Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

At first glance, this quote is very poetic, very abstract, very metaphorical, and you might think there’s not much you can do with it. And yet, I’m going to give you a very simple tip to help you communicate better with the people around you.

How can you best share your passions?

Generally speaking, when you want to talk to the people around you about subjects that really interest you, you talk about your passions, your hobbies, things that are close to your heart. So what happens when people talk about their hobbies? They’ll often talk about very specific little details that will bore everyone to death!

DON’T BE THE FIRST TO TALK ABOUT A TINY DETAIL
If you want to share your passions with other people, don’t talk about the smallest detail first. It may sound silly, but let me give you a very simple example: someone who loves hiking. Usually, this hiking enthusiast will talk about their passion when they meet someone, and they’ll talk very quickly about the new walking stick they’ve bought, which has a compass, or they’ll talk about new hiking boots. These are really details that get people drunk.

TALK ABOUT WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS PASSION
If you want to get people interested, get them excited about your hobby. And to get people interested in your hobby, don’t talk about specific things, don’t explain the technical details of your passion, the small points, but rather the big picture, what this passion allows you to do from an abstract point of view.

LET PEOPLE ASK YOU QUESTIONS
If you’re talking about hiking, to use my example, it’s much smarter to talk about the magnificent landscapes you can see when you go hiking, or the health benefits of breathing clean air, or the benefits of walking on the cardiovascular system, without going into details.

For example, you’re going to say “walking is really great for your cardiovascular system”. The person in front of you will wonder why and ask for more information. Then you’ll be able to go into more detail.

On the other hand, if you say “You know, hiking is great because it will accelerate your pulse during an hour’s walk, and this acceleration will burn so many percent of body fat”. I’m making up the example, which isn’t necessarily well-chosen, but you can see where I’m going with this.

Most people who talk to you about their hobby, their profession, their passion, will talk about the small, precise details rather than talk about what made them fall in love with this passion in the first place. The pleasure of hiking was the beautiful scenery, not the fact that it burned so much body fat per hour of walking.

APPLY THESE TIPS TO YOUR WORK AND SHARE YOUR VISION
You can apply this advice if you have projects. If you’re a business leader, a team leader in your work, and you want to motivate your troops, you’re not going to do it by going into detail. Motivate them by talking about the long-term project, the long-term vision of the project.

For example, if you’re working in satellites, with computer engineers, you’re not necessarily going to tell them about the little computer subtlety on the project that’s going to be the challenge, but the long-term vision, the fact that you’re working on a future satellite that’s going to be a hundred times more accurate in terms of weather conditions and hurricane forecasting, for example.

The vision of this objective is much more likely to motivate the troops, who will say to themselves “we’re working on THE next satellite, that’s great”, rather than saying that the next challenge is to solve this computer bug that occurs once in ten thousand times when the satellite encounters such and such conditions.

If you want to interest the people around you, whether in your professional life, in your passions, in your family, for your children, talk about the long-term vision of what made you fall for this passion in the first place, and not the little technical aspects that fascinate you today because you’ve been doing it for years.