The Over-Communication Principle: A Thing Said Once Was Mentioned
Here is a sentence I hear from leaders every week: I already told them. And it is always true. They did tell them. Once. In a meeting. Six weeks ago. The Over-Communication Principle starts from a fact about attention that most leaders find insulting until they apply it to themselves: a thing said once was not communicated. It was mentioned.
Think about the last big message you received from above you. The strategy shift, the reorg, the new priority. How many times did you hear it before it felt real? Before you could explain it to someone else in your own words? For most people the honest answer is three or four, across different channels, over a couple of weeks. That is not a failure of your attention. That is how attention works. And your team’s attention works exactly the same way, on your messages.
So the principle. Anything that matters gets said three times, in three forms. Once out loud, in the meeting. Once in writing, the same day, in the words you actually want repeated. And once again a week later, out loud, without apology, as if it were new. Three times is the floor, not the ceiling. The fifth time you say it is roughly the first time the back half of the room hears it.
Here is the tool. Write down the three things your team must understand this month. Not ten. Three. For each one, write the sentence you want repeated back to you, in the words you would want to hear in the hallway. Then schedule it: where it gets said, where it gets written, where it gets said again. That is a message map, and it takes fifteen minutes.
The objection every leader has is that it feels like nagging. It is not. Nagging is repeating yourself because you are frustrated. This is repeating yourself because you understand how people hear. Your team will not experience it as repetition. They will experience it as finally being clear about what matters.
The leaders who get called great communicators are not the ones with the best sentences. They are the ones who said the sentence enough times that everyone could finish it.
The Right Altitude Field Guides. One dimension at a time. therightaltitudebook.com/the-field-guides
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