Speed Kills
As a Manager with less than 2 years of experience at the company, this was the first time Kerri had been invited to present before the Senior Leadership Team. This was a testament to the significance of her idea–a project that would pinpoint exact cost saving opportunities throughout their complex supply chain. Word of her idea spread, and on a random Tuesday she got pinged on Teams to get ready to present in the last 5 minutes of an upcoming SLT meeting. She was elated.
Fast forward and Kerri is in the meeting nervously watching the clock as each preceding conversation drags on. They are way behind schedule, and Kerri’s 5 minutes has become 2. In the moment, Kerri did what many presenters elect to do, she sped up. Kerri covered the why, how, and when of her project proposal in what seemed like 30 seconds. She was a torrent of words and images as she rapidly clicked through her meticulously crafted deck. When she was done, the SLT said “thank you” and the meeting was over.
Kerri isn’t alone (and don’t worry, we’ll reveal Kerri’s fate a bit later on).
Speakers speed up for a number of reasons:
To cram lots of content into a condensed period of time;
To race through material to get to what is perceived as more fruitful discussion;
To save a seemingly disinterested audience from having to listen longer;
To make it stop and end the pain of public speaking.
Regardless of the reason for going quickly, speeding through content is a major presentation faux pas.
Just like on the interstate, Speed Kills.
Speed kills a lot of things necessary for an effective presentation, including:
Audience attention
Because it takes more mental energy to process information coming at hyperdrive, going quickly drives audiences to ‘give up’ and ‘tune out.’ Additionally, the unwritten assumption is that when a presenter races through content, they are subconsciously signaling that the content isn’t that important–it isn’t worthy of thoughtful consideration. The great irony, then, is if you go quickly in an effort to save a disinterested audience, you’re actually making the problem worse.
Effective information transfer
It goes without saying that when you go quickly, even if you have an audience willing to expend the mental energy to keep up, they are going to miss things.
Content reinforcing intonation and gestures
When you race through content you become more monotone and your gestures drop out (because moving at 2x speed makes you feel more like you’re leading a calisthenics routine than delivering a business presentation). Intonation and gestures convey a LOT of information to your audience so when those go by the wayside, you become an even less effective presenter.
The only thing worse than going too fast is telling your audience you’re about to go too fast. How many times have you heard a speaker start with something akin to, “I’ll just quickly cover this information.” What message does that send? Would you race through an important conversation with your mom? Would you speed through critical instructions for your pet sitter? If you were air traffic control walking a passenger through landing a plane, would you fly through the details?
So if speed kills, how can you guard against speed in your next presentation? Here are 4 tips:
1) Start slow
Give your audience a comfortable on-ramp to you and your information. Even if your speed inadvertently builds up over time, you will be starting from a comfortable pace and bringing your audience along with you. As we are fond of saying, “If it feels like you’re talking through molasses, it’s probably perfect for your audience.”
2) Gesture
Our verbal and nonverbal communication is connected. We tell the same story at the same time with our gestures and our voices. And because we typically don’t feel comfortable gesturing in hyperdrive, when we commit to gesturing, it inevitably slows down our rate of speech.
3) Insert “Fire Breaks”
We call deliberate pauses between ideas “firebreaks” because these moments of silence can stop you from raging out of control and going too fast. The silence let’s everything settle down and gives you and your audience a place to reset. You can read more about our Firebreak concept and how to implement it here.
4) Be Willing to Pivot
Kerri had devised the perfect presentation. She spent hours building and refining it. It told the perfect story. Well, it told the perfect story if she had 5 minutes. But she didn’t have 5 minutes, she had 2. In an ideal world, she would have instantly adjusted what she elected to tell her audience. She would have pivoted to the highlights.
Rich Jennings, the President of Comcast’s West Division, has a rule. We’ve dubbed it “Rich’s Rule” and it says that a speaker should actively prepare to deliver a presentation in half the time allotted. If you expect to speak 10 minutes, envision what a 5-minute version looks like; if it’s a 5 minute update, what are the highlights you’d cover in 2 minutes? Giving yourself permission to pivot, and devoting a little thought to what that pivot would look like, allows you to pare down your content instead of speeding up to cover everything.
Want to know what happened to Kerri and her cost-saving idea? Turns out, it was all a pre-presentation nightmare. She woke up the morning of the presentation in a cold sweat, pondered how she’d pivot if she got less time while she was sitting for breakfast, and aced a 3-minute presentation later that day. Today, you’ll find Kerri on LinkedIn with “Director” in her title.