Podcast

Dr. Marlis Douglas & Dr. Keisha Bahr

#388: How to Turn Nerd Speak into Business Solutions With the ABT

We all nerd out.

We get overzealous with our inventions. Gleefully share our innovation. Blather on and on about the uniqueness of our product or service or initiative.

We presume that our audience knows everything we know about what we’re trying to communicate. It’s obvious, right? At least to us.

But the “Curse of Expert” is a pandemic that impacts us all. Are you and your communications suffering from it?

Your job is to translate your brilliance into bite-sized stories so the people we’re connecting with *get it* immediately.

An anecdote is the antidote for obfuscation.

Today, you’ll learn how to turn nerd speak into business solutions using the ABT agile narrative framework from the co-authors of the new book:

The Narrative Gym for Science Graduates Students and Postdocs: Using the ABT Framework for Proposals, Papers, Presentations, and Life in General.

Dr. Marlis Douglas and Dr. Keisha Bahr have dedicated their science careers to making their complex messages simple so that everyone in the room understands and appreciates the important projects they’re working on.

They both believe:

Scientists are curious and quite creative AND IF they are good at storytelling, THEN they can persuade that science can help.

BUT, scientists are bad at storytelling, because they are too detail-oriented and don’t think about how to relate to non-scientists.

THEREFORE, training scientists in storytelling helps them focus their messaging and the ABT provides an agile framework so scientists can be part of the solution, and not the problem.

Dr. Marlis Douglas is an endowed professor in Biological Sciences at the University of Arkansas (since 2012). Her conservation genetics/genomics research on fish and wildlife informs management and guides conservation planning across the globe.

The ABT Framework is her essential tool to translate complex scientific data into simple actionable solutions that address real-world problems.

Dr. Keisha Bahr is a coral reef ecologist and an Assistant Professor of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. Over the past decade, she has experienced several coral bleaching events and watched entire reefs die.

After traditional methods of science communication (i.e., publications) failed to create change, she quickly realized that the future of our coral reefs relies on the scientific community’s ability to communicate with the public. But many graduate students and researchers lack effective communication training. Therefore, she has been on a conquest to improve communications in science to increase the effectiveness of the management of our coral reef ecosystems.

Discussed in this episode:

How to leverage the ABT to make your complex message simple so they land right the first time every time.
How to use the Matt Template: Heaven + Heaven But Hell, Therefore Action
How to deploy a BUTT BOMB.
Shirley Malcolm’s Law: If you don’t own your story, someone else will tell it for you and your probably won’t like how they do it.
How to use the Dobzansky Template to find your singular narrative.