Stop over-explaining. Try “So what / now what.”

 

Have you ever walked into a meeting thinking you are fully prepared?   The slides are done You rehearsed the story. You know your material. You start presenting and everything feels fine… until you glance at the clock.   Thirty minutes in, you’re still on slide two. Cameras start turning off. People are half-listening, half-multitasking. Someone is clearly answering emails.   You can feel it. You’ve lost the room.   This is what happens when over-explaining becomes your way of trying to prove a point or sell an idea.   And the frustrating part is that it usually comes from a good place.   Most high achievers assume that more context leads to better understanding. If people just knew how you got here, the constraints, the background, the trade-offs you considered, they’d appreciate the recommendation more.   But in senior rooms, the opposite often happens.   The message gets muddy. The bottom line disappears. And executives, especially, check out fast. Not because your idea isn’t smart, but because they’re not listening for the backstory. They’re listening for meaning.   And this isn’t uniquely about presentations. It comes up in emails, daily conversations, interviews and even when I speak with prospective clients. And while it may feel small - just a little too much information - it has a big influence on how you are perceived.   This is one of the clearest signals leaders use, often unconsciously, to decide whether someone is ready for the next level.   Can you take something complex, technical, or nuanced and make it immediately clear why it matters and what should happen next? When you can’t, great ideas die quietly.   You’ll hear a polite no.   Or “Let’s revisit this later.” Or “We need to think about it.”   And then a week later, someone else will bring essentially the same idea. Framed more cleanly. Positioned more clearly. And suddenly it lands well. How frustrating!   The habit that’s hurting your reputation: over-explaining I know over-explaining often feels like diligence. Like being thoughtful. The responsible thing to do when you talk to stakeholders.   They should know what we know. See what we see. Come to the same conclusions. But at senior levels, your job isn’t to walk people through how you got there.   Your job is to help them understand what matters now.   Over explaining doesn’t sound like credibility, it reads as uncertainty. And that right there really messes up your reputation. And when senior leaders think you’re unclear, uncertain or can’t make a point… They’ll assume you’re not ready for the next level.   So today I want to show you a simple way to stop over explaining and instead learn how to communicate strategically in any situation.   Let’s dive into it.

The framework: “So what / Now what” This framework saved me so many times when I started slipping back into over sharing.   Most people start with a very broad what. The full story, the journey, the deep research… everything that happened on the way to this conversation. But they usually go too deep, too long and completely lose track.   Instead of sharing chronologically (or play-by-play) use these two questions before you speak, present, or send a message:   So what? Why does this matter to the business, the goal, or the decision at hand? Why should your stakeholders care?   Give yourself a constraint here. No more than three bullet points.   This forces prioritization. It forces judgment. It forces you to stop going on and on and start filtering. And it stops you from falling into the chronological order trap. You don’t need to start at the beginning, you need to focus on the most important thing.   Now what? What do you want to happen next?   This is where many smart people get vague, and where senior leaders get very specific.   You choose one outcome. Not “let’s align.” Not “let’s discuss.” Not “we’ll talk about it next meeting.”   One clear outcome: A decision A direction A commitment A trade-off   For example: “I need approval by Friday.” “I’m asking for one additional headcount.” “I recommend we move forward with option B.”   This isn’t just a communication trick. It’s a thinking filter. When you can answer these two questions clearly, something powerful happens.   People understand you faster. Your ideas land more cleanly. And you start to sound like someone who can lead, not a nervous intern who can’t stop blabbing.   How to stop over explaining at work (and life) Let’s make this very concrete. Here’s how an over-explainer might surface an issue in a leadership meeting.   They start at the beginning.   “Two weeks ago, we received a complaint from a user. We spent the next couple of days researching because this client has been with us for a long time and it felt urgent. My team ran three different analyses to understand what was going on, and we looked at several possible causes…”   There’s effort here. There’s intelligence here. There’s also a lot of information decision makers don’t need and almost no signal.   The room is working hard to figure out why they should care. If you don’t give them a reason fast, you lose your chance.   Think about it, have you ever met someone at a networking event and asked a simple question like “what do you do?” and they recite their entire career for 7 minutes? You check out after about 60 seconds and pray for them to stop speaking. (And silently wonder - are they oblivious to how they sound?)   That is what senior leaders experience when you over explain.   Now here’s the same situation, framed without over explaining: “We’ve identified a critical issue with the product, flagged by a client. After four days of investigation, we traced the root cause to X. The best way to fix it and prevent recurrence is Y. I’m here today because we need one additional headcount to implement this within three days. The ROI is clear: we reduce client risk and accelerate time to value. Here’s the budget request. I’m happy to answer questions.”   Same problem. Same intelligence. Completely different level of clarity and authority.   One version is a bed time story (it might put them to sleep). The other is a leadership narrative.   That difference is what executives think of you at the end of the day. And before you say “Maya…but sometimes the context is important…they need more information…” Let me reassure you - they don’t.   In fact my rule of thumb is to follow what every good 90’s action movie taught us: ”They’re are on a need-to-know basis, and they don’t need to know” (For movie buffs this one is from The Rock but I always hear Bruce Willis’s (a.k.a John McClane) voice in my head).

Your Next Steps You don’t need to overhaul how you communicate overnight. Start small.   Before your next meeting, presentation, or important message: Write your So what in no more than three bullets. Choose one Now what and make it specific.   This alone will dramatically tighten how you show up. And here’s a tip you can use if you catch yourself rambling:   If you notice yourself going in circles mid-meeting and you can feel the room drifting, you don’t have to finish the story just because you started it.   You can pause and say: “Let me get to the point.” Or, “Here’s what really matters.” Then jump straight to your So what / Now what.   That move signals confidence, judgment, and seniority. Not insecurity.