Expectations can be weighty. Many who are called upon to make presentations believe it’s important to be seen as someone who’s thorough – showing all and sundry a mastery of the topics at hand.

“I simply have to cover every possibility”, exclaimed one participant at a recent seminar. “In my job, I deal with so many things…and they’ll expect to speak about them all.”

Was he right? Does that sound reasonable to you?

Maybe?

It’s certainly easy to see why one might hold this view. And yet the answer has to be a decided ‘no

Don’t set your audience up to miss the point

If you make a speech that is chock full of different, albeit important messages – chances are that your audience will forget most of them by the time you stop talking.

But surely more is better? What about the old ‘if you throw more muck at the wall, more will stick’ argument?

When making speeches, nothing could be further from the truth.

Every extra message you share gives your audience more they have to remember. And truth be told, we’re not programmed to recall as much as you may think from speeches we hear. Remembering stuff can be hard work.

Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a little test you might like you to try (and it’s best if you grab a pen and a blank sheet of paper to do this).

I’d like you to cast your mind back to the last time you heard someone give a talk.

Now think hard about whatever he or she said and write down every single point you remember. As you do this, please don’t peak at any slides you might have received!

What do your results look like? Do you have a short (or even blank) list by any chance?

Why less is more when speaking in public

If your answer is yes (and in most cases it will be)…what’s going on?

How can it be that you may have listened to a  speaker for a good chunk of time and yet struggle to remember much of what was said to you?

It’s because the speaker – almost assuredly unwittingly – gave you a job to do that few of us can accomplish. He or she was asking to remember too many things.

In an era of information overload, most of us struggle to grasp and retain more than a few chunks of information at any given time. And if more comes your way – guess what happens? Yep, you run the risk of messages you wanted people to retain being filtered away or ignored altogether.

And the moral?

If you want to be memorable speaker – don’t think ‘the more the merrier’ when it comes to messages shared…

…Think ‘few and well’.  And be assured, this is one form or communication where ‘Less really is More’

Over to you

Who is the most memorable speaker you’ve ever seen? And what was it about his or her messages or delivery that caused you to feel that way?