I’m going to be vulnerable for a moment here. Sometimes I feel out of touch. Especially as I get older, and the professional circles I’m a part of widen and change.

Research shows that if you can find that balance between the panic zone and optimal anxiety, a moderate level of stress can help you enhance your skills and abilities.

We’ve heard it a million times: don’t bury the lede.

But what does this mean for effective communication in 2023?

Let’s revisit and refresh our what it means to be concise, how to leverage brevity as a tool for a constructive meeting, and why it matters to the people in your org.

We all get nervous. We all know that intense push-pull feeling of needing to be heard and not wanting attention.

But what we have to say matters, and so there’s no way around it: we need to overcome our nerves and communicate to our audiences.

Getting to the point is always important in business communication, but it can make or break a virtual meeting. We’ve all experienced someone taking forever to make their point. It drains the energy and people start to multi-task. And with many of us in back to back meetings, if people aren’t concise, the meeting can run long and we show up late and frustrated to our next meeting.

The first time I finished a live webinar several years ago, I ran into the living room, exasperated, and told my husband, “I’ll NEVER do that again!” At the time, presenting virtually felt like too much to manage -- the windows, the tech, the chat, the equipment, and not enough human interaction and feedback for my taste.