When I think about the times something actually landed, a pitch, a hard call, a workshop, the move was never the delivery. It was leading with listening. Calibrate first, then synthesize, then communicate. The order matters. Most people start at communicate.
And when you do get to communicating, it works best from a position of humility and curiosity and questions, trying to get deeper rather than trying to be right. Everything is really a probing exercise. You’re feeling for where the other person is before you decide what to say.
Half-joking, but I mean it: everything is therapy. The good version of any conversation is the one where you spent most of the time understanding before you spent any of it being understood.
Before you try to be understood, how much do you actually calibrate to the person in front of you?