Where’s the Sweet Spot?

Concise or Detailed?

December 10, 2024

Most business leaders agree. When asked about one key skill that is critical for success at work, it’s typically something related to communication. At any stage of your career, your ability to communicate clearly can make or break key relationships, projects, and opportunities. One important question you need to ask yourself about the way you communicate: when do I keep it short and sweet, and when is it better to dive deeper with a more detailed explanation? There’s a fine line between the benefits of brevity and the virtues of detail. Adjusting your communication style to different situations, audiences, and media takes practice, but the effort is well worth the reward.

This is a common communication dilemma. Take a look at the situation Samira found herself in:

Samira is a hard-working middle manager at a growing tech company. She has always thought of herself as being thorough in every aspect of her work. Whether it was writing a project update email or presenting a new strategy, she made sure to include every relevant detail – and a few personal anecdotes to make her points relatable. She has fostered very strong working relationships with her leaders and coworkers, even becoming friends with close colleagues over the course of her career.

But lately, she had started to notice glazed eyes during her team meetings and long silences following her emails. Her boss had even begun signaling to her to wrap it up by waving his finger like he was twirling a lifeguard’s whistle, or worse, cutting her off mid-sentence during presentations, asking her to “get to the point.” While her coworkers generally liked her personal and friendly approach, the team’s work had become more intense recently, and they were all feeling pressure to focus on delivering their work.

It wasn’t until an important client presentation went off the rails that Samira truly realized there was a problem. She had spent so much time explaining the backstory of her proposal that she barely had time to cover the key points. The team left the meeting worried that the client wasn’t satisfied. Afterward, the client expressed confusion about the main objective of the meeting, leaving Samira frustrated and embarrassed.

Determined to improve, Samira sought feedback from a mentor, who gently pointed out that her over-explaining and additional color commentary was diluting her message. She was including too much irrelevant information, which was distracting from the core issues. It was hard for Samira to hear the feedback. From that moment, Samira committed to being more thoughtful in her communication. She started by outlining her main points before every meeting and trimmed down her emails to the essentials, focusing on clarity and relevance. Slowly but surely, she found her balance between providing enough detail to be understood and being concise enough to keep her audience engaged.

When Being Concise Is the Way to Go

The length of our attention spans have been on the decline, with no signs of this trend letting up. There’s increasing pressure to keep communications as short as possible. Being concise ensures the message is clear, prevents misunderstandings, and saves time – making it attractive in many situations. In fact, it may be the only way to get someone to actually read your email!

Keeping it short works in specific situations. Here are some examples when conciseness is critical:

Quick Status Updates: Think about daily or weekly standup meetings or brief update reports to your boss or team members. This is the time to focus on the essentials – what’s done, what’s pending, what are the risks, and what’s urgent.
Routine Emails: Short project updates, FYI emails and confirmations only require a short message. Stick to the key facts. For example, on a meeting reminder, just include the meeting logistics without a lengthy explanation of the agenda.
Elevator Pitches: Whether selling an idea or a solution, you’ll often have just a few seconds to make an impact. Be ready to distill the core components and value of your content and deliver it in a compelling way.
Instant Messages: Collaboration message applications are designed for quick questions and quick answers. Staying with the most important facts, data and logistics allows your audience to focus on the key points.

Being concise in these contexts shows that you know your audience, respect their time, and can deliver your key points without unnecessary information.

When to Go Deeper into Details

While we all appreciate a focused and clear message, sometimes it isn’t enough. Many complex situations require detailed explanations and rationale:

Technical Discussions: Complex technical topics may require detailed thorough explanations. This is especially true for an audience of non-experts. For instance, if you’re explaining an application interface and its implications to a marketing team, you need a more detailed rationale than if you were discussing it with IT.
Justifying Big Decisions or Investments: Careful explanations with analysis and interpretation are required for high-stakes decisions, especially those with significant financial implications or strategic pivots. Gaining your audience’s understanding and trust with a complete explanation will help them see a full picture and make a well-informed decision.
Training and Onboarding: New hires or clients likely require more background, explanation and instruction. Taking the time to provide them with the right depth of detail will ensure that they are ready to take on their new job or assignment. In this case, the audience may also benefit from repetition so that they can fully integrate the knowledge.
Client or Stakeholder Proposals: When presenting a solution to a client or outlining a new project proposal for approval, you likely want to provide thorough background and rationale behind your plan. Contracts, statements of work and other collaboration documents require a significant level of detail to align all parties and avoid misunderstandings.

A more comprehensive communication helps your audience fully understand your message, and it reduces the chance for errors, confusion, or missed opportunities.

Fine-tuning Your Approach for Different Audiences

Each of the situations above must be tailored for the audience. Matching the level of detail or brevity to your audience helps your message land. At the same time, you’ll also have to become adept at managing a mixed audience comprised of members of these groups:

Executives and Senior Leaders: Typically, busy executives are pressed for time and show a strong preference for concise and on-point communication, especially when receiving updates or proposals. They want the big picture and to quickly understand the implications. A good approach for them is to present or write your most important 3-4 points upfront in your communication and then be ready with detailed explanations when they ask for more information.
Peers and Team Members: When working with colleagues on shared projects, your communication may be somewhere between concise and explanatory. They require you to provide enough information that allows you and your team to succeed, but not so much that there is information overload, or that it takes too much time. You have to deliver enough detail so that everyone fully understands their roles and responsibilities.
Clients or External Stakeholders: External collaborators may require more detail, and it is best to err on the side of overexplaining with them. For clients, you want to ensure that they are fully familiar with your product or service so they remain satisfied. For external collaborators or vendors, more details about deliverables, timelines, or strategy can help build trust and strengthen the business outcome for you and for them.
Technical vs. Non-Technical Audiences: With technical audiences, you can use highly specific language and acronyms and forego background explanations. With non-technical audiences, you should be ready to provide high level explanations of new terms and technical specifications that help break down the complexities without oversimplifying.

Understanding your audience is crucial to determining whether to be concise or explanatory. Matching the situation to the audience and calculating the right level of detail will get you to a message that resonates and is understood.

Delivery Method

Consider for a moment all the different channels for communications at work. Some channels are clearly made for quick communications (e.g., instant messaging), while others are suited for more detail (e.g., 1:1 meeting with your manager). Although we all have our personal preferences, we should also take into account that different channels lend themselves to varying levels of detail:

Emails: Emails allow for both concise and detailed messages, depending on the purpose. It’s easy to send a quick reply or update. Email also allows for a longer format with greater detail. If you plan to use email to provide a lot of detail, take the time to make your email reader-friendly with clear subject line, headers, bullet points and an upfront objective, ensuring the reader knows why they are getting the message. Remember that a brief email with a detailed attachment is really a long email!
Presentations: Presentations give you the opportunity to leverage the power of visuals to help make your message clear and reinforce your talking points. Your slides should have your high-level points (the brief approach), but you should also be prepared to provide more detail verbally or in Q&A sessions (the detailed approach).
Small Meetings: In closer settings, you may be able to dive into details. Small groups are likely to foster discussion and debate, so you have more opportunity to go deeper on complex topics, and to adjust your delivery as the meeting progresses.

Ideally, your communication objective will be the driver of how choose to deliver your message. Sometimes the situation dictates your channel, and you must adjust accordingly. Matching your communication style to the channel helps you make the right adjustments to your delivery.

Watch Out for Over-Compensating

There’s a lot to think about when considering your level of brevity or detail. Sometimes it’s clear, while other times require a balancing act. Avoid being overly concise simply because there’s an executive in the room, but also don’t go down a rabbit hole of detailed technical explanation because you’re looking for a greenlight for your project budget.

Too Concise

If you’re too brief, you risk leaving out critical information, or even coming across as if you don’t know the details.

Too Detailed

Providing too much information can overwhelm your audience. The details may bore your audience and confuse your main idea or key points. You may lose their attention or cause confusion.

Your message may come across as vague or unclear, leading to follow-up questions, assumptions, misinterpretations, or delays in decision-making.

You risk coming across as too lost in the details and unable to articulate your key message.

Call to Action: Your Communication Plan

Fortunately, there are ample opportunities to practice your communication approach. In the beginning you may want to take some time to plan your approach. As you get more comfortable, these steps will become second nature. Here’s a checklist of questions to run through to help plan your communication approach:

What is the objective of my communication?

What is the core message? Is it clear?

Who is my audience?
How much do they already know and what else do they need?
What do they need to know to act or decide?
How have I prepared for questions the audience might have?
What is the best format or medium for delivering this message?

Taking time to think through these questions will help you adjust your communication to the right balance of concise and explanatory.

Mastering this balance in communication is an essential skill for any professional. Over time, you will notice yourself improving in this area because not only will you be able to practice, but you will also be observing others. You will hone your ability to consider context, audience, and purpose, and you’ll soon master effective communication in every situation.