Leadership Communication in Action · 2026-09-01 · 18 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
38 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Rambling in presentations often stems not from lack of knowledge but from trying to communicate everything at once - a problem particularly acute among knowledgeable leaders who fear missing important context. Liz Boswell, host of Leadership Communication in Action, addresses this through a deceptively simple three-question framework designed for use before opening PowerPoint. First, understand your audience deeply: what they already know, what matters to them, and what decision they need to make differs sharply between boards (who want commercial risk and ROI), leadership teams (who need to understand personal impact), and wider organizations (who need context and reassurance). Second, identify the single message you want people to remember - not five bullet points or twelve slides of detail, but the one thing someone should tell a colleague afterward. Third, be crystal clear about the desired outcome: do you want approval, a decision, or feedback? Boswell emphasizes that clarity creates credibility at senior levels, and that confidence shows through saying less, not more. The framework applies whether you're presenting quarterly results, recommending strategy, or influencing upward. She offers the Leadership Presentation Planner as a practical workbook to move through this thinking before presentation preparation begins.
Experienced leaders often know so much about their subject that everything feels important, and they don't want to miss anything or appear unprepared. They think more information will build credibility, when actually clarity creates credibility at senior levels.
Instead of 'What do I want to tell them?' ask 'What do they need to hear from me?' - this reframes the presentation around the listener's needs rather than the presenter's knowledge, which fundamentally changes what gets included, excluded, and explained.
Imagine someone leaving the room and being asked 'What did the presenter say?' - what do you want them to reply? If you can't answer that clearly before presenting, your audience will decide the message for themselves, often incorrectly.
Simple is not the same as simplistic; taking something complicated and explaining it clearly is a real leadership skill that shows you know what you're talking about and builds trust, whereas rambling can make you sound less credible despite your expertise.
Without clarity on the desired outcome - whether it's a decision, approval, or feedback - people leave the meeting confused about what happens next, making the time spent feel pointless and undermining the entire presentation's impact.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode delivers a straightforward three-question framework (audience, main message, call-to-action) that is practical but not novel - these are standard presentation principles taught in dozens of communication courses. While the advice is sound and useful, it lacks surprising insights or counterintuitive findings that would educate experienced B2B operators who've already encountered frameworks like Duarte, TED talk structure, or basic stakeholder analysis. The host adds minimal original research or unexpected data.
Question one, who is your audience and what matters to them?
What is the one message you need them to remember? Not five messages, not the 12 bullet points on slide seven, but what is the point you want to get across?
The framework presented is a well-worn path in presentation training: audience-first thinking, single-message discipline, and clear calls-to-action. These concepts appear in countless business books and workshops. The host offers some personal anecdotes (rambling from knowledge overload, learning to omit information) but no contrarian thinking or first-principles re-examination of how presentations actually work at the executive level. The framing is competent but recycled.
You know so much about your subject that everything feels important, and you don't wanna miss anything out.
When you get to senior level, clarity creates credibility.
This is a solo-hosted episode with no guest. The host, Liz Boswell, positions herself as a trainer, facilitator, coach, and business owner but provides no credential validation, track record specifics, or proof of operating at scale in B2B environments. She speaks from generalized coaching experience rather than demonstrable practitioner expertise in complex organizational settings.
I'm Liz Boswell, and this is Leadership Communication in Action
Over the years as a trainer, facilitator, coach, and business owner, I've delivered hundreds of presentations
The episode uses generic examples (board presentations, company-wide changes, leadership teams) but lacks named companies, specific metrics, real failure stories, or quantified outcomes. The CRM recommendation example is illustrative but invented and vague. No data on presentation success rates, audience retention metrics, or concrete before-and-after scenarios from actual clients. The advice is grounded in principle but not grounded in evidence.
Let's say then that you're presenting a recommendation to the board. Your main message might be, 'We need to invest in this new CRM system because delaying for another six months will cost more in lost time than if we act now.'
You can deliver exactly the same information to two different audiences and get completely different responses.
The host speaks in a conversational, warm tone and uses self-disclosure effectively (admitting her own struggles with rambling, childhood school reports). However, this is a solo monologue with no guest to challenge, no pushback, and no genuine dialogue. The host occasionally poses rhetorical questions but doesn't answer them rigorously or explore edge cases. There's no intellectual sparring, no admission of limitations, and no willingness to sit with uncomfortable disagreement. The format itself prevents conversational craft from being tested.
I know a bit about this personally as well, to be honest. my school reports always said I talked too much and was easily distracted
Have you sat in meetings where somebody's given a detailed presentation, at the end, you're sat there looking around the room at everyone thinking, 'Well, what are we supposed to do?'
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Leadership communication gets harder when you know your subject so well that everything feels important. You start explaining, add more context, throw in another example and suddenly you’re rambling without actually getting your point across. At senior level, it’s not about proving how much you know. It’s about making it easy for people to understand what matters. Strong executive communication means knowing what to include, what to leave out and where you want the conversation to go. Because in leadership meetings, clarity creates credibility. So how do you stop rambling without losing the warmth and personality that make you a good communicator? You’ll learn three questions that can transform your leadership communication before you even open PowerPoint: Who is your audience and what matters to them? What is the one message they need to remember? What do you want them to do next? These questions help you move beyond simply sharing information towards purposeful business leadership. Want to make your next presentation clearer before you start building the slides?
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Have you ever finished giving an update in a senior meeting and thought, "I'm not entirely sure if I got my point across there"? You knew your subject, you've got plenty to say on the matter, you probably spent hours preparing slides as well. But somewhere between starting your explanation and finally getting to the point, you lost the thread. Perhaps people listening did as well.
Now, if that sounds familiar, stick with me because today, I'm gonna share a leadership presentation framework with three simple questions that will help you stop rambling, make your message clearer, and get your point across in senior meetings with more confidence I'm Liz Boswell, and this is Leadership Communication in Action, the podcast for women in leadership who want to be clearer with their communication. Before we get going, I wanna say thank you so much for being here.
If you've been listening for a while, thank you for continuing to spend a little bit of your time with me. I know that there's thousands of podcasts, even more actually, probably millions of podcasts out there that you could choose to listen to, so the fact that you keep coming back to this one genuinely does mean a lot. And if this is your first episode that you've found, you're very welcome too. I hope you stick around.
Right. Let's get into it then. Why are we talking about how to stop rambling in presentations? Well, the first thing I want you to know is that rambling usually is not caused by a lack of knowledge or confidence.
Quite often, it's the opposite. You know so much about your subject that everything feels important, and you don't wanna miss anything out. You want people to understand the background and show that you've thought it through properly. Before you know it, you're five minutes into your explanation, and you still haven't told people why they should care I know a bit about this personally as well, to be honest.
my school reports always said I talked too much and was easily distracted, and to be fair, they probably had a point. I've always been able to talk. Learning how to decide what actually needs to be said has been far more useful as I've stepped into senior leadership. Over the years as a trainer, facilitator, coach, and business owner, I've delivered hundreds of presentations, and I've facilitated more leadership team workshops than I can remember.
I've also sat through plenty of them as well, and what I've learned is that people rarely ramble because they don't know what to say. They ramble because they're trying to say everything. Sometimes there's an anxiety underneath as well, to be honest. I mean, when we feel under pressure, we do start adding more words, don't we?
And explaining the point and then explaining the o- explanation, adding in a few more examples in case the first one wasn't clear, and then going back and qualifying something we said two minutes ago. We think more information will make us sound more credible, but often it has the entirely opposite effect. And when you get to senior level, clarity creates credibility. So let's break down the framework for a leadership presentation with just three questions and keep it simple.
So question one, who is your audience and what matters to them? Now, this is the bit that often gets missed because people think they should begin with a subject. They think, "I need to give an update on this project. I need to present the quarterly results.
I need to explain this new strategy." So there they go, opening PowerPoint and starting typing in everything they know onto the slides But your presentation really isn't about the project, the results, or the strategy. It's about the people in front of you and what they need from you. Who are they?
What do they already know? What are they worried about? What decision are they trying to make? And what's likely to make them sit up and pay attention or turn them off?
You can deliver exactly the same information to two different audiences and get completely different responses. If you're giving an update to the board, for example, they're gonna want to understand the commercial risk, the likely return on investment, and what decision you want them to make. Whereas a leadership team, on the other hand, they might want to know what the change means for them personally, for their teams, and what you expect them to do. If you're presenting to the wider organization, maybe it's a company-wide change, they're gonna need more context, more reassurance, and a clear sense of what happens next so that you don't leave them feeling uncertain.
The subject could be s- the same, but the presentations should never be the same. They need to be different and tailored to your audience. Experience has taught me that a good presentation should start with the listener. So instead of asking yourself, "What do I want to tell them?"
try asking, "What do they need to hear from me?" Now, that sounds like a small difference, but believe me, it changes what you include in your presentation, what you leave out, and also how you explain it. So before your next presentation, try writing down this sentence: The people in this room care most about... dot, dot, dot.
And then make yourself finish that sentence. And if you can't finish it, then you might not yet be ready to deliver the presentation. Maybe you need to go speak to someone first. Do a bit of research.
Find out who's gonna be in the room and what they already know about this topic, what else they'd like to know. And that little bit of preparation will save you an awful lot of time later. Question two What is the one message you need them to remember? So looking ahead, start with the end in mind What is the one thing you want people to walk away with?
Not five messages, not the 12 bullet points on slide seven, but what is the point you want to get across? Now, imagine somebody leaving that room, walking back into their office and being asked, "What did Liz say?" What do you want them to reply? If you don't decide that in advance, then your audience are probably gonna decide it for themselves because they don't have clarity.
It might be that different people leave with completely different versions of what they thought you meant. So if you've not got one clear point, that can happen. So this is where a lot of rambling begins, I think. When you haven't chosen the main point, you just keep talking in the hope that the point will eventually reveal itself.
And believe me, I've done this myself as well. I can remember preparing presentations with pages and pages of notes because I wanted to make sure I didn't forget anything. But the problem was that all of those notes made it harder to see what mattered. I was prepared, but I wasn't necessarily clear.
Now these days I'm much more focused and, you know, I ask myself a few questions beforehand. What's the key message? What three points support it? What can I leave out?
And that last question is often the toughest for me as well because you know what? Leaving something out, sometimes we think that it's gonna make it less interesting, less valuable, but it doesn't. It just means that it makes everything clearer for your audience, and you don't have to prove everything you know in one presentation. One of the clearest signs of confidence is being able to say less.
Let's say then that you're presenting a recommendation to the board. Your main message might be, "We need to invest in this new CRM system because delaying for another six months will cost more in lost time than if we act now." So everyone... Everything else in the presentation should help the board understand that message and make the decision.
You might structure the rest of the presentation around three points. For example, like, here's the problem, this is the evidence to, to prove it, and here is how I recommend we move forward. Now, that structure gives you and the audience something to focus on. And if you notice yourself drifting away into the detail, you can come back to that main message.
If someone asks you a question, as they often do, that takes the conversation off in a completely different direction, you can answer that question and then bring it back to this structure Sometimes people tell me that they worry about if a message is simple, it might make them sound less knowledgeable, but I promise you it won't, because simple is not the same as simplistic. So taking something complicated and explaining it clearly is a real leadership skill. It shows you know what you're talking about, and it builds trust and helps people to make the right decisions This is exactly why I created the Leadership Presentation Planner, and I'm, I'm so excited to share this with you, honestly, because it takes you through exactly what we're talking about in this podcast.
it takes you through the thinking that we've been doing here. Before you even open PowerPoint, you can use this planner to help yourself get prepared. You can get really clear about your audience, decide what you really need them to remember, and work out what you can leave out as well. So if you've got a presentation coming up, and you're already wondering how on earth you're going to turn everything in your head into something clear and useful, have a look at the planner.
It's a digital, really practical workbook that you can download and start using straightaway, and you'll find the link in the show notes. Right. Let's move on to the third question then, because this is the one that turns a presentation from simply sharing information into leadership communication. So question three: what do you want people to do next as a result of your presentation?
What do you want to happen next? do you want them to make a decision on the level of investment? do you want them to give you approval for their spending, or do you want somebody to take responsibility for something? Whatever it is, make sure that you're crystal clear.
Now, you're probably the same as me. You... Have you sat in meetings where somebody's given a detailed presentation, at the end, you're sat there looking around the room at everyone thinking, "Well, what are we supposed to do?" Sometimes the presenter doesn't know either.
They've spent so much time preparing the content that they haven't prepared the outcome, and it can feel really uncomfortable, especially if you're speaking to people who are more senior than you as well. So if you're influencing upwards and you feel a bit uncomfortable with that, you could soften the request a little. For example, you might say, "I thought it would be useful to get your thoughts on this." Now, there's roth- nothing wrong with asking for people's thoughts if that's genuinely what you need to move forward.
But if you need a decision, then be specific about asking for a decision. So if you're recommending a course of action, say so. It's really good to be clear and say, "My recommendation is that we proceed with option two, and I'm asking the board to approve that today." Now, that's really clear on what you want them to do, and then people can give you their objections, ask more questions if they need to.
They might disagree with the re- recommendation, but at least they understand what you're asking them to consider and why So those are the three questions then. Who is your audience and what matters to them? What is the one message you need them to remember? And what do you want them to do next?
I promise you, if you answer those questions before you even open PowerPoint, you'll find it so much easier to decide what belongs in your presentation, and you can even structure your s- slides around those three key points. Now, more importantly, you'll find it easier to spot what you don't need to put in there as well, and as you're going along, you can decide what to put in and what, and what not. So some of the pres- best presentations, they can feel like a genuine conversation.
They've got that warmth, humor, and moments of spontaneity, and maybe you've seen people present like that, and you're thinking, "I really wish that was me. I really wish that I could be that relaxed." Well, I tell you, when you're clear and confident in what you're saying, you will be more relaxed, and you'll f- be less likely to ramble as well. I've learned that in my own work.
I'm speaking from experience. I'm naturally a really conversational person, and I like responding to people in the room when they ask me questions and following where the energy goes. That's definitely one of my strengths. But I also know that it can be a weakness as well because I can get distracted and, and, and go off on a tangent.
So we have to be really clear on where we're heading. Otherwise, we could all have a lovely conversation and leave without knowing what we've actually decided, and then we're thinking, "Well, what's the point of spending all that time?" So talking is useful, but knowing where you're going next is better. If rambling is something you struggle with, then please don't think it's evidence that you're not a strong communicator.
It probably just means that you care about getting it right. You care about making sure people understand. You might know your subject really well, so that deciding what to leave out feels difficult. You might also be thinking while you're speaking, particularly when the pressure is on.
And so the answer is for you to be prepared so that you feel really clear before you even speak. Know who you're speaking to, know the point you want to make, and know what you want people to do as a result. Then trust yourself to say it. If you've got a presentation coming up, remember to check out my Leadership Presentation Planner to help you do exactly that.
You'll find it at www.boldmovescoach.co.uk/planner.
It's £29, that's all, and it will really help you to, to go through these three questions before you start thinking about slides, so you can work out what you actually need to say, what you need to leave out, and how to structure your message clearly. So that's all for today, but before I go, I would like you to try something. Before your next meeting or presentation that you have coming up, take a blank piece of paper and write down three sentences. My audience cares most about...
dot, dot, dot. The one thing I need them to remember is dot, dot, dot. And the action I want them to take is dot, dot, dot. And that is just a simple version of what we've discussed today.
Don't overthink it. If you can answer those three questions clearly, the rest of your preparation will be so much easier. S- thanks so much for listening today, and thank you for continuing to come back and spend time with me. I really enjoy it, and I hope there's something in this episode that will make your next presentation feel a little clearer and easier.
If you know somebody who's got a big presentation coming up, or somebody who's ever said, "I know what I mean, but I'm not sure how to get it across," then feel free to share this episode with them. Meanwhile, take care of yourself. I'll be back soon with another episode of Leadership Communication in Action.
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