Want to be sure non-specialists trust you?  Here's how.

Have you ever wanted to convince a non-technical stakeholder to trust your judgement and let you make a technical decision? Or value your work more?

But you struggled to explain in detail what you were working on?.

If so, you are not alone.

Some months ago, this is precisely what happened to my client, who worked as a technical team lead for a German financial company.

The company's product is a complex web application that helps over 20.000 professionals upload documents and comply with rigorous legal procedures.

Her stakeholders, clients and management had an idea of what her development team worked on. They worked on "the back end of the product".

But because they had never touched a line of code themselves, they missed the complexity of the decisions my client had to make every day. Decisions that could impact the security of the app, or the way users interact with a feature.

With 20.000 daily users, any choice could provoke a cascade of effects, crash the app or leave a door open for any hacker to exploit. Unfortunately, my client’s managers and stakeholders did not measure how much time was needed to implement features on a live, functioning web application.

They did not have the background knowledge that specialists intuitively have.

My client’s managers and stakeholders are not “special.”

These stakeholders, managers and board members are not "special".

In most companies, stakeholders and managers are great professionals who do not have a technical background to understand the decisions made by specialists ...

-> because it is not their role to understand them.

Their role is not to know all the topics in-depth but to know how to connect these topics with other functions of the company (like sales, marketing, finance, strategy, etc.).

And specialists and non-specialists need to understand each other.

My client needed a method to explain her work so that she could inject that background knowledge.

We cannot expect people to become what we want them to be. We can only train ourselves to interact with them differently.

Why do specialists occasionally generate confusion with their explanations?

My client’s explanations and presentations often sounded confusing to non-technical people. There were too many details, too soon.

For a specialist, the challenge of gaining trust and control is separate from their capacity to do good analytical work. And the audience is not looking to judge them on these skills.

On the contrary, trust and control are linked to the capacity to explain the "big picture"; and this is a very different skill set. By adding too many details and trying to justify her technical choices, my client was creating confusion for managers and stakeholders.

Because these non-specialists wanted to HELP, they gave their opinions.

What is paradoxical is that most managers, stakeholders and clients will not give their opinion or ask for more proof about what we do if they understand the logic of our work.

They know that we know what we're doing. And their wish is to let us do what we do best.

For a specialist, this requires a conscious effort to limit his explanations to the big picture, at least in the first two minutes, before going into more detail.

That makes sense, right?

Becoming clearer in our explanations

The fact that we confuse others when explaining something we know well has its root in a psychological concept known as the "curse of knowledge".

The formal definition of the curse of knowledge is:

a cognitive bias that occurs when someone assumes that others have the same background knowledge that themselves. This bias is also called by some authors the curse of expertise.

Basically, the more we work on a topic, the more we know, and the more we know, the more we become cursed by our knowledge.

We do not realise it, but when we spend thousands of hours working on one single topic, our brain starts to understand concepts very intuitively.

And we need to remember that most other people have different background knowledge. They spent thousands of hours on DIFFERENT topics. For a manager, it might be business processes, finance, strategy, leadership skills, project management, or accounting...

So everyone is Cursed by his own knowledge, no matter the field.

And the problem is that once you know something, you cannot "un-know" it.

Try it below....

So, the Curse of Knowledge is your brain once it knows something.

If you knew the answer to the Brain Teaser, you would not be able to return to a state of "not knowing". And to get the correct answer the first time, you often have to fight your instinct to answer intuitively and instead tell yourself, "let's see.. if it's a brain teaser, I need to read the instructions well, and only then make a decision".

To become clearer in our explanations, we need a method to overcome the "Curse of Knowledge". A way to force us to inject the right background knowledge in our explanations.

How to overcome the curse of knowledge

Luckily, I've discovered the solution to this problem.

It took me seven years and working with over 3.000 specialists in engineering, research, international diplomacy and tech companies.

It was a long process because my clients are working in industries where it is impossible to do “marketing”, lie, pretend or stretch the data.

They need to be factual, accurate and still attractive.

To help them, I created a method to turn complex information into logical steps that any non-specialist can understand.

For a specialist, it’s as simple as following the method step by step. If you do, you get a perfectly functional story that is not cursed by knowledge.

I like to think of it as a cooking recipe. If you follow the steps, you can bake a great cake.

If you return to it two weeks later and follow the steps again, you will bake another great cake.

We can spend years figuring out the recipe for a chocolate cake. Making dozens of tries up until it goes well. Or we can start from a functional recipe and bake well almost from the first try. And keep improving the recipe afterwards.

This is how we overcome the Curse of Knowledge, step-by-step:

1. Learn the formula of storytelling that applies to technical and complex information.
2. Use the formula to extract multiple stories about our work, all factual and appealing.
3. Turn these stories into a presentation, a briefing note, a Linkedin post or a video.

Now, Let me break the steps down for you:

I. Learn the formula of storytelling

By learning the formula, we acquire a single process to use every time we need to create a presentation.

It gives us a step-by-step recipe to organise information in the correct logical order so that someone else can understand it. And since it is a step-by-step process, we can use templates to accelerate the process.

By using the formula systematically, we can turn complex data into a presentation in under 30 minutes. After practising it 10 times, it takes less than 15 minutes.

This gives us the confidence, that every time we use the formula, others will understand.

II. Use that formula to extract multiple stories about our work

Depending on whom we talk to, they will be interested in different stories. A manager might want to know how far a project is, while a stakeholder might want to know the long-term plan.

So we need to learn where to extract these stories fast, and to identify precisely what can appeal to a non-specialist audience of managers, stakeholders and clients. Example:

1. if we have “just an idea”; when we need to convince non-specialists to let us start a project (convince them in a pitch).
2. if the project is “in implementation” --> we need to update our partners, managers and stakeholders (build trust).
3. if the project is “finished” --> we need to create case studies that inspire future clients, stakeholders and the public (credibility).

And each story can be re-used with all our audiences.

III. Finally, turn these stories into a format easily consumed by a non-specialist.

Once we have our stories, we can build communication tools extremely fast. They will be better designed and more impactful.

For instance:

• By sharing an impactful PowerPoint presentation for a live meeting, we get asked more often for our contribution and analysis
• By writing a briefing note sent by email, we help dozens of people figure out answers rapidly.
• By producing a short 3 minutes video, we can have an even larger-scale impact, and reach hundreds of people with what we learned and packaged in the video

And because, as specialists, we don’t have the time to become graphic designers, we need to use step-by-step guides to turn our story into one of 12 communication tools often used at work. And all of this can be within PowerPoint.

Now obviously, that's easier said than done.

You normally can’t…

• Change the way you explain technical information
• Get the trust of your manager, stakeholders and clients
• And inspire them so they celebrate your work ethic, and share your projects with others

…without spending hundreds of hours learning skills, getting a degree in communications, or an MBA in leadership.

That's why I built the CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE System.

It’s a way to absorb this fundamental skill of "presenting clearly to convince non-technicians" in less than 20 hours using a mix of ELearning, group coaching, one-to-one meetings and fully developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

Because we focus on learning a step-by-step process that 3.000+ technical specialists have already validated in over 20 industries, we don’t learn theoretical information.

We absorb straight-to-the-point, operational techniques to make this happen at work.

When learning the system, we use real examples to overcome our "curse of knowledge".

We review case studies from industries as diverse as veterinary vaccines, space technology, data management, urban planning, artificial intelligence and computer vision, particle accelerators, materials research, innovation ecosystems, food engineering, tomography, bioinformatics, and analytical chemistry.

And because it is so operational, we learn a practical skillset that we can use immediately at work to improve our careers and have a long-lasting impact.

By telling the correct stories in a convincing and inspiring way, we get the freedom we need to execute great work. We become good teachers and are respected and trusted for our choices.

I believe there is nothing more important for our species that sharing information and knowledge better, keep being inspired by working on solutions and making other people learn what we achieved. That's how we progress as a specie.

If you'd like, let's hop on a quick phone call to see if overcoming your CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE is right for you.

Just book a time to chat that works for you: https://calendly.com/curseofknowledge/45-minutes-session-curse-of-knowledge

During the call, we'll look at how you can change how you communicate with non-specialists, build trust and see your recommendations accepted by using the CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE System, and what your best next steps would be if you decide to pursue this strategy.

Spots are limited, and there's zero obligation to work with me, but if we do end up being a fit, I'll invite you to become a private client of mine, and I can do all of this for you.

I look forward to speaking with you!

Charlelie