When presenting, cut it in half.
You’re given 45 minutes to present — say, to speak at a lunch meeting. Take no more than 20. (You’ll probably expand to 25 anyway, if you’re like most speakers.) Then say
“Now, where have I gone astray?”
or
“What do you think?”
or
“There’s more I could say on this, and I’ll be happy to answer questions, but what I really want to know is what’s on your mind.”
(Not “your minds” — it’s not about the group. Say “your mind” with conviction, and any member of the audience will take it personally.)
The world is full of speakers, even funny ones and ones with smart things to say, who end up a presentation with something like, “Well, I wanted to take some questions, but I had so much material that I see we’ve run out of time.” These folks — unless they’re so legendary that the audience would sit there for hours (think Katherine Hepburn, or John Wooden, or the Dalai Lama) — make the mistake that the members of the audience are there for the speaker rather than for themselves.
So cut it in half, and give what’s left to the audience. Give it wholeheartedly.
Note that this isn’t a shortcut when it comes to preparation. You’d better work extra hard to make sure you put an hour’s worth of value into your half-hour of time, and you’d better be ready to talk about whatever comes up during the discussion, even if that means saying, “I don’t know” and then moderating an impromptu roving panel among members of the audience who know more about a given facet of the topic than you do.
Have you ever tried this? Are you willing to?
~
Photo by Bruce Tuten.
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I love this — particularly the alternative questions (alternative to the standard one: are there any questions?).
I think a lot of the audiences I’ve been part of had a lot more to ask and kick around than they were given the opportunity for. But, obviously, the presentation itself also shapes the outcome.
Right, Elaine. Asking “Are there any questions?” — especially when you’ve only left five minutes at the end of an hour — means you think (a) there might not be any questions, and (b) that’s okay.
I recommend the approach I do precisely because it upsets those expectations. This approach can change the entire way the speaker composes the presentation.