedback. These are the decisions that we are going to be making together in this meeting setting. You help those maybe more introverted people who typically, if you didn't do that work, might not speak up and contribute, do so, which is then going to lead to them being more engaged in the process and also just a much more productive meeting because you have, these super smart people contributing to the conversation, which can lead to a better outcome.

speaker-0: And one thing that I learned from that is very often if there is someone on a team who is challenged to fit in for whatever reason, the way they communicate is different. And the leader or the manager will often think, Why should I make an accommodation for that one person when this what we're doing works for everyone else? And much like I thought changing The meeting so that you ask the question ahead of time would benefit introverts. It turns out it benefited everyone. Anything that people consider an accommodation, if it makes it easier for that person to learn and communicate with you, I guarantee it helps almost everyone else on the team as well. So rather than thinking about a problem with a person, I reframe it as you have a problem with your communication system. And if you fix the system, it will help that person and everyone else. Mm-hmm.

speaker-1: Yeah, a rising tide lifts all boats, especially as it relates to, you know, the spirit, the energy, the contributions of the team. Right? You have this team, you brought these people together to unite behind this mission, this goal that you have within your organization. And the more contributions you can you can have from every one individual, it's not like a a linear thing, right? There's that classic saying of, you know, bring As it relates to bringing really smart people together, one plus one doesn't equal two, one plus one equals five or ten, right? And this imagine that with, a larger organization. So the more the contributions that you can make and engage the people on your team, the the more it'll help absolutely everyone, which is awesome. And one thing that you just said that really piqued my interest is communication system within your organization. So I'm gonna do my best to pose a question that will help you to I guess when you say communication system within an organization. What makes up a communication system within a within a business? Because I've never heard that before.

speaker-0: Yeah. If you use meetings as an example, which I just did, if you have a system for how your meetings run, then it's going to be better if you have an agenda that you send out a day ahead of time so that people have a chance to prepare what they need and you are conscientious about who you invite. You don't invite a bunch of people just because it's nice to have them there, but you consolidate it down to who needs to be there. And you have a system for the meeting itself of, you know, I'm going to say that if we get off track, it's not that it's not important, but I'm going to put a pin in it and we're going to address it later because we only have so much time. And you end the meeting with concrete action items that need to be done and get assigned to a person. So that's kind of a system for how meetings run. It's not the way most people run their meetings. Communication in general, the system consists of how you're sharing and receiving information. Some people will just want to have a conversation. But for someone with say ADHD, hearing something in the conversation is probably going to be forgotten before they get a chance to sit down and do the thing. For them, having it written is really important. For someone with dyslexia, writing's not helpful, but having, you know, a translation recorded is going to be really helpful. So there are all sorts of ways that people gather information, whether it's visual, audible, audio, audio. I don't know the word for that. There are so many different ways to receive and share information. If you cover more bases, you're going to make it work for more people. Mm.

speaker-1: So improving the communication system in the context of meetings is largely largely revolves around preparation, you know, organizing that agenda. I don't love that word, just very corporate. But anyways, the agenda, kind of the purpose of the meeting, like getting super clear on that and the outcomes and the decisions that we want to make and the feedback that you're looking for and like the purpose of the meeting, right? So getting super clear on that and then distributing that to the people who are going to be participating. Being really Jeff Bezos's two pizza rule, right? you can't have a meeting with more people than two pizzas could feed thing. I might have butchered that. But you know, just I like that Yeah. Being conscious about, you know, who's in the room, like making sure that it's people who really need to be there, not just you know, throwing out a mass C C to fifty five people and then it's just nothing's gonna get done in that kind of conversation. And then being again conscious of the idea. Which I think is one of the more profound things that I've learned from this conversation is that everyone learns and intakes information and processes information very differently. So providing different mediums of that information so that you can have it available and accessible and usable and really useful for e everybody that's going to be participating in that conversation.

speaker-0: Yep. And I for inst I am one of the odd people who does not like to watch videos. If you send me an instructional video, I will look to see if there's a transcript because I'd rather read it than watch it. Yeah. I'm unusual in that way.

speaker-1: Cool. that's yeah, I I definitely I think would like to watch a video on two X speed, maybe with the the the the the th the subtitles, but that's super interesting.

speaker-0: I've recently recently been frustrated that movies don't have the one and a half speed button on them 'cause I've gotten so used to like videos and podcasts going faster that now when I need to watch a regular T V show or video or movie, I'm like, This is way too slow.

speaker-1: There's slow motion. Yeah. I there's gotta be some funny movie scenes or TV sh TV episodes that would just be hilarious and one and a half speed. any fight scene I feel like would just be unreal in in one and a half that would be so funny. But I love it. Jeremy, this was a wonderful conversation. There's a lot more that we can unpack and I hope to do so in future conversations with you. I have one final question for you. It's a recurring question I ask every guest. But before we get to that, how can people find you?

speaker-0: Neuroconversant Leadership is the name of my book, which you can get on Amazon. It's what my website is, it's the name of my podcast. so you can look me up on neuroconversant leadership dot com, or if you're on LinkedIn, then Jeremy Doran Speaks is my handle on LinkedIn and I'm pretty active there.

speaker-1: Amazing. We'll have all that linked in the description. and if anything that we talked about here today resonates with you and you'd love to learn more directly from Jeremy, he's got a wonderful podcast, a lot of great resources and content on his website, very active on LinkedIn, so connect with him, follow him, all the links in the description. So Jeremy, as I mentioned, my last question for you is a recurring question that I ask every guest. If you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds. With one message to the world, what would it say and why?

speaker-0: Stop making assumptions and ask more questions. That is the gist of what it takes to be better at communication. When you assume other people communicate the way you do, you're almost guaranteed to be wrong and miscommunication is going to happen. And once miscommunication starts to happen, if you are willing and able to stop and ask questions to make sure that you understand, then you're far more likely to get on the same page.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's profound. Stop assuming and start asking questions. Stop making assumptions, start asking questions. Again, one of those principles that can be applied to so many different domains, but it's especially relevant to everything that we talked about here today. I guess maybe one final little follow up. What questions do you encourage people to utilize in those moments where they're in a communication moment and they want to kind of check in, like avoid making that assumption and kind of check to see how they could better explain what it is that they're going to explain?

speaker-0: It's always getting to the why of what someone thinks. When two people are talking and they disagree on the what, very often they will simply try to change the other person's mind and it goes back and forth and nothing gets done. Instead of stopping to change their mind, ask them why or how they got to the position that they have, why they think what they think. And when you understand the why, you are almost guaranteed to have some things in common and then you can figure out a common ground on how to move forward together.

speaker-1: And connecting everything together when you ask somebody why or how they arrived at their thinking, it's gonna prompt a story. It's gonna prompt a story and how they got there. So I love it. Yes, it will. very cool. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for the time.

speaker-0: Yeah, this has been great. Thanks.