One Trick for Founders Who Talk Too Fast

The brain of a startup founder-CEO is often going a mile a minute. It’s only natural that they also talk a mile a minute. Of course, this can be a problem, because when you talk fast, people can’t follow what you’re saying and understand the message. Needless to say, that’s something founders and other leaders will want to avoid.

If you’re a founder, you may have been told a time or two that you talk too fast. Maybe you just shrugged your shoulders, thinking there’s nothing you can do about it. If you haven’t been told that you talk too fast, it might not hurt to ask someone, just in case it’s a problem nobody has told you about.

As mentioned, it’s an understandable problem for founders-CEOs. You don’t have to blame yourself or get upset. But you do have to understand that talking a mile a minute is not the way normal people communicate. It can also be a hindrance to being an effective communicator as a leader.

One trick that can help you stop talking so fast is to stop talking all the time. Limit yourself to four sentences at a time before taking a break to pause and let someone else speak. In workshop settings, I will even encourage people to hold up four fingers when the four-sentence rule needs to be enforced.

Any point that you need to get across, you should be able to get across in four sentences or fewer. Anything beyond that becomes too much information for someone to absorb at one time. You also risk the person tuning you out if you talk for more than four sentences, especially if you’re talking too fast.

If you’re speaking with employees, stop after four sentences and ask them what they heard. What was the biggest takeaway from what you said? This helps prevent you from continuing to build up speed and talking too fast. It also turns a speech into an actual conversation.

More importantly, stopping to ask the person about the key point they heard will help ensure your message was received. After all, it doesn’t matter what you say to someone. The only thing that matters is if that person understood the message you wanted to convey. 

Therefore, your focus should always be on conveying the proper message, not saying everything you want to say. By limiting yourself to four sentences and checking that you got your point across, you will become a more effective communicator. In turn, you will become a better startup leader.

If your startup’s leadership team has unresolved issues or seems to be pulling in different directions, the Founder-CEO Alignment Sprint from the Midstage Institute is the solution. We will help you get to the root cause of the issue, get the team aligned, and start making faster decisions to spur growth.