When I first moved to Australia, I didn’t arrive with a polished leadership playbook. I arrived with two suitcases, a lot of optimism, and no real idea how different the professional culture would be. A close family member, someone who’d lived here for twenty-five years and built a genuinely successful career, sat me down early on and gave me two pieces of advice. Just two.

“To succeed here,” she said, “you need to put the business before yourself. And you need to learn to communicate concisely, in the fewest words possible.”

That’s it. That was the whole speech.

I remember thinking, “is that really it?” No playbook, no framework, no grand strategy? But looking back now, those two principles have done more for my career than almost anything else I’ve picked up along the way. And I’ll be honest, the second one? I had to earn it. It didn’t come naturally.

The Person Who Talks Most, Controls Least

There’s a widely held belief, especially early in careers, that the more you contribute to a conversation, the more influence you hold. Fill the silence. Get your ideas in early. Show them you’ve thought about this.

It’s understandable. In most organisations, visibility feels like currency. But here’s the problem: volume of words and weight of influence are not the same thing. In fact, they’re often inversely related.

Robin Sharma explores this brilliantly in The Leader Who Had No Title. His central premise is that real leadership isn’t about position, it’s about behaviour. And one of the most counterintuitive behaviours of genuinely influential leaders is this: they learn to speak last.

When you’re the first one to put your view on the table, you do two things. You anchor the conversation to your framing, which sounds good, but you also signal that you’re more interested in being heard than in genuinely understanding. You close off exploration before it begins. People read the room, see what the “leader” thinks, and start gravitating toward that position. Not because it’s right, but because it’s safe.

Speak last, and the dynamic shifts entirely.

What Simon Sinek Gets Right

Simon Sinek has spoken at length about this principle. Leaders who hold their opinions until others have spoken create something psychologically powerful. They signal that every voice in the room matters. They gather more information before forming a view. And when they do speak, the room listens more intently, because it’s been earned.

“If you speak last, you give everyone a chance to feel heard. And that’s when people start following you.”

Think about the leaders you’ve respected most in your career. I’d wager they weren’t the ones dominating every meeting or verbally processing every half-formed thought in real time. They were the ones who, when they did speak, made you feel like the conversation had just crystallised. Like they’d been listening the whole time and had seen something no one else quite had.

That’s not magic. It’s discipline.

Brevity Is a Superpower, Not a Shortcut

There’s a famous quote often attributed to various historical figures, but most reliably to Blaise Pascal that goes:

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
— Blaise Pascal

The irony is perfect. Writing clearly and concisely takes more effort, not less. It requires you to actually know what you’re trying to say. And in leadership, that clarity is invaluable.

Research consistently shows that concise messages are more memorable, more persuasive, and more trusted. When you strip away the noise, what remains carries weight. Long-winded explanations, especially when pitching ideas upward to senior leaders tend to backfire. Decision-makers interpret over-explanation as uncertainty. You talk more when you’re less sure of yourself. You talk less when you know exactly what you want and why it matters.

There’s a practical framework I’ve come to rely on when I’m presenting ideas or trying to influence a decision: BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front. State your conclusion first. Then give the supporting evidence. Resist the urge to build the case dramatically toward a reveal. Nobody at the executive level has the patience for a slow burn, and honestly, they shouldn’t need to.

The Art of the Considered Pause

Here’s something nobody tells you early enough: silence is not weakness.

In meetings, silence feels uncomfortable. The instinct, especially for people with a lot of energy and ideas is to fill it. Don’t. Let the discomfort sit for a moment. Nine times out of ten, the person who speaks into the silence reveals more than they intended, or someone else steps up with a contribution that’s genuinely useful.

And when you do respond, take a beat. One breath. The pause signals that you’re processing, not reacting. That you’re choosing your words, not just releasing them. It’s a small thing, but it’s one of those habits that people notice without being able to articulate why; and it’s the difference between someone who seems thoughtful and someone who is thoughtful.

You have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio.
— Epictetus

Getting Your Ideas Heard - Actually Heard

Here’s the part that matters most if you’re trying to move ideas through an organisation.

Most ideas don’t die because they’re bad. They die because they’re introduced wrong. Too much context. Too much self-justification. Too much hedging. By the time you get to the point, the audience has already made a mental decision and they’re just waiting for you to finish.

The antidote isn’t presenting with more confidence. It’s presenting with more precision.

Before you walk into that room or type that email; ask yourself three questions:

1. What’s the single thing I need them to understand?
2. What’s the single most compelling reason they should care?
3. What’s the one thing I’m asking them to do?

One. One. One.

If you can answer those three questions in three sentences, you’re ready. If you can’t, you’re not ready yet, and that’s the real work. Not the preparation of slides or the rehearsal of delivery, but the clarity of thought that makes both of those things almost unnecessary.

From Noise to Signal

I’ve been in rooms where the most junior person said the most important thing but lost the room in the first thirty seconds. And I’ve been in rooms where a single, well-timed sentence from someone who’d been quiet the entire meeting changed the direction of the whole conversation.

The difference wasn’t seniority, wasn’t confidence, wasn’t even the quality of the idea. It was economy. The ability to distil a complex thought into something clear, crisp, and well-timed.

My family member’s advice “concisely, in the fewest words possible” wasn’t just professional etiquette for a new country. It was a philosophy. Say what matters. Don’t say what doesn’t. Let the quality of your thinking do the work.

That’s the discipline. And like most disciplines, it’s harder than it looks, more valuable than it seems, and transformative when you actually practise it.

Your Turn

Think about the last time you spoke in a meeting. Did you say what you needed to say? or everything you could say? Was your contribution sharpened by intention, or was it a running commentary on your own thought process?

And the next time you walk into a room with an idea you care about, one you want to get funded, supported, or simply understood; try going in with three sentences instead of thirty. Wait until others have had their say. Speak last, speak clearly, and mean every word.

You might be surprised how much louder that sounds.

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Further reading:

• Robin Sharma, The Leader Who Had No Title - a practical fable on leadership without formal authority
• Simon Sinek on speaking last: Leaders Eat Last - the full framework for building trust through service
• Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook - why concise communication builds psychological safety