Distance Creates Clarity in Work Meetings

Last week I hiked up the top of Twin Peaks to get a clear view of downtown San Francisco. The fog, affectionately known by locals as Karl, began to roll over the city. From above, I could see the skyline with clarity.

My client Katherine felt stuck at work. Projects dragged, outcomes slipped away, and she kept asking: Is it me? The group? What am I missing? At work, we live in complexity. We get lost in the thick of it. People. Innovations. Protocols.

Distance is what lets us step back, see how we are communicating in meetings, and prepare more effectively to speak.

I asked Katherine to record a meeting (with her colleagues’ permission) and run the transcript through her company’s enterprise AI. What she expected was a recap with feedback on filler words and pacing. What she got instead was clarity. Clarity about how her explanations were lost in a fog of words.

Step Back

Nobody likes to watch or listen to themselves speak. After years of asking tech leaders to review recordings of their presentations, I have seen them squirm as they hear themselves.

In my recent article Clarity of Thought in the Age of AI, I wrote about how we unconsciously cover up ideas by over-explaining, over-simplifying, and over-dressing them. I call these The Three Fogs.

Being aware of your tendency to over-explain, over-simplify, or over-dress ideas is an ongoing practice because every new insight requires learning how to share it clearly.

When Katherine ran the meeting transcript through AI with the prompt below, it confirmed what she already knew: she was over-explaining her ideas because she assumed clarity needed to be shared equally with everybody in the room.

Try It Yourself. Cut and Paste this Prompt with a Recent Meeting Transcript:

Analyze this meeting transcript as my communication coach. Start with a one sentence summary about my ability to communicate clearly. Then, give a summary ranking the Three Fogs of unclear speech — Over-explanation (rambling to find clarity), Over-simplification (stripping away too much nuance), and Over-dressing (loading ideas with jargon) — from strongest to weakest. Include a strengths section with one moment of clarity (direct quote + why it worked), one recurring bad habit, and one practical next step. In a deeper dive, for each fog give 1–2 examples with ≤25-word quotes and short context. For each: Before (quote), Why it matters (1-sentence impact), After (sharper rewrite). If a fog doesn’t appear, write “none.”

Here is what I have seen: engineers and subject matter experts tend to over-explain. Business leaders, politicians, and educators often over-simplify. Anyone trying to prove their worth inside a company tends to over-dress their language.

Running one to ten of your own transcripts through this prompt is a powerful way to get distance from your communication habits and see what is really going on.

In my next article, Leading with Clarity in the Age of AI, I’ll explore what that distance makes possible and how you can turn it into sharper, clearer speech.

Final Thoughts

Transcripts are not just memory keepers. With AI analysis, you get evidence of how you communicate, so you can see a clearer picture of how you come across. That clarity feels like standing at a mountain vista.

As AI raises the bar for communication skills, this technique becomes essential. Ignore it, and you stay lost in the fog. Use it, and the fog lifts, so you can lead your team with clarity.