You can only solve problems that you can articulate

 / 

Colleagues with strong comprehension and good communication skills are worth their weight in gold. Eloquence is good but being articulate is even better.

It will affect your ability to solve problems and improve things. Charles Kettering said that a problem well stated is a problem half-solved. In fact, it’s near impossible to solve a problem that you cannot articulate.

Pairing a good understanding with poor communication is almost as bad as not understanding at all. As Stephen Fry warns: “A true thing, poorly expressed, is a lie".

Comprehension and communication are the tools we use to grapple with problems. And the way you engage with and think about problems directly influences your ability to solve them.

I love it when someone understands a problem well enough to explain it to me simply. An articulate knowledge worker is like a good coach who takes complex ideas and makes them simple.

Conversely, it makes me sad when I see people make ideas and concepts more complex in an attempt to appear like they know what they are doing.

Simplicity is the best way to convince me you know what you’re talking about. Like Einstein said: If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.