“Let’s Talk” — How Two Simple Words Cause So Much Trouble

Talking to people can be hard. Let’s face it – many of us with a degree in STEM or scientific disciplines got into these fields because of a deep interest in some fairly (or more like extremely) technical subjects. Physiology, cardiology, pharmacology, neurobiology – none of these topics lend themselves to light conversation. These are subjects that require many years of study and a great deal of learning. Genuinely.

The only thing harder than learning your subject? Talking about it. It’s no surprise that years of study don’t lend themselves to being compressed into a convenient soundbite. Especially because, during all those years of intensive training, the one subject that was almost never covered? Communicating what we know, to those who need to know it.

Good communication is a system: identify who you want to talk to, understand what they need from the conversation, decide what you want the conversation to do, and adapt your message to the time and situation.

Good communication is a living system. With practice it gets stronger; with feedback, we adjust it, drop what doesn’t work, and keep learning.

Thirty seconds is a useful target for introducing yourself and giving someone a reason to keep listening. (In sales, they call that a hook.) Which is good news! You don’t need to talk for hours. You can fill half a minute, no problem. Fifty or sixty words. Four or five sentences. This is entirely doable.

The goal here isn’t to shoehorn your life’s work into a tiny container. The goal here is to plant the seeds for a conversation. We don’t plant pine trees – we plant pine seeds.

Most communicators aren’t “winging it.” Spontaneity doesn’t mean saying whatever comes into your head and hoping something sticks. Politicians have speechwriters, actors rehearse their lines, and there’s hardly a comedian or magician who hasn’t spent hours working out what they’re going to say, when they’re going to say it, and how they’re going to deliver it. (Even spontaneity can be trained!)

So let me boil this down to one small seed of an idea: communication is not about saying everything. It’s about starting the right conversation, with the right tools.

Maybe you have a 30-second elevator pitch. Maybe you have fifteen minutes for a client consultation or an innovation-grant presentation. Whatever the format, the principle is the same: know your audience, know your purpose, and know what you want the conversation to become.

If you’re not sure where to start, I’ve been doing presentations, demos, and client consultations for almost twenty years. Get in touch.

And let’s make “Let’s talk” a system, not a problem.