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Art of Explanation
We (you too, right?) have some seriously important messages to communicate, and we’re not always great at doing it. I know I have growing to do in communication skills, so I really enjoy books that give fresh insight. The Art of Explanation, by Lee Lefever, is light reading, but that’s because it embodies his own advice: make the cost of understanding low for your audience by laboriously planning and cutting your presentation to make as little barrier as possible to entering your understanding.
We word people (you too, right??) are a bit resentful of all the visual media winning the communications popularity contest nowadays. Yet we can’t communicate effectively if we don’t get in the game, and the rules of that game are increasingly word-averse. Yet there is (witness this book) still a huge place for words: primarily, they are used to get your message so clear, so well-ordered, so focused, that you can get it across with the fewest possible words. It sounds a lot like the art of teaching, but we just have to remember we are often teaching people with very little capacity to receive meaning in words.
We can’t just moan and groan about that insufficiency in our audience. True communication is speaking the truth in love. That means letting go of the need to be perceived as ‘intellectual’. That means suffering to become however ‘small’ we need to be in order to be received. That means moving all the way into mature and rich and complex use of words, and then returning with mere symbols.
Is this starting to sound like Resurrection and Sacraments, Christ becoming man as an infant, St. Paul becoming all things to all men? It should! Until we get that communicating is ultimately about communicating Christ, whatever else we are talking about, we won’t appreciate this book and others like it. Love condescends.
Everywhere I look, I see books on communicating effectively. Some of their common elements are: use as few words as possible, use great visuals, start by making sure your audience hears why they should listen, use the story arc constantly, and be sure to recap what you’ve already told them. It’s all a modern (and vastly more readable) rewrite of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and much of it is very helpful as a review of Communications 101.
Lefever adds a lucid explanation of what the differences are between explanation and description, definition, instruction, elaboration, reporting, and illustration…surprisingly insightful…and good examples of the development of some very good explanations…and visuals that actually do help me access his principles.
I’m running some of my presentation ideas through his thought process already, and can see improvement, so I’m thankful I discovered this book.
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