Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes - The Goodman ...

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Building Better Presentations
How to Take Your Audience from A to B – cont’d
There may also be occasions when you are allocated more time than you feel is necessary
to adequately cover your subject. Under those circumstances, do not feel obliged to fill the
time. “If [session organizers] ask for more than 1½ or two hours,” says Peg Neuhauser,
“I start asking why. I will argue with a long length – even though I can charge more
– because it is just as important that everybody walk away happy.” (In this vein, it is worth
noting that of the 2,501 public interest professionals who completed our survey, not one
complained about a presentation being too short.)
When the Time for the Presentation is Flexible
If the length is up to you, decide how long it will take to (a) cover your material, (b) engage
your audience in learning exercises, and (c) send them off ready to act on what they have
just learned or to employ the skill they have just acquired. When Gerry Tabio teaches
creative problem solving, for example, he insists on a minimum of four hours. When I
work with larger organizations (i.e., more than 100 staff members) on storytelling, I often
request an entire day for the workshop.
Be advised, however, that when you plan a session of several hours, you have to break up
the time. “I use roughly an hour as people’s butt-in-one-place limit,” says Chuck Loring,
who speaks frequently on nonprofit governance. Kristen Grimm of Spitfire Strategies
observes an even tighter schedule: “I don’t talk for longer than 20 minutes ever, about
anything. At that point, you get brain drift, and people need a break of some sort. I
think of it as a cup you have filled, and people need to empty that cup before you can
put more in.”
A 1978 study of medical students’ attention spans during one-hour lectures confirms
Grimm’s observation on “brain drift.” The study, which was reported in The Psychology of
Teaching Methods (University of Chicago Press, © 1976), tested over 1,300 students after
they had attended 12 different lectures. By asking questions related to material covered
at different times in each lecture, the study was able to determine how the students’
attention rose and fell over the course of an hour. The conclusion: Attention rose steadily
over the first 5–10 minutes, peaked around 15–20 minutes, and dropped sharply after
that, never regaining the higher levels of those first few minutes.
In short: When the length is up to you, take as many hours as you need. But always
remember that within any given hour, the audience has needs, too. For the remainder
of this chapter, we will focus on the construction of a single hour, which will serve you
equally well whether that hour represents your entire presentation or just one segment
within a longer workshop.