The curse of knowledge can be overcome by stripping out jargon, consulting with others, taking the smallest steps of logic in the right order, and by helping people know where they are in the argument.
In The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Steven Pinker suggests that overcoming the curse of knowledge may be the single most important requirement in becoming a clear writer.
So what’s the curse of knowledge?
It’s that we find it hard to remember what it feels like not to know something that we ourselves know well. And it’s even more of a problem in public speaking, as people can’t pause to re-read a page or consult a dictionary before continuing with their listening.
How can you avoid the curse? TED Head Chris Anderson’s advice 
Strip
Strip your address of all jargon and technical terms. Some of this is unavoidable and, depending on the audience, some of it may be acceptable. But ask the question anyway so as to minimize it.
Share
Share your draft with colleagues and practice your talk before friends who know nothing about the topic. I know preachers who do something like this every week before preaching their sermon. I don’t recommend this. However, I do think that regular sermon reviews with elders, and perhaps with people in our congregation who have no church background, can reveal whether the curse of knowledge is preventing blessing.
Steps
Make sure every sentence is connected logically to the one before it and to the one after it. The precise sequencing of sentences is vital for building understanding and maintaining connection with the audience.
A speaker has to be sure that listeners know how each sentence relates logically to the preceding one, whether the relationship is similarity, contrast, elaboration, exemplification, generalization, before-and-after, cause, effect, or violated expectation.
Anderson explains this point using the illustration of a tree. The trunk is the throughline, the main idea of the talk (the sermon proposition, if you like), that leads from the bottom to he top of the tree. The branches (similarity, contrast, illustration, etc.) are the way we rise from the bottom of the tree to the top.
We don’t jump halfway up, then come back to the bottom, before leaping three feet up the tree to near the top. No, we start at the bottom and look for the next nearest branch, then the next, then the next, and so on, until we reach the top of the tree.
Sentences should follow one another like these branches, each one leading to the next nearest one, with no huge gaps in between, no leaps of logic that leave us hanging in the air or plummeting to the ground.
In my own sermon preparation, I spend a lot of time switching sentences and paragraphs around to ensure that I’m giving people the smallest steps possible between branches.
Situate
Use the appropriate linking words to help people know where you are in your argument. You are trying to help someone detect if this is your main argument, a digression, an exception etc.
What this means is that some of the most important elements in a talk are the little phrases that give clues to the talk’s overall structure: “Although . . .” “One recent example . . .” “On the other hand . . .” “Let’s build on that . . .” “Playing devil’s advocate for a moment . . .” “I must just tell you two stories that amplify this finding.” “As an aside . . .” “At this point you may object that . . .” “So, in summary . . .”
If we go back to the tree illustration, these connecting words are the way we get on to the branches in #3 and the way we signal we are moving off one and on to another. It helps people locate where they are on the tree.
The curse of knowledge can be overcome by stripping out jargon, consulting with others, taking the smallest steps of logic in the right order, and by helping people know where they are in the argument.
More articles in the Preaching Lessons from TED Talks series.