Ladder of Abstraction For Better Clarity

Do you want your future speeches to be clearer and easily understood by your audience? Then you may want to consider using the Ladder of Abstraction Technique. Using this technique will help your audience more focused, engaged and motivated to follow your speech as they find it easier to understand.

Imagine your speech is like a ladder that you can move up or down on. As you explain vague concepts such as 'poverty', you are moving up the ladder. Some in your audience have no problems in following your speech. However, as you might have known, you will also have other types of audiences on the floor, the ones that may find it a bit difficult to grasp the concepts.

To address their needs you need to move down the ladder. Using the example above, when talking about vague concept such as poverty, you can give specific examples of poverty etc. Thus, each time you have vague concepts in your speech (up the ladder) you will illustrate them with specific examples (down the ladder). By doing this, you are sure to address all the needs of your audience and increase your effectiveness as a speaker or presenter. Try it in your next speech.