Time to be honest about time...

"Time, he's waiting in the wings

He speaks of senseless things

His script is you and me, boy…"

So sang David Bowie in Time (an incredible, bonkers song from his Aladdin Sane album that gets a little bit NSFW in the following stanza…).

Channelling my inner Bowie, I’d like to focus on Time too - but with less swearing.

If you recall, last time round we touched upon the probably the biggest challenge facing any presenter - ‘The Curse of Knowledge.’? ?

It’s a curse that makes it difficult to translate your knowledge of the subject matter into a piece of content which your audience – who will almost always know less than you do about it – will easily understand.?

If they are struggling to understand, they are unlikely to be listening quite as attentively.?

If they are struggling to understand, they are unlikely to keep up with the story you are trying to tell.

If they are struggling to understand, they are unlikely to realise why they should care.

Which is where Time comes in.

Along with ‘who are you presenting to?’, the first question I ask any of my clients is ‘how long are you speaking for?’? It’s a crucial question because it allows us to have a very useful conversation early on in the process, a conversation which starts to address the curse of knowledge.

The conversation goes something like this:

Reuben:? “How long are you speaking for?”

Reuben’s lovely client:? “About 15-20 minutes.”

Reuben:? “What do you think you can achieve in 15 minutes?”

Reuben’s lovely client: ?“Hmmmm.? 15 minutes you say?? Let me think…”

You’ll note that I don’t ask “how much content do you have?” ?because at this stage it’s not about how much they have to say.? At this stage it’s simply about being realistic about what success looks like.

And that is really useful in starting to address the curse of knowledge because the simple fact is that most presenters (and most presentations) try and do too much in the time they have.

Loads of presentations I see want to introduce the audience to something new, explain how it came about, who did what and when, show off some of the cool stuff it does, share how it does other stuff waaaaay better than something they are already using, show how to get the best out of it, share what other folks are doing with it, talk about what the future might hold for it and, right at the end, often start talking about next steps.

It’s ‘The Curse of Knowledge’ writ large.? ‘I know all of this so let me tell you all of this…’

Basically, it is attempting the impossible.? You are trying to change the audience’s mindset, change their behaviour and then help them build best practise all in one go.? And you also want them to keep in touch afterwards.

That’s why the “what do you want to achieve?” conversation is so valuable at the start of the presentation process.

Be honest with the answer.? In the time you have with the audience you are in front of, what can you really hope to achieve that will be useful for both the audience and yourself.

I believe that more often than not it is simply about piquing interest.? If you do that – at scale – you’ve succeeded.? Be happy that changing your audience’s mindset is enough for today.? Save the behaviour change / best-practise for a follow up session.? Or a different format entirely.

And of course, if you are just helping them change their minds about something, they probably don’t need to know everything that you know.

Now we’re starting to address ‘The Curse of Knowledge...'

As always, any further thoughts on this subject, and of course if you have anything you'd specifically like me to focus on in future, just pop it in the comments or email me at [email protected]

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