7 Ways To Talk Technical With Non-Techie People

When technical experts are speaking with a non-technical audience, miscommunication can easily result. By finding out more about your audience beforehand, carefully considering what to include so that it’s relevant to them and showing respect for your listeners’ own areas of expertise, you can help prevent this.

 

Ever had to explain a technical part of your job to someone who had no clue what you were talking about?

You’re an engineer and mention latency-tolerant functions or cloud RAN at your mom’s big holiday dinner. Or you’re a marketer and excitedly bring up long-tail keywords and psychographics while waiting in line at the grocery checkout. You’re in IT and comment on TCP/IP to anyone within hearing range. Your friends, family, or grocery store compatriots glaze over … confused. Or maybe you’re lucky and your family has researched what you do and taken it upon themselves to become educated in your field (unlikely).

Personal lives aside, if you’re a technical expert called upon to share knowledge with a non-technical group, you’ve got your work cut out. And this is happening more and more. Technical people are paraded into meetings or sales calls filled with non-technical listeners and decision makers, to fill in gaps and answer questions.

And to make matters more complicated, acronyms and jargon aren’t static in any industry. They change. How many of us had ever used the word Coronavirus, social distancing or zoonotic before?

 

You’ve got to resist your second nature

The problem occurs because the unique knowledge of a technical expert is second nature to him or her. They spend most of their work days surrounded by and talking with others who share their knowledge — who don’t need translation. ICH conditions and elemental impurities are just everyday banter for a chemist. Declination diagram has meaning in the military world.

But when you’re sharing technical information with an outside audience (or your mom) who has little or no expertise in that area, you have to help them “get it” without making them feel stupid or sorry they asked.

If you fail, you not only frustrate your audience and waste time … you risk contributing to an adverse effect on your company’s bottom line. There’s also a high risk of being labeled by leaders and colleagues as someone with poor communication or people skills.

To help avoid either of these outcomes, take a step back and consider how best to convey your message in understandable terms and avoid an information dump that leaves your audience overwhelmed and no closer to understanding.

 

Tips for communicating technical information to a non-technical audience:

1. Know who will be in your audience. What do they know about this topic? Will they be familiar with technical terms and jargon? If you’re invited to a meeting or sales call, ask questions. Without this information you risk coming across as egotistical for talking “over” people or insulting the intelligence of people who are already familiar with the technical information you’re sharing. If you have audience with varying technical expertise, don’t use the technical terms, but do explain that you want everyone to understand.

 

2. Know what challenges they have related to the topic. If you’re a programmer presenting information about the new capabilities you’re building into an app, your audience will be more interested in why this is included. What are the problems it will solve? Technical people often fall in love with features and technology. But regular people are more interested in how it helps them. Keeping your audience’s pain points in mind, will also help you decide what information to include (or leave out). Emphasize how the information you’re sharing will help them.

 

3. Build a relationship with your listeners as you get started. Help them to feel less intimidated by making a joke or poking fun at yourself. If you’re not by nature a funny person, you could also try simply showing respect and setting your audience at ease by recognizing them as experts in their own fields. “I may know a bit more about this software, but I definitely couldn’t’ begin to calm an angry customer.” It can also be helpful to make small talk prior to a more formal presentation.

 

4. Carefully choose what needs to be included. It’s likely that the people in your audience don’t need to become experts in the information you’re sharing. They don’t need to know and won’t be interested in everything. They hired your company to provide that knowledge. Keep your information confined to what’s important to them.

 

5. Use examples, analogies and diagrams often. Telling stories and explaining things using words and objects your audience can relate to will help them understand more easily. Simple drawings that show how something will work can also help with understanding.

 

6. Make sure everyone’s understanding you as you go along. It can be embarrassing for someone to admit they didn’t “get” what you were trying to explain. Much of this can be avoided by starting at a lower technical level to begin with and talking slowly. Watch your audience to help gauge understanding. If they’re not nodding and smiling, you probably need to backtrack.

 

7. Explain things in more than one way. If you’re answering questions or clarifying, don’t keep repeating yourself using the same terms. Be flexible. Be helpful by finding more than one way to explain your information.

 

For more tips, register for: Essential Communication Skills for Technical Professionals.

 

If you’re sharing technical expertise with a non-technical audience, it’s important that you are able to explain things in a way that others understand. Technical information is not obvious to people without a technical background. Respectfully help them to understand.  

 

---