Less is More

As the only woman in the room for most of my career, I found out quickly that one of the most important things I needed to learn was to be direct and to the point. It seems it was hard enough to have a woman at the table, but a chatty woman was just too much.

Now that we are all living on our screens in various virtual meetings and conferences, our attention span is very short and gets shorter as the day progresses. Now is the time to embrace saying more but with fewer words and less screen time!!!!

I think we can all agree that this is a great concept but actually distilling your messages to make your idea, your point or your story as crisp and succinct as possible while appearing genuine is not that easy to do. Most of us have a very hard time simplifying what’s on our mind. As a woman I can say this; women seem to have a need to justify and amplify all the thinking, work and research that is the basis for their idea perhaps because it is often hard to be heard and taken seriously… but that is another issue for another day.

Early in my career, I learned that the more I talked and explained all the attributes of an idea or my point, the less my colleagues listened. It was VERY frustrating and often made me so angry and upset that I would hold a full-fledged pity party for myself at the end of the day!!! Obviously, that was not helpful but it did get me thinking.  How can I change these results? One day I just started listening, really listening and observing and I noticed that the more succinct, almost abrupt but not rude the speaker, the more we were all engaged. All the details that I wanted to deliver upfront came out in the discussion and follow up.  Who knew that it could be that simple? The objective is to capture your audience’s attention, no matter whom it might be, by condensing your message/thought/idea, cutting it to the bare bone and then let the details come later. It is far more engaging to quickly grasp what is being said rather then sit and doodle and noodle.

 We coach entrepreneurs about the importance of concise elevator pitches and yet here we sit, day in and day out, not taking our own advice.

Bottom line, we all know when we are droning on about something.  When we don’t seem to be able to find the words, we feel inadequate. We feel the audience is not listening because they’re not…  so we keep on until someone finally interrupts us and then they either state the idea in a few words or they drone on about their idea… and so it goes.

How do we change this tiring syndrome? We practice just like we were giving our elevator pitch in a 10-story building not a skyscraper!  We write down 1-3 points we need to make and we practice making them over and over until it becomes a habit and until people tell you are too direct. Then you know you have made it.