muddled thoughts cloud your vision?

Stop letting what you fear shape what you say.

Have you ever gone into a meeting with the best intentions and still completely miss the mark?

I see this often (too often) with clients when they first start working with me. They walk into a meeting or presentation knowing they have something important to say, but when I ask them what they want to achieve, the answer isn’t always clear.

They’re often (too often) much clearer on what they don’t want.

They don’t want to sound pushy. They don’t want to upset anyone. They don’t want to get challenged. They don’t want to come across as difficult. They don’t want to get it wrong.

And before they’ve even opened their mouth, their thinking has already been negatively trimmed.

The problem here is that knowing what you want to avoid doesn’t tell you where you’re actually trying to go.

it's like planning a holiday to a tropical island, and spending all your time thinking about what you mustn’t pack, you could arrive with a very carefully edited suitcase and still be missing what you actually need for the beach.

Communication works in much the same way.

When you’re unclear about your outcome, your attention gets pulled towards managing the risks around it rather than moving towards what you want to achieve. You get stuck in your "I don't wants".

And here is where I often see something interesting happen in meetings.

The person with the cut-throat agenda, who might not thought the agenda all the way through but feel motivated and clear on the first steps is the one who knows exactly what they want and isn’t waiting around for everyone else to make up their mind, often comes out on top. Since they know what they want to achieve.

Their thinking might have holes in it. Their agenda might even be short-sighted. But it doesn’t necessarily matter because they are clear on their next steps.

They know the point they’re making, why it matters and what they need the people in the room to understand and feel in order to buy into it.

That clarity gives their communication direction and throughput.

It doesn’t mean being aggressive. It doesn’t mean bulldozing the room. And it certainly doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means knowing where you want the conversation to go and then moving the conversation into that direction with confidence in your voice.

So before your next meeting or presentation, don’t just ask yourself, “What do I need to say?”

Ask: What do I want to get out of today's meeting or presentation?

Then get clear on the points that will help you get there, why those points matter, and what your perfect outcome looks like instead of what it is you want to avoid.

Because if you’re practising avoidance thinking, your clarity becomes a list of things you’re trying not to achieve. And that won’t get you where you want to go.

Manage your focus. Know your outcome. Know how to articulate it and get clear on your message.

Because if you don’t, someone else will.