Why smart people still sound confusing
You walk into a room, share your idea, and by the time you finish, nobody can quite tell what you meant. People nod politely, scribble notes, then leave carrying different versions of the same story.
Andrea Belk Olson, a differentiation strategist, speaker, author, and customer-centricity expert, attributes this to “leak points.”
From ideas to reality
Your mind holds the full picture: colorful and alive. The moment you try to explain, the picture loses part of its aliveness. Then, when others run it through their own filters, it changes again. By the end, the idea you thought you’d delivered has fractured into fragments—at each “leak point” it lost more of its spark.
And the cost? Decisions aren’t made. Strategies stall. Promotions slip through the cracks. The idea wasn’t weak; it just never survived the journey out of your head.
In the end, only what people remember survives. And if nothing survives, the idea might as well have stayed in your head.
Managing leak points
One way is to cut the excess. Research in memory science suggests people only carry three or four pieces of information at a time. Any more and recall drops. Instead of unloading the whole deck, carve down to the essentials. Think of a colleague telling a story: “We’re in phase three of the rollout, aligning stakeholders and refining the implementation roadmap for full-scale deployment.” Now imagine them saying: “The pilot works and we’re preparing to scale.”
Another way is to stop trusting your own sense of clarity. You might think you nailed it — but what did they actually hear? When the audience are asked to play back what they understood, nine times out of ten, it’s not what the speaker intended.
And finally: delivery. You can have the best message on paper and still lose people if you mumble, rush, or throw in “um” every other breath. We have seen participants transform just by slowing their pace and locking eyes with one person at a time. Suddenly, the same words feel grounded, not scattered. Presence is the basis.
Your challenge
Start with something as simple as describing an everyday object like a table to someone, imagining that they are from a different planet. At first, you might describe it as: “an elevated rectangular surface made from wood.” This description still assumes shared understanding though. How is it elevated? By how much? How big is the surface? What does wood feel and look like?
The exercise forces you to see before you speak. It also challenges assumptions about shared understanding. Does your audience know which stakeholder group you refer to when you say “stakeholders?” Does full-scale deployment mean full deployment across one department, or deployment across all departments?
In your next meeting, don’t ask, “Did that make sense?” Ask, “What’s the one thing you’re walking away with?” If their answer doesn’t sound like what you meant, the problem isn’t them. It’s you.
In the end, only what people remember survives. And if nothing survives, the idea might as well have stayed in your head.
We have seen participants transform just by slowing their pace and locking eyes with one person at a time.
If you want to master your communication—and change how you think, speak and act—join us for our next BRILLIANCE.
We’ve taken elements of our most impactful communication workshops—usually delivered to top executives at companies like LEGO, Google, and Nike—and distilled them into a new series of programs that accelerate your transformation.
