A Stanford professor explains how to develop the communication skill that sets great leaders apart

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was known by his colleagues as “the Great Explainer.” Using his communication skill, he could break down complex, scientific material, like general relativity and quantum mechanics, in the simplest terms, so that others could better comprehend these mind-bending ideas. His lectures are the stuff of legend, recorded for posterity, translated into multiple languages, and used to inspire countless teachers today.

Feynman’s gift, the communication skill to turn something complex into something simple, is becoming an increasingly rare skill in today’s business world. Every day, we are bombarded with messages that don’t always make sense, and it is left up to us to figure out what they all mean. Consider the engineer attempting to explain an innovation, or the executive aiming to outline a new investment opportunity. To make their argument compelling, they often drown their audience in jargon, detail, statistics, technical language, and PowerPoint presentations with too many slides, each with too many words. These explanations often leave their audiences bewildered, rather than bedazzled.

How can we make our communication easier to grasp, like Feynman did? As it turns out, there are tools you can use to this end, tools that will help you connect with your audience and achieve understanding. The way to remember these tools is simple. No, really, it’s S-I-M-P-L-E, which stands for Slogans, Images, Metaphors, Parables, Lists, and Examples. When used well, these simplifying tools can help you hone your communication skill to explain things more clearly.

Slogan

A slogan is a short phrase that captures the essence of a message. It is intended to be memorable and oft-repeated, amplifying the appeal of your argument. People embrace slogans to distill a core idea into something crystal clear. For example, Dumas used the motto, “All for one and one for all,” to capture the unbreakable bond shared by the Three Musketeers. Apple developed its slogan “Think Different” to identify its products as the forefront of innovation. Makers of the film, Bonnie and Clyde enticed audiences with the jarring tagline, “They’re young, they’re in love, and they kill people.”

Some slogans are alliterative. Some have rhyme. The best slogans have a distinct ring that makes them part of our vernacular. To make your message more powerful, boil it down to its essence and give it a simple, but captivating, slogan.

Image

You have probably heard the expression “An image is worth a thousand words.” The right image is probably worth more than a million. Consider the image of a lone man standing in front of an army tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989. We have all seen this image countless times. It persists in our consciousness because it captures a single human being standing up in opposition to institutional oppression. It illustrates that resolute spirit more efficiently, and perhaps more effectively than a well-crafted essay ever could. Powerful images like these are effective, in part, because they capture emotion, express vivid detail, and, if they are conveyed well, their message can be absorbed instantly.

Simplifying images can appear in many forms. It might be a drawing or a photograph. It might be a pie chart or a bar graph. It could even be a verbal description. In 1962 at West Point, General Douglas MacArthur delivered the following message to the cadets in attendance, “The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts dressed in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words . . . Duty . . . Honor . . . Country.” Referring to the cadets as the Long Gray Line, he invokes the imagery of fallen soldiers from past wars acting as their moral conscience. The picture is painted beautifully, hauntingly, and stirringly.

Metaphor

The word metaphor combines the Greek terms meta (beyond) and phero (to carry). A metaphor carries the meaning of one term beyond its original use and applies it to another domain. For instance, I could talk to you all day about what it’s like to work with my colleague, Mike, or I could just refer to him as a “bottleneck,” and you would better appreciate my frustration. Ben Franklin frequently used metaphor to boost the appeal of his aphorisms (“Time is money,” “Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle,” “Love your neighbor, but don’t pull down your hedge”). Powerful metaphors lead people to think of old ideas that were once unclear in new ways that now strike them with abundant clarity.

Do you know why the ancient Greeks embraced the use of metaphor? It may have to do with the fact that they relied heavily on oratory rather than written speech (since most people could not read). Given that audiences could not go back and reread what was said, pressure mounted on the speaker’s communication skill to make their point clear the first time. Metaphors enable an audience to grasp a concept immediately, allowing the speaker to hold their attention. Perhaps this is why middle-school science teachers often refer to the mitochondria as the “engine” when explaining the function of the human cell. It’s hard to keep the attention of middle schoolers in any context, much less a biology lecture.

Parable

Much is said about how storytelling can be a powerful communication skill. This is because stories can be captivating. But we should not use stories merely for the sake of commanding an audience’s attention or hearing ourselves speak.

Stories should have a point—a lesson at the end of the story that the audience can appreciate and absorb. That is what turns a simple story into an effective piece of communication.

Some of the longest-lasting stories—the Tortoise and the Hare from Aesop’s fables, or The Good Samaritan from Bible verse—are parables that provide a lesson or an instructive principle. After hearing them, audiences can better appreciate the underlying theme, upshot, or gist the broader story aims to convey.

Well-constructed stories often have elements that resonate with an audience, like a coherent structure, a comedic tone, or a plot twist. However, these stories also have razor-sharp focus. Their entertaining elements elevate the story’s main point, rather than overshadow it.

Lists

You do not need to spend more than 10 minutes on the internet to recognize that people love lists. “Top 10 Movies of All Time,” “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” “Five Ways to Know Your Spouse Is Cheating on You.” The appeal of lists like these is clear. They bring order to our disorderly lives.

A list can do the same for your ideas. But not just any list will do. The list needs to feel compelling, and it needs to feel complete. Acronyms can be very useful lists. For example, if someone wanted to communicate with their audience about ways to simplify a message, they might use an acronym like S-I-M-P-L-E.

I use lists to help my students remember important lessons. For example, we all make mistakes and often need to apologize to repair the damage we have done. But what makes for an effective apology? Well, there is a deep literature on apologies. I can point my students to the specific journal articles and empirical studies that identify the key components. Or I can summarize these components by using a list.

In this case, I tell students that a good apology has three components: Alacrity, which is a ready willingness to offer the apology (not begrudgingly or after some delay); Acknowledgement, which entails recognizing both the harm that was done and the role we played in causing it; and Amends, which means making some effort to set things right. Include these components, and your apology will be so good it’s Triple-A rated.

Example

A good example can make everything crystal clear. According to research on the “identifiable victim effect,” people often feel more sympathy for a single individual experiencing a tragedy than a large number experiencing the same tragedy, especially when the individual’s unique experience is brought to light.

Perhaps the most powerful use of an example is a demonstration—objective proof that supports one’s contention. Circling back to Feynman, demonstrations were his specialty, and he used this special skill when he led the investigation into the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986. Concerns had been raised that the O-rings on the solid rocket boosters would fail at colder temperatures, leading to catastrophe. At one point during the investigation, Feynman was listening to claims from NASA engineers about how they could not have known the O-ring’s composite material would fail in near-freezing conditions.

While he listened, Feynman poured a glass of ice water and dropped a piece of the O-ring material in the glass. Moments later, when the NASA leaders had finished, Feynman explained what he had done, removed the composite material, bent it, and showed that it would not bend back, thus proving its sensitivity to colder temperatures.

These tools—Slogans, Images, Metaphors, Parables, Lists, and Examples—are effective devices to develop the communication skill to simplify your message. But just because these tools are simple doesn’t mean they are easy to adopt. It takes keen insight to wield each of them and continue to sharpen them.

As you work on developing simplifying devices, here are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, try to make them partly emotional, rather than purely logical. People will respond more enthusiastically to a simple message that connects with them on a visceral level.

Second, these tools need to be tested, not trusted. In other words, don’t assume they’ll work. Pilot them with others to see if they resonate in the way you intend. Third, and finally, combine these tools when you can. They are even more effective when used in combination, rather than isolation.

If you work on honing this skill, it will become something you can leverage for the rest of your career. Communication skills separate great leaders from all the rest. The ability to turn what’s complex into something simple will make you the oracle that others seek out to help them make sense of that which feels nonsensical. They will seek you out for your ability to demystify the mysterious. They will come to you because you will become “the Great Explainer.”