Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

After listening to or reading technical talk,  I often recognize that I lack the language skills to speak geek. If it were all about speaking geek, I could not keep up with the technology I need to stay cutting edge in my field – which is to suggest strategies that energize leaders’ and learners’ brains for results.

Do you face the Babel of acronyms and code commands – that scream for an increasing command of geek? Or a lexicon to translate?

I still call wireless speakers simply that, and I say “universal plug and play” … not  “UPnP.” The linguistic lingo leaves me one HDTV signal behind and I feel a need to lag rather than be bullied into submission by IEEE 1394 connections that push their way into my words.

In any field  language becomes a barrier to understanding, when it excludes people in different areas, who need to comprehend and communicate new ideas without completing a degree in geek speak. We all do it … but increasingly expert communicators are showing us how to avoid fluent geek in favor of clear language that welcomes and engages people in diverse backgrounds.

Not that we need to translate every term…. No, we simply need to pass on our words to people in another field to test the ideas for clarity. If they need translation, we may have slipped back into jargon that will drive others away, even those we hope to reach from a  mass audience.

Want your ideas to reach an audience as wide as the six million who catch the BBC’s main TV news bites?

If so listen to the language used on a good show such as BBC or one that a leading publisher signs off on. Here are some tips to reach beyond speaking geek in order to reach real people.

Here are smart skills to help people understand and care about your next hot topic?

1). Ask a teenager to help you speak English, not geek on the topic.
2). See your items on a stage and describe them so others can visualize them too.
3). Show details such as color, shape, size, and texture.
4). Tell how it is used in one setting or how it cannot be used well in another.

5). Speak of people who prefer the thing, and tell about others who do not.
6). Show conditions under which it works well, and those that work less well

7). Describe a distinctive about this topic and show what else it’s most like.
8). Tell how the thing works under pressure and why other cultures use it.
9). Predict where this item with rank in future and why.
10). Ask people to share their ideas about the thing or to ask questions.

Would these smart skills help you to speak more English than Geek? Can you think of other clarifying tactics?