The most common question I get in communication coaching and workshops is this:

I tend to ramble. How can I be more concise?

Concision, also known as brevity, is really a function of how well you know the thing you're talking about. When you know something inside and out, you can emotionally regulate yourself and be crisp. When it's new, you stay quiet, keep to a script, or you ramble due to nerves.

I've learned this from personal experience. On some topics in my own profession, five years ago it would have taken me an hour to say what I can now say in five minutes. I've had to work on it. In social conversations, in meetings, in sales pitches, and in front of large audiences. So if you too want to learn how to be concise, you need to practice over and over again in real-stakes situations. And the question to ask yourself is this: what stage of learning am I currently in?

After a decade of helping engineers, scientists, designers, and business leaders in workshops and coaching sessions speak more concisely, I've developed the line chart below to help people visualize what I believe is The Path to Concision.

You're new to a domain, and the buzzwords, acronyms, and jargon are flying past you. Maybe you catch half of them. It feels like people are speaking a different language. If you spoke now, you'd sound like a kindergartner. And you may or may not realize it.

Truly hearing yourself speak at this stage is painful, because you realize you don't sound as smart and present as you want. Give yourself some grace. You're new at this.

Yes, that awareness might make you shrink back, especially if you get feedback from a manager about your communication skills. You need to embrace being a beginner.

To move to the next stage: put yourself out there and talk. You have to practice getting your point across before you start to nail your points down when it really matters.

Tips for this stage:

Now you have the words, and you use all of them. And I mean all of them. At this stage, it takes you many words to make your point.

You tend to over-explain to sound knowledgeable. But, in reality, you’re working out what you think in real time in front of the audience. It actually makes you sound less knowledgeable.

You might repeat what others say because you know it’s safe, but you lose your authenticity.

You liberally use buzzwords, acronyms, and jargon as shortcuts. The clip above pokes fun at founders all using buzzwords spoken without any intonation to sound confident, questioning your authority on the topic.

Truth be told: it’s scary to put yourself out there. You are most likely performing confidence without even realizing it, to protect your ego. Those who move on to the next stage are those who get the more reps.

Next step: just notice when you've been talking for more than two minutes. Ask yourself, why am I still talking? Name the feeling. Fear, anxiety, or maybe excitement? Did my audience really need all that context?

Tips for this stage:

You most likely will be in this stage the longest. The Beginner Stage can be a year or less. The Intermediate Stage is a few years. The Advanced Stage can be the rest of your career.

At this stage, you are a subject matter expert. Buzzwords, acronyms, and jargon are used sparingly. But without much prep time, you have lengthy slide decks, verbose stories, and long memos. You don't need a script to speak, but if someone asks you a question, you might go into a deep dive or get off track.

You take up a lot of space here. Not selfishly, per se. You have some humility. It's just that you want to transfer as much knowledge as possible to others. You see the larger picture, and you can't help but share it, and hear yourself say what you know out loud. Every edge case, every possible pitfall, every benefit. You’re trying to help.

That's why many people get stuck in this stage. The motive is good, and the room rewards it. It feels like you're bringing true value to the conversation.

Next step: orchestrate powerful discussions inside and outside the meeting room.

As you begin to see the gap between how much you're saying and how little is moving, you will want to influence others to hear you out in smaller conversations, and then assemble everybody into the same room to have the discussion. It's your voice in concert with others that makes you sound advanced. Collaborate, not coordinate.

Tip for this stage: create the conditions for others to collaborate. Listen deeper. Synthesize others’ perspectives. Co-create meaning. Give credit to others. Then come in after everybody has finished talking and state your thought as a running thesis you have.

A mentor of mine, JD Schramm, articulates in his book Communicate with Mastery that those who strive for mastery will actually never reach it. If someone says they have made it, doubt them. Mastery takes constant work.

You speak concisely because you have clarity about your goals and your audience. You use stories alongside reason and emotion to inspire others. When you hear others speak on and on, you aren't annoyed. Instead, you ask questions to help them get to their point. You create space for others and chime in with a question, an idea, or a piece of guidance when it's needed to keep things moving forward. You have no attachment to a specific outcome, and you don’t try to rescue others with your words.

It’s not because you have less to say. You have more than ever. But the depth of conversation you want depends on other people making the same journey you did.

You realize that everybody has to go through their own individual process as you did. You can't hand someone your understanding, because you didn't receive yours that way. You built it through your own confusion, your own performative ways, your own ten-minute answers. It's now embodied.

Next step: work on a beginner's mindset in all that you do.

Because the path doesn't end here. It starts over every time you step into something new. You are safe because you know your presence is what communicates the most.