A client of mine has gotten feedback that he’s too wordy and goes into more much detail than is necessary. It’s clear from the volume of this type of feedback that this is a behavior that shows up all the time, regardless of the situation. I’ve observed it myself in our coaching sessions.
In the course of our conversations, it emerged that he assumed the only way to practice mitigating this habit was by preparing to be concise for a specific meeting or a presentation.
The great thing about needing to practice talking, I pointed out, is that we do it so much. And his particular habit, one that shows up in almost every communication scenario, gives him lots of opportunities to experiment with doing something different. Waiting for the next presentation or meeting backfires: it obscures the true extent of the issue, and it means we only think about it when the “big meeting” is coming up. We don’t build the muscle to effect any deeper change.
I asked him to think about three occasions, each day, when he can deliberately focus on offering much less explanation than feels natural for him. These could be team briefings, talking to his spouse about the plan for the day, or even emails that he’s composing for his boss. The objective here is for him to start asking the question: how much context does this really need? What’s the bare minimum I can say and still get my point across?
This extreme adjustment is an experiment. I don’t expect him to do this forever. But his default mode is also extreme, so I am asking him to see what it feels like to swing all the way in the other direction. He’ll see that people can, in fact, understand him with far less detail than he is used to offering, and in fact, it’s easier to follow his stories and examples when they are more pared down.
It’s also perhaps worth repeating here that just because a particular way of communication feels “natural” to you doesn’t mean that it’s effective for the people you’re talking to!
