Ask HN: How can I learn to "talk a lot and say nothing"?

Have you tried looking at your problem from different standpoints and with different ways of thinking? Have you tried to understand the ways in which your listeners are thinking about things?

Find someone with unmedicated ADHD or autism. They will talk, forget why they were talking in the first place, and evolve what could have been a conversation into an exercise of one-way self-gratification.

Good managers don’t talk to hear the sound of their own voice. Good managers talk because they have something worth hearing. Worth, not to themselves, but to the other person. That requires high empathy and low sympathy. Be direct, even if brutal.

> I've been called "cold" in professional settings.

Talking a lot and saying nothing will make you insufferable. Better cold than insufferable.

You could learn to say some simple “grease the wheel” type of expressions. But that is going to cone across as feigned.

People prefer genuine, so perhaps you could just try and be polite and turn the cold into warm.

founder here who used to feel like this, i would say as few words as possible as a defense against being misunderstood. And i still do that as a founder because when it comes to dealing with investors or customers or employees, high bandwidth communication is a superpower. we’re all distracted, nobody is paying attention! so the message has to be super clear to be effective.

here, i suspect the actual issue “coldness” is lack of soft skills and empathy which is orthogonal to efficiency and effectiveness. Politicians and managers understand their audience very well as well as their psychology. There are hundreds of self help books about communication, try walking into an irl book store and browsing the self help section. Fastest path from zero to one might be a therapist (they do zoom now).

Why would you want to mold yourself into corporate environment that praises management-style over efficiency? Talking lot and saying nothing is often used for keeping certain facade or expectation of work or efficiency in corporate world.

But if you are interested in becoming a leader to inspire people through talks, I suggest reading other people's speeches and letter like what Albert Camus or Einstein wrote to convey information to audiences, not their books but letters and speeches to understand how they effectively conveyed information.

In the corporate world, the tendency to "talk a lot and say little" is used to maintain appearances and complicate matters. You should not mold yourself to that. But if you want to become an inspiring talker,

1. find something you genuinely care about. 2. study speeches by people who are passionate about their subjects. 3. refine and iterate on your speeches. 4. practice delivering your speech to others, observe their responses, and refine it until they also start to care about what you care about.

My personal opinion is don't read self help books, those are always static, often never matches one individual's true experience since it is taken from someone else's.

I used to have similar problems. At the end of the day it comes down to a lack of empathy and training, which you must develop.

Terse communication is generally a bad thing, because ANY part of it that's misunderstood will distort or even destroy the message you intended. You need to build some redundancy into your message so that people can figure out what you intended. The "empathy" part comes down to understanding and anticipating where and when people will misunderstand (as opposed to saying "I was 100% clear and concise! How could they possibly have misunderstood!?"). You'd be surprised at the number of ways you're being misunderstood every single day. They don't have the exact same knowledge as you, so they can't make the same assumptions as you do in your terse messaging (or they have a very different assumption set - right or wrong), and thus receive a completely different message.

And they're going to have a different way of thinking compared to you (that's to be expected - they're different people). So you need to find common ground.

Your job is to HELP them understand.

Start by getting a few books on business communication. They lay out a lot of ground rules for how to communicate effectively, how to control for tone, how to speak to your audience (use of jargon, etc) and other gems. Another one is the old cliché "How to win friends and influence people". Yes, that book is FULL of gold.

When you're getting frustrated talking to someone, it's time to take a step back and ask yourself what you're missing - maybe try another approach to reach that common ground.

> I want to get good at "management-style speaking" or “talking a lot and saying little”

Well first of all, stop with the backhanded insults.

Next, figure out what you’re actually trying to achieve because it’s not “talking a lot and saying little.”

Do you just want to make more money? Have more power? What’s your goal here?

Just watch CXO interviews. Eventually you will find some good examples.

Or watch "Yes Ministers".

Or watch any politicians answering difficult questions.

Watch Seinfeld and write down the lines. Every episode is filled with a lot of “talking about nothing.”

for example when explaining technical topics: start by establishing common understanding of a problem boiled down to a level all engaged in conversation can understand.

add by building on the established foundation, go into more technical detail, make sure people can follow by repeating the concepts from different angles, pause and ask questions to gauge whether people are still following your chain of thought,

and the end of your monologue give space for follow up questions, repeat what you have already said if necessary. assure everybody that rewriting the codebase is only 1 story point and you and your team are working hard on it as a priority. ensure everyone you'll keep then in a loop and schedule another meeting two weeks from now where you will repeat exactly what you have said with more assurances. rinse and repeat.

> It's like they have a built-in LLM

and an LLM can tell you how to do it

Strategies:

    Practice Storytelling:
        Incorporate anecdotes, metaphors, and analogies into your conversations. This makes your communication more engaging and less direct.
        Example: Instead of saying "We need to increase our sales," you could say, "Imagine our company as a ship; to stay afloat, we need to navigate towards higher sales."

    Use Fillers and Connectors:
        Use phrases like "as you know," "in other words," "basically," and "to put it simply." These help to extend your speech without necessarily adding new information.
        Example: "As you know, our goal is to improve efficiency. Basically, this means we'll need to streamline our processes."

    Focus on Emotional Appeal:
        Use words that evoke emotions rather than just conveying facts. Express enthusiasm, concern, optimism, or caution depending on the context.
        Example: "I'm really excited about this new project because it has the potential to revolutionize our approach."

    Reiterate and Rephrase:
        Repeat key points in different ways to emphasize your message without adding new content.
        Example: "The main objective is to boost productivity. In other words, we need to find ways to work smarter, not harder."

    Ask Rhetorical Questions:
        Pose questions that don't necessarily need answers but keep the audience engaged and thinking.
        Example: "What does this mean for us? It means we have an opportunity to grow."

Resources:

    Books:
        "Talk Like TED" by Carmine Gallo: This book offers insights into how to present ideas effectively and engage audiences, inspired by TED Talks.

        "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie: Although more focused on interpersonal skills, this classic book provides valuable advice on persuasive communication.

I learned to stretch my speaking and writing out in college. We would have to write 25 page papers on topics I think would normally take 1-2 pages. This forced me to develop the skill of being more verbose in my writing, which over time translated into speech as well. It’s more about providing a narrative, rather than just hitting the bullet points.

This is a blessing and a curse. While it can make certain communications sound better to the right audience, sometimes an email will end up being so long that people won’t read it. Then a new challenge arises. How do I structure my writing, or speech, so people can know at a glance if it applies to them, while also providing the full context for those who need it. I’ve experimented with different options over the years, but don’t think I’ve really nailed it yet.

While you don’t want to be seen as “cold”, I don’t know that going full “management-speak”, talking a lot and saying nothing, is the right goal. I work with many of those people, and we have side-chats where people complain about these jokers monopolizing the whole call, providing 0 value, and leaving no space for people that have important and relevant information to add.

I think the better goal is to find ways to warm up your current communication style, rather than completely swapping it out for one that is also very problematic. Part of this is simply practice. I got much more comfortable in meetings and on calls when I was doing them all the time. It also really helped when a lot of those meetings were about things I really cared about and I was the domain expert. Being the expert on the phone helped me to be more comfortable and confident in what I was saying, and I could speak from a position of technical authority. When I’m less confident about a topic, I’m much more reserved and shy when talking about it. The people who loudly and confidently talk at length about stuff they clearly don’t know anything about are a huge pet peeve of mine. They might sound good to the uninformed, but they are toxic to an organization, as they spread vast amounts of misinformation. They are ignorant, but people trust them due to the confidence they speak with. This is a dangerous combination that should be avoided at all costs, imo.

I never read the whole thing, but I assume the book, How To Win Friends and Influence People, would be one that could help. It’s often recommended in scenarios like this. Just don’t go overboard with the “use people’s names” thing. Some people over do it, and it because awkward and obvious they just read some book that told them to do that.

Honestly to me it sounds like you should read the book “how to win friends and influence people”, if you haven’t already. I suspect a lot of the feedback you are getting is not because you only talk about technical topics but because you never make small talk or talk to people about themselves. Just a guess I obviously don’t know, I found that book very useful.

Another useful thing for me is to not just talk about technical aspects but to talk about a “Vision” as in a long term easy to understand end goal that this technical thing is building towards. On YouTube there is a channel called healthy gamergg, I recommend you watch his video on “charisma”

Being like Jordan Peterson is not going to make you a more eligible management candidate.

If you want to overcome introversion and develop peoples' skills, it is not enough to "talk a lot and say nothing". You need to feel comfortable and confident, adapt to the speaking style of others, react to their communication cues, etc. Read a lot about body language, listen to how other people speak, and start trying to imitate some phrases and topics. Besides, learn a bit about different topics you would usually not speak about, you don't need to know a lot to be able to keep a small conversation about sports, cars, gardening or literature. And if you include those topics in your small chat, you will eventually learn more. Have small chats with the janitor, the store cashier, the taxi driver, etc. Smile and be kind, people will generally be kind to you as well. There are advanced courses on oratory, public speaking and the like, but you probably need to feel confident with the basics first.

I think you misunderstand what management is and what those people do.

They talk a lot because they want everyone to understand and be on the same page. It's very hard to align human beings. Like extremely hard. Things get misunderstood, people drop balls left and right, they go on side quests, etc… If you are managing people your main tool is communication.

Be good at communication. You are misunderstanding the main skill you are trying to learn.

> Im used to communicating as effectively as possible, using as few words as possible, but I understand this makes me less attractive as "management material" in a corporate world.

I can assure that whatever is happening, your problem isn't that you communicate effectively. No one is saying behind your back "wow that guy communicates effectively, we hate that".

I can't know why people think you're not management material, but if I had to guess I'd say perhaps it's related to your belief that being good at management involves talking a lot and saying nothing. Ironically the opposite is true - one element of being good at managing people is communicating effectively.

My conversational skills really increased by going to lunch with people every single day instead of staying in my cubicle over lunch, working or watching YouTube. I'm very thankful to my boss who made this part of our group's culture.

Please don’t!

Weve had enough of such useless talks and people all over the place - from taxi drivers to presidents.

I’m begging you - enjoy your style as it is, it has enormous strength.

Reconsider. Learn to listen instead. Learn to control your body language so you radiate confidence. That's powerful stuff.

Read "How to Win Friends and Influence People"

As much as life might be simpler if people were just apis that we could supply information to and get a logical response back from, that isn't how we work (most people, anyway).

I disagree with your take on management speak, etc..

To answer your question, to improve your communication skills, join your local Toastmaster, and combine with several leadership/personal development courses/books.

To get better at small talk, try to engage in more casual conversations with your friends about various topics outside of work. This practice can help you become more comfortable and natural in different social settings. Additionally, I recommend reading “The Fine Art of Small Talk: How to Start a Conversation, Keep It Going, Build Networking Skills—and Leave a Positive Impression!” by Debra Fine. This book offers practical advice on how to start and sustain engaging conversations, which can be very helpful in improving your talk skills.

“talk a lot and saying little” is a horrible place to start. Acting like you're superior to people who don't speak like a computer is not a good way to endear yourself to neurotypical people.

It’s actually pretty simple:

1. Identify the most important parts of the message you want to convey.

2. Imagine they’re under NDA and you can’t disclose them publicly.

3. Think about generic placeholders for the parts you can’t disclose.

4. Now say what you wanted while replacing confidential stuff with the placeholders.

—-

That being said, don't try to imitate managers, instead try to put yourself in the shoes of the person you are talking to and talk to them using language, concepts and terms that they will understand.