I’ve been helping a friend build a website. I’m not a website designer or developer, nor a graphic artist. However, with the knowledge I do have I still managed to drive them successfully into a comatose when I spoke the language of websites, search engines, list building, SEO, RSS feeds, widgets, plugins, ecommerce and other knowledge that led him sitting with an open mouth and glazed glassy eyes.
I lost him instead of inspiring.
The other day, a similar thing, I opened an email from a client which said, ‘I hadn’t got a clue about what you meant, I asked my brother and I get it now!’. I had confused her with my language.
Both are examples of the curse of knowledge.
The curse of knowledge is when we try and communicate a message but what we end up doing is zoning people out, shutting their brain down until they hear nothing.
See, nobody knows what you know.
Have you ever met someone and you just clicked with them? You and they spoke the same language? Okay, compare that connection with someone you’ve met where you genuinely hadn’t got a clue what they were talking about. Which one felt better?
George Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘”The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
As a trainer I plan and deliver with the following rules: keep it real and keep the ball in the learners court.
This simply means that I don’t fall prey to the curse of knowledge, I stay on the side of the learner and deliver in a language that they understand. And sometimes, when it comes to sharing knowledge, it means I have to work a lot harder at putting it an a context or story that that can relate to and understand.
We can put hurdles and barriers in the path of how a message is received with the curse of knowledge.
Have you ever struggled with the curse of knowledge? At work? In your business, or another relationship? What did you do to remove those hurdles and barriers so that the message you wanting to impart is what is actually heard?
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