The How-To for Simple Talk

See if  you can tell what my directions are for the following:

Begin with the tail bumpers lined up. Turn right while reversing, then left. The right again as you go forward.

Probably easy to guess. This was the parallel parking lesson with my 15-year old last weekend.  I realized as we were stepping through the more detailed instructions the first time that a simplified summary would be helpful.  She walked away with the short version as “right-then-left-then-right.” Easy!

We sometime make communications more difficult than they need to be. There are several reasons for this but I think the main one is that we lose ourselves in the details. “Lost in the weeds” we call it at work. The other reason is that we may have a sense that we are oversimplifying sometimes when we talk to others, and risk the sound of talking down to them.

I have found that erring on the side of clear, more simple talk is a better bet. It gets everyone on the same page and readies them for stepping it up to the next detail level.

So now when someone accuses you of being a simple-head, consider it a compliment.