Partner Article

How long do you last?

There are times when lasting a long time is a good thing. There are times when it isn’t. Making presentations is one of the latter.

No one ever made themselves unpopular with their audience by finishing early - although you might give an event organiser grey hairs if they’re assuming that they don’t need to get coffee ready for another 10 minutes and you start to wrap up your presentation! Most of us aren’t in that situation, of course, so we’ve got some flexibility about how long our presentations last.

So how long do you need to stand at the front? Well, as you’d expect, that rather depends on what you’ve got to say - but remember a few key points and you’ll be fine: typically an audience can/will

• concentrate for no more than 20 minutes without a break or a change
• cope with no more than three ‘big ideas’ in one presentation
• forget everything (rather than just the ‘excess’) if you try and do too much

With that in mind, how much of your presentations can you (or rather should you!) cut out?

The hardest part of presenting, if you’re on top of your topic, is not figuring out what to say, but rather it lies in figuring out what to leave out - give your audience too much and you’ll end up with them taking none of it in. Less, as they say, is more.

As always: questions and comments at sme@curved-vision.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .