Good news!

Your audience has agreed to do the hard work for you.

If you think that you can’t boil your talk down to a simple core message, your audience will happily do it for you.

After your talk, when someone asks them what it was about, they will gladly provide an answer. Let’s call it the pass along phrase.

Here’s the thing:
That pass along phrase is always short.

If you can’t decide which of the 10 features was most important, they’ll pick one for you.

If you can’t focus on what it’s actually for, they’ll pick a focus for you.

And if the talk was somewhat confusing, they might just choose that fact: “I honestly don’t know what the talk was really about. It was somewhat confusing.”

Also:
The pass along phrase is always in their words.

They won’t bother with fancy language, tech jargon and the likes. They will choose language they are familiar with.

Let’s say it straight: You might not like their choice.

Which means that you might want to make your audience’s work of figuring out a pass along phrase as easy as possible.

You might want to pick a focus and use language your audience is familiar with.

Now, how do you make that task easier for your audience?

Is less more?

Less isn’t more.
(Obviously!)

Personally, I never thought that less itself was a worthwhile goal.

“Less but better” is.

Fewer words, but more carefully chosen.
Fewer messages, but with a much sharper focus on one goal.
Fewer features, but more specifically tailored to a specific customer problem.

Less means you have more attention for what really matter.

Less means you can get a few things right rather than many things so-so.

Less means you can make a massive leap in one specific direction rather than spreading yourself thin in multiple.

The point isn’t less.
The point is what less enables.

What’s one area where you can do less but better today?

Running out of time

If you know what you’re talking about, there will always be more interesting things to say than you have time to say them.

The common approach is to try anyway and fit as much of it into the talk as possible.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it?

In a way, yes.

But then again, how well does it work usually?

It risks overwhelming your audience …
… or you run out of time on stage because it took longer than the speaker expected.

I bet you’ve seen it just as often as I have.

Ultimately, it means that either the audience or time will decide on what sticks.

That’s why I think a better approach is to do the exact opposite:
Put in as few things as possible.

Put in the things that your audience absolutely has to understand.

Start with only one thing.
(Yes, only one thing!)

What is the most important thing that your audience needs to understand?

And then put in the second most important thing.

And the third.

Until you hit the time limit.

That way, what will be left out, will be the least important things (obviously) – and you’re in control of what that is.

(Btw, it will also usually make for a much more focused and engaging talk.)

Less

We often default to adding more details to clarify our points. But did you ever notice how more details sometimes lead to even more confusion?

When more won’t help, less might. Yet, seldom do we consider subtracting an aspect or two to stop the confusion.

Have you experienced that?

Your relationship with focus

Focusing hurts.

Especially for people who deeply care about what they do and who spend what feels like every waking hour thinking about their idea.

Part of the reason why they are so good at what they do is that they care for the details. They pick up every stone and look behind every corner.

What they find can be fascinating, sometimes opening up a whole new branch of possibilities.

For these people, it can hurt to let go of these possibilities.

And yet, it’s essential …

  • for yourself, so you don’t loose yourself in the details and get distracted with stuff that would ultimately lead you off track,
  • for your team, so everyone’s pulling in the same direction which allows you to build something extraordinary that you can actually be known for,
  • for your audience so that they can have a position in their mind that they know you for and can pass that story along.

Nevertheless, it hurts.

Which is why it takes courage. The courage to make a choice: What exactly is the focus?

One realization made the choice easier for me: The fact that if you don’t choose, someone else will.

It could be your team, your customers, your audience.

Or it could be time.

Basically, if you’re not making the choice you’re delegating it.

That’s not what I want.

What’s your relationship with focus?

The only one

Right now, nothing is more important than you.
That’s the feeling that great communicators will give you.

Not only in 1:1 conversations, but also on the stage and even in their writing.

Right now, nothing is more important than you.

Which is not to be confused with:
“Never is anything more important.”

But right in this moment, nothing is.

These people let us forget that
-> they are just as busy as we are (if not more),
-> that they juggle just as many balls as we do (if not more),
-> that their day sucked big time and their lunch break is already one hour late (if not more).

But right now, none of that matters.

They are super busy. And yet, in this moment, they are fully present.

They don’t necessarily leave everything aside for us. We’re not the center of their focus all the time. They might not even have much time for us. But when they do, they’re fully committed and present in the moment.

Sometimes, you could even say that the feeling is not so much one of being the most important person in their world right now. It almost feels like you’re the only one that matters.

How focussed are you on the person you are talking to?

A Superpower

Almost nothing is important.
And yet, the Universe is on a mission to make us believe it was.

If you’re leading an organization, you’re bombarded with tons of information and decisions and each one of ’em likes to suggest that it’s rather important.

But from a distance, in that huge pile of stuff, most things aren’t that big a deal. Don’t you agree?

That email? It can wait.
That third bullet point on slide 15? Nobody would have missed it.
That new study that’s all over social media? It’s not even relevant to our scale.

To say it straight: Most things are utterly unimportant.

Treating them as if they were important distracts not only you but the whole team from what really matters.

I think that’s one of the main aspects of lighting the path. To arrive at a clear (and joint) understanding of what’s truly important and what’s not.

So that you can focus on the former and keep the latter from distracting you.

Once you become used to it, it can become hard to bear it when people obsess over unimportant stuff.

Now, this may sound like you wouldn’t care for the details and only the big picture. But I think it’s the opposite.

When the detail matters, you deeply care for getting them right. It’s going to make a huge difference.

But if you let the details of stuff that doesn’t even matter distract you, well it’s going to hold your team back from making a difference.

A bit of a mess

You’ve started with the best of intentions. You’ve chased opportunities and kept doors open. You’ve been a good listener and tried to fulfill the wishes of your customers and your team.

But then – before you even notice it – you find yourself in a bit of a mess. Initiatives begin to overlap, priorities clash, and what was once a structured strategy begins to resemble a haphazard scramble.

You’ve committed to one “yes” too many. You’ve crossed the line to becoming aimless. You’ve essentially become lost.

When leaders frequently bypass saying “no”, they inadvertently plunge their teams into a whirlpool of confusion. Each “yes” is not merely an affirmation; it’s a commitment of time, energy, and resources.

Worse, this inability to set boundaries and make selective decisions blurs the team’s vision. Instead of a clear path lit by intention and strategy, the route becomes foggy, littered with detours and distractions. The light that should guide the path dims, causing uncertainty and doubt to creep in.

For some, saying “no” feels easy. But for most of us, it’s not. But leadership is not about embracing every opportunity. It’s about making choices that align with the team’s vision. Saying “no” is an instrument of clarity that allows teams to focus on what truly matters and keep the light focused on their path.

Choosing “no”

A “no” to excessive jargon is an embrace of clear, straightforward language that every listener, regardless of their background, can understand.

A “no” to redundant meetings is a commitment to purposeful collaboration.

A “no” to information overload is a commitment to prioritize, ensuring clarity over clutter.

A “no” to lengthy emails signals respect for the recipient’s time and attention.

A “no” to generic statements is a push for specificity, ensuring that feedback, directions, and insights are meaningful and actionable.

A “no” to speaking without listening underlines that everyone’s on the team for a reason.

A “no” to speaking for the sake of speaking ensures that when words are spoken, they carry weight and relevance.

“No” is a choice.

In the vast sea of words and information, sometimes what you choose not to say or include makes what you do communicate all the more powerful. As leaders, embracing these principles can elevate our communication, making every interaction more meaningful and impactful.

Keep lighting the path!

The double-edged “yes”

Hidden within every “yes”, there’s an implicit “no”.

Steve Jobs famously said that he was as proud of the things he hasn’t done as he is about those he did do. For him, saying “no” to many ideas meant that he had more time to focus on the things that deeply mattered to him and that he really did say “yes” to.

It’s an insight we tend to forget. Saying “yes” to one thing means saying “no” to all the things you could be doing instead of the thing you said “yes” to.

Saying “yes” often feels like the most harmonious response. Whether it’s agreeing to a colleague’s project proposal, accepting a social invitation, or undertaking a new responsibility, a “yes” can carry a world of positivity and opportunity.

But every choice has an opportunity cost. Each time we say “yes” to one endeavor, we are (consciously or unconsciously) saying “no” to another. Agreeing to work late on a project means declining the family dinner. Accepting an invitation for dinner with Tom means we can’t go out with Tim. These implicit “nos” often go unrecognized, but they have a profound impact on our time, priorities, and overall well-being.

Every “yes” is not just an acceptance, but also a decline of alternative possibilities. But is that what you really want?

Getting awareness of this duality allows us to be more deliberate in our choices and ensure that when we do say “yes”, it’s to the things that align most closely with our values and objectives.

Embracing “no” is not about becoming negative or closed-off. Rather, it’s about recognizing the interconnected nature of our decisions and the implicit trade-offs within them. It’s about making the unconscious conscious and empowering ourselves to choose with greater clarity.

How do you choose?

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Dr. Michael Gerharz