Real. Smart. Now.

We work a lot with smart people who really know their stuff. This means that we often have to talk with them about how they pitch their material at the right level of detail. Having a multi-faceted understanding of your topic means that you see all the subtlety, and can sometimes find it hard to filter that for a group. It can often feel like you’re dumbing down to an ridiculous extent.

Edward Hall was an anthropologist who wrote some key texts about cross-cultural communication. I came across him when I was researching a programme which we called Global Communication Strategies. His work is accessible and fascinating.

One concept of his from cross-cultural communication that I am shamelessly appropriating for us here is the idea of High Context and Low Context. This is particularly relevant if you work in a technical or highly specialised field, but at times speak or write for people who come from outside of that field.

High Context is communication that relies very little, if at all, on the explicit words that are being used. Think of a couple who have been together for 15 years, and how much can be communicated with a glance. Almost all of the information is ‘stored’ in the context of the communication – High Context.

Low Context would be typing code for computers. Everything must be explicit for a computer – there is no room for even a punctuation mark out of place when typing code. None of the information is reliant on knowledge outside of what is expicitly stated, thus Low Context.

High Context delegation would be ‘Make the business more profitable this year.’ Low Context delegation would involve precise process instructions.

Hall’s idea was that this was a useful axis from which to examine national cultures. Particularly writing for a reasonably untravelled (at the time) American audience, he helped to unravel cultures that seemed so alien: Japanese, Mexican… Hall lived for a quite a time in Japan, and discovered that he was misconstruing much of what was being communicated because he was listening to the words, rather than working from an understanding about the way the words were being said, and what wasn’t being said. Coming from a ‘let’s put all the cards on the table’ American culture he wasn’t trained to respond to communication where much of the relevant information was being conveyed by the context in which it was delivered.

Just to be clear, we are talking about a continuum, not an on/off digital distinction. Speaking of relatively High Context, or relatively Low Context makes more sense.

Pitching your communication at the right level means finding where your audience is at with your topic. Using the metaphor of High/Low Context can be helpful if we take it out of the concept of national culture and apply it to any kind of in-group.

Watch your conversation the next time you speak to someone you know who is also a specialist in your field. How much assumed knowledge is there between you? What would be gobbledygook to your grandmother? If a friend from a different field came into the conversation, what would you have to apologise for and explain? This is how we communicate in a High Context situation. Much of the information is unstated and implied. It can also be very efficient in terms of time.

Now think about actually explaining your job to your grandmother…

My granny asked me the other day if it might be good for her to get a computer. Thinking about how much detail we went into to show her how to use her cable tv remote (‘First press this button – that will switch it on. Then…’) I know how Low Context the communication would have to be to teach her how to use the internet. Low Context communication is detailed and explicit and slow. My granny is a smart lady, it’s just that she doesn’t have a schema, a framework, to place instructions about website addresses, or even mouse clicks.

Pitching your communication too Low Context will patronise someone who is familiar with your topic. Pitching it too High Context for people who have little detailed understanding will leave them lost.

Particularly get sensitive to the specialist language that is used in your field. These are essential shortcuts in a High Context situation, but jargon in a Low Context one.

Like so much of your thinking about communication, if you pitch it just right, people won’t even be aware of the planning you’ve done. You’ll hit the right balance between what can be assumed and what must be made explicit, and your information will be that much more likely to slide right in.