Some time ago, I found myself facilitating a team meeting for one of my clients. The team leader opened the meeting with a speech. He talked and talked and talked. It seemed like he never took a breath. He just kept talking. After a few minutes, I could no longer follow what he was saying. I got confused and I looked around the room and I could see that nobody else was following either.
When he finally finished, he asked for thoughts. There was a moment of awkward silence. He looked to me for help. The meeting was in Spanish and so I said, “I didn’t understand what you said, can anybody in the room help me by summarizing.” A few people tried, but nobody could really get to the point. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, I asked the leader if he would briefly summarize his thoughts so that we could clear up the confusion in the room.
In just two or three minutes, he summarized what he had been rambling about for the previous 30 minutes. This time, he spoke clearly and succinctly. He made his point in such a way that there was no doubt about what he was trying to say.
Say What Is Core
Too many people do not express their ideas simply, clearly, and directly. This causes a lot of the communication problems that they encounter in both their professional and personal life.
Many think that they need to beat around the bush or sugarcoat their message so that they can avoid causing hurt or conflict. They think people either won’t understand or that they will become offended if they just say what they need to say.
There is no doubt that it is important to communicate with style and tact, but the ability to be crisp and to the point, without being abusive, is a very desirable trait for a leader to possess.
