How to Articulate Your Thoughts More Clearly Than 99% of People

Every time you speak, people are making

a decision. Is this someone I can trust

or is this someone that I tune out of?

Running my company, acquisition.com,

taught me this. Leadership lives or dies

by your communication. If you cannot

communicate like a leader, then you will

never be trusted like one. So, let me

show you the five behaviors that are

quietly killing your executive presence

and exactly what to do instead. Number

one is stop overexplaining. You can have

the best ideas in the room, but if you

can't actually communicate them clearly,

you will always follow somebody who can.

And the thing is is that trust erodess

with every weak behavior that you let

slide. You don't need to add behaviors

to be taken seriously. You actually just

need to eliminate the ones that make you

look weak. The most intelligent people

in the room, they rarely say the most.

They actually usually say the least, but

every word that they say lands with

people that are there. I used to be the

queen of overexplaining. And and I did

it for multiple reasons. One, I felt

like if I didn't give people every

single thing from my brain that they

weren't going to understand the concept

when it was actually the fact that I

didn't know how to simplify concepts.

The second is that I felt not sure in

what I was saying. And so I talked

around the thing a million ways until I

finally was like, does the person

understand the message? And then the

third thing was that if somebody wasn't

giving me the reaction that I wanted, I

felt unsure, uncertain, doubtful. So I

kept talking and it was out of

nervousness. And so it wasn't until I

got into a setting where I was leading a

big team where I realized that I watched

myself on a meeting and I was replaying

it because I felt like I didn't get the

reaction I wanted out of my team and

when I watched them watching me, I was

just talking in circles. At some point

they tune out. They're like you're just

said it six times already. Like I don't

need to hear you say it again, lady.

Like we already know. The second is that

I didn't come off confident. So people

start to check out because they're like

suddenly they're like well I don't want

to listen to you because you're not an

expert. Because experts and people who

are confident and people who know their

they don't need to talk that much about

the thing. They just say it and they

assume that you understand. They move

on. Here's the thing. If you pause and

you're okay with silence, it gives

people time to process and respect your

words. Authority is felt when one speaks

as if they're expected to be heard, not

as if they're hoping to be heard. So

when your communication's tight, your

thinking appears sharp, even if it's

imperfect. When people are trying to

improve their executive presence, the

first thing that I say is you have less

time to talk. They're usually taking up

way too much time when they're speaking.

A trick that I do with my executives,

for example, is that when I'm having

them present in our quarterly off sites,

in our meetings, often times they say,

"Well, how many slides can I get?" I'm

like, "It's not about how many slides

you get. You get 2 minutes to talk.

However many slides you want in there,

great." But I try to constrain the

amount of talk time they have because it

will constrain them to a certain amount

of time which makes them bring the

message down to only the most important

points because if not right is most of

the time they're overexlaining and

overexlaining makes them sound insecure

which is why people don't listen to you

in the first place or take you

seriously. There's a quote by Warren

Buffett that says the one easy way to

become worth 50% more than you are right

now is literally just to hone in on your

communication skills. Number two is that

we want to stop fidgeting. what you say

does not matter if your body language is

saying the opposite. People won't follow

somebody who looks uncertain. So if your

voice and your body are not aligning,

people don't trust either of those

things because your energy reads as

nervous and uncertain. And people don't

want to follow somebody who comes off

nervous and uncertain. So instead,

instead of being nervous and just and

chewing gum like I'll do that, and

playing with your hair and playing with

your nails and like doing all sorts of

things, instead you want to be

controlled, precise, and slow. Now, why

does this work? One, having a strong

posture, having a strong presence,

standing up straight, putting your hands

together, having your shoulders back,

sitting up straight, that shows that

you're grounded, even if you are unsure.

And it also signals to you that you're

grounded. The second is that the way

that you position yourself literally

signals to somebody how you feel about

yourself. So, think about somebody who's

really confident in themselves. And then

think about how they stand. Stand that

way. Right? If somebody's very

confident, they're standing like this.

They might be using a lot of gestures.

They feel open. They feel big and

they're taking up a lot of space. Right?

When you think about somebody who's not

confident, you probably think of like

more hunched over like this. They're

doing some uncertain stuff. It looks

fidgety and they're slouching. They

don't look sure about themselves. I

remember actually that I had a director

of operations and she was really great

at managing projects. But the moment

that it got to, okay, we're going to

command the team, we're going to tell

the team what to do, she had the

weirdest fidgeting. And so she would do

two things. One, she would bite her

nails when I go on the calls. She

wouldn't stop biting her nails. and she

would be talking her nails. And I was

like, it's so such a little thing, but

it makes a difference. And the second

thing she would do is she would

constantly be doing like this with her

hair and just playing with her hair and

she wouldn't ever stop fidgeting. And

her fidgeting actually signaled to me

that she was nervous or uncertain. And

so I had a call with her and I said,

"Hey, I actually think the one thing

that you could do that would make the

biggest difference into how you lead

this team is I just need you to get some

fake nails so you stop biting them." And

so it was really funny because she

actually went to the nail salon, got

fake nails, and then she stopped biting

her nails. that it actually made her

look much more confident with the team

because she didn't have this nervous

fidget that she was doing. Think about

how if you see a CEO on a stage versus,

let's say, a customer support rep, how

do you think they're going to show up

differently? How are they going to walk?

How are they going to talk? Where are

they going to put their hands? How are

they going to move their hands? It's

like the CEO is probably going to have

very intentional gestures. They're going

to use their hands to tell a story.

They're going to bring people into it.

Whereas the customer support rep might

be fidgeting. They might be talking like

this. They might be going like this.

They might be, you know, rubbing their

arm. They might be playing with their

hair. And so you have to remember what

executive presence looks like. And most

people have some kind of nervous fidget

that they do or they ramble. And those

things distract them from what they're

saying. It steals their confidence and

it seals attention that the audience

would have on what you're saying. And

now they're watching the thing that

you're doing. So end of the day, we want

to replace the nervous fidgets, the

slouching, the weird gestures with

adopting a slow, precise, and grounded

posture and movement that make people