The More We Say, The Less They Hear
When it comes to speaking, too little story is almost always stronger than too much.
I'm a blabbermouth. I tend to over-explain and repeat myself, heaping too much information on my audience rather than adhering to the four Cs of intelligent messaging: Clarity, Confidence, Consistency, and Concision. That last C-word, being concise, is my Achilles heel. One I share with most leaders and speakers.
I can actually feel my audience slipping away in real time as I press on with unnecessary content, talking and talking to the point where what I originally had to say begins losing meaning or impact. Trust me, I'm always working on it. Anyone hoping to lead with value will do well to recall a key #CorporateStorytelling truth: The more we say, the less they hear.
Precision vs Brevity
Forbes defines “concise” speakers as those who keep it short and sweet, understand time is money, aim for crisp, clean relevance, and who don’t pad their sentences with jargon or flowery phrases to sound more “professional”. I'll add three more to the Forbes list: Concise speakers get to their point quickly, state their message succinctly, and trust that their audience got it the first time.
The Wharton School of Business makes an important concision distinction between focusing the content in our communication and just cutting it. A winning message is measured more by precision than by brevity. Concise communication saves time, and makes it easier for the audience to understand and process a message.
The Perils of Over-Communication
Another #CorporateStorytelling truth is that no one listens to or trusts a droner. Verbose, cluttered communicators often lose credibility. They don’t appear to be clear thinkers with a good understanding of their topic. Many people tune out rambling communication because they don’t have time to do the work of sifting through extraneous words for key points. They have short attention spans and are overloaded with information.
You've sat through countless speakers meandering around their topic, making every detail important to the point where nothing is important, data dumping far too much information for fear of leaving something out. And while this is painful for an audience or team member to sit through, over-communicating can also be a career limiter. Overly wordy people are frequently excluded from meetings, aren’t given critical writing assignments, and get low ratings on their leadership expertise or communication skills.
KISS Theory
A University of Pittsburgh study showed that most listeners can comfortably and openly accept three main ideas in a single communication engagement, then three supporting arguments for each of those three main ideas. Anything more and one idea begins competing with another for value. Once that occurs, the audience starts to forget. Too much information means something will get discounted, discarded, and forgotten – that losing idea becomes a time waster and degrades the talk.
Many of us pack our communication with too much content out of a deep psychological desire to be heard, trusted, or respected. The mouth keeps moving to make absolutely certain our audience recognizes that we know what we're talking about, and sees unquestionable value in our message. But the actual response is just the opposite; Too much talking erodes trust and respect.
It’s like being hungry and trying to choose between too many choices on the menu. We want to eat, but delay satisfaction in food analysis paralysis. Delivering too much information to an audience creates the same lack of clarity and concision, leading to similar analysis paralysis in our listener. Remember the KISS theory: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Bottom Line
Honor the four Cs in every communication opportunity: Tighten the message for absolute clarity, and trust your leadership expertise to deliver that tighter message with confidence. Stay consistent in every engagement with an audience or with your team members. And remind yourself to be concise – they’ll almost always get it the first time, without the need to repeat or overpack your message.
