Presentation skills ~ tellingpeople

in a five minute presentation? Or a three minute…? Or a 30 second elevator pitch?

That’s one of my pet hate questions that seems to crop up quite often in various fora: I even get asked this on our training days by people who I’d have thought would have known better!

Asking for a time-limited presentations winds me up - and yet it’s something that seems to be the staple of many training environments such as Speakers’ Circles, Toastmasters, schools and so on.

It flies in the face of everything I know about presentations: say what you’ve got to say, then stop.

It’s not a hard concept, is it? No, I didn’t think so either. (The tricky part is actually figuring out what you’ve ‘got’ to say, of course, but that’s another issue.) Why pad out a presentation than needs 2 minutes into five? Why try and crap a 10 minute presentation into 6?

Just because that’s how long your slot is? What a rubbish reason.

The content is the king. You decide how much you need to say and then say it: unless there’s an over-riding reason to keep to a specific time (you’ve got only 20 minutes before the next speaker and running late would be rude, for example) the time should be dictated by the content, not the other way around….

Okay… rant over! And yes, I know there are exceptions to that point, but the principle is sound, I think!