Speak Their Language

Imagine asking an experienced chef for a recipe. You want to make something special, and they assure you it is straightforward.

“Sweat the onions, deglaze the pan, reduce the sauce and season to taste.”

For the chef, those instructions contain everything necessary. For someone who rarely cooks, they contain several unanswered questions.

How hot should the pan be? What does “sweat” mean? Reduce the sauce by how much? And if you knew what it was supposed to taste like, would you need quite so much help?

The chef has explained the process as they understand it. Years of experience sit behind each short instruction. What sounds simple to them depends on knowledge you may never have acquired.

Now imagine a different explanation.

“Cook the chopped onions gently in a little oil until they soften, without letting them turn brown. Then add the stock and stir, loosening the browned pieces from the bottom of the pan.”

You can picture what to do. You know what to look for.

The expertise is the same. The difference is the ability to make it useful to someone else.

We face this challenge whenever we explain something to a colleague, customer, employee or family member. We speak from inside our own understanding and expect the other person to follow.

Effective communication requires us to find out where they are starting.

The knowledge hidden inside our words

In The Expert Trap, I explored how expertise can become a barrier when we struggle to communicate beyond the language of our profession. The same problem reaches far beyond consulting.

Every field develops its shorthand. Technology, finance, education, healthcare and operations all have terms that save time between people who share the same background.

Organisations develop their own language too: project names, acronyms, references to previous decisions and phrases that supposedly “everyone knows”.

These expressions can be useful. The difficulty begins when we assume that shared words mean shared understanding.

A manager says, “I need you to take more ownership.” An employee agrees, but leaves wondering what they should actually do differently.

Someone describes a proposal as “more efficient”. Their colleague hears lower costs. Another person hears faster delivery. A third hears fewer people doing the work.

Even ordinary words can conceal different meanings.

Removing jargon helps, but clear communication also means making our assumptions visible: the background information, connections and expectations that make a message understandable.

Understanding the person before explaining the subject

Speaking someone’s language begins with curiosity.

What do they already know? What experience are they drawing on? What matters to them? What are they trying to decide or do?

A finance director may need to understand the cost and business risk of a system change. The people using that system may need to know how it will affect their working day. A technical colleague may need the detail required to assess whether the proposed solution will work.

All three deserve an accurate explanation. Each needs a different starting point.

This calls for judgement. Too much unexplained detail can leave someone lost. Too little can feel patronising or conceal information they need. Plain-language guidance makes the same point: communication should reflect the audience’s actual knowledge and expertise, while retaining necessary technical terms.¹

Speaking someone’s language also requires us to understand how they describe their own situation.

A customer says a process is “unreliable”. Before explaining how the system works, we need to discover what unreliable means to them. Does it fail completely? Produce inconsistent results? Take longer than promised?

Our explanation becomes more useful when it responds to the problem they are experiencing.

Five habits that build the skill

Audience awareness becomes a practical skill through behaviours we can learn, observe and repeat.

1. Establish the starting point

Before launching into an explanation, ask a question that helps you judge what context is needed.

“How familiar are you with how this works?”

“What have you been told so far?”

“What would be most useful to understand today?”

Listen to the answer. Someone may know the terminology but misunderstand the process. Someone else may understand the process perfectly well while using different words.

When they describe a concern, reflect it back:

“So the main difficulty is that you can’t tell customers when their orders will arrive. Have I understood that correctly?”

That brief check gives them an opportunity to correct your assumptions before you build an explanation on top of them.

2. Connect the explanation to what matters

People need a reason to care about the information we give them.

Consider an update that begins:

“We need to migrate the reporting database.”

For someone outside the technical team, the significance may be unclear. A more useful opening might be:

“Our current reporting system is struggling with the volume of information. Reports are arriving late, which delays the decisions your team needs to make. We’re proposing a change to address that.”

Now there is a reason to discuss the database.

Start with the relevant problem, consequence or decision. Then explain the detail needed to understand it. Preserve the costs, limitations and trade-offs that matter to the listener’s choice.

3. Make the abstract observable

Words such as “ownership”, “alignment” and “proactive” can sound clear while leaving the expected behaviour undefined.

Instead of saying:

“Please be more proactive about delivery risks.”

Try:

“If you think a deadline might slip, tell me as soon as you see the risk. Explain what is causing it and what help you need, so we have time to respond.”

The person now has something they can act on.

Use examples from their experience where possible. Analogies can help too, provided the connection is familiar to the listener. A cooking analogy offers little help to someone who finds cooking more confusing than the subject being explained.

Ask yourself: What would this person see, experience or do differently? The answer will often produce a clearer explanation.

4. Give information in manageable stages

Once we begin explaining something we know well, it is tempting to include every qualification and exception.

The listener may still be trying to understand the first point.

Give them the main idea, explain the essential detail, then pause. Ask which part they would like to explore further.

If a technical term is necessary, explain it where you introduce it. Expanding an acronym alone may not help: the full phrase can be just as unfamiliar as the initials.

You can also offer a choice:

“Would it help to look at an example, or would you prefer more detail about how it works?”

That gives the other person some control over the conversation.

5. Check what the explanation made possible

“Does that make sense?” is an easy question to ask. It can also be an easy question to answer with a nod.

A more useful check connects understanding to the purpose of the conversation.

“What would that mean for your team?”

“Which part still needs clarification?”

“Before we finish, can we compare what each of us thinks happens next?”

Make this collaborative. You are checking the quality of the explanation, and giving both people a chance to catch a misunderstanding.

Remember, too, that understanding and agreement are separate. Someone can understand your proposal and still have good reasons to question it. Clear communication should make those reasons easier to discuss.

Practise before the difficult conversation

Reading these habits is a starting point. Developing them requires deliberate practice.

Choose something you explain regularly: a service, a process, a recommendation or an expectation. Prepare an explanation for someone outside your field.

Underline every expression that assumes prior knowledge. Include ordinary words whose meaning might be unclear in context.

Then ask a colleague or friend to listen. Invite them to tell you where they lost the thread, what they thought you meant and what they would do next. Resist the urge to defend your wording. Use their response to revise it.

Next, explain the same subject to someone with a different concern. Notice what needs to change. The facts may remain the same while the opening, examples and level of detail change considerably.

Bring one habit into an everyday conversation. You might focus on asking about prior knowledge, replacing a vague instruction with a concrete example, or checking the next action before a meeting ends.

Afterwards, reflect briefly:

• What did I assume they knew?
• Where did their questions reveal a gap?
• What will I change next time?

Look for evidence in the conversation. Could the other person explain the main point in their own words? Could they identify the decision or next step? Did they feel able to ask a question?

Those observations give you something more useful to practise than simply trying to “communicate better”.

Turning awareness into everyday behaviour

Under pressure, it is easy to return to familiar language. We rush, skip context and rely on shorthand because it feels efficient.

Repeated practice helps us notice those moments and adjust. We become more able to pause, ask a question, choose a useful example and recognise when an explanation has left someone behind.

Skills Shift can support that development through realistic conversation practice, feedback on your responses and opportunities to try again. You can rehearse how you explain, listen and adapt, then bring those behaviours into everyday conversations and reflect on what happened.

The next time you need to explain something, think of the chef handing over a recipe. What knowledge have you left between the lines? What would help this person use what you know?

Explore how Skills Shift can help you build and practise your communication skills.