TJ Walker answers a viewer's question about a 45-minute speech that runs only 20 minutes. He recommends practicing with a timer, adding more stories and case studies to your main points, asking the audience questions, and using pauses and movement onstage. Walker notes that shorter talks can still work if they hit your objectives.
Chapters
Lee writes in with the following question. TJ what do you do when your speech is shorter than you thought? For example, it's a 45 minute speech I'm supposed to give, but it only takes 20 minutes. So you realize you have to push it longer or you will be embarrassed. And you don't realize this until the day of the speech. Well, Lee, a couple of things. First of all, I guess I'm glad that you realized it because before the speech actually happened, because too many people, the first time they're stating their speech out loud is in front of the live audience. So at that point it's almost too late because they look at their watch and there's another 20 minutes left and they got nothing. That feels awkward. So from the description of how you wrote this, it sounds like you practiced it once. That's great. And timed it so that's fantastic. This gives you a sense to figure out where you can add. I would ask you to go back to your fundamental mission here and ask yourself, what is it you want the audience to do? Presumably you did that in preparing your 20 minute speech. Think of the ideas, the main messages, and then I wouldn't necessarily add new messages, but I would add additional stories to flesh out your messages. So sometimes if I'm giving a speech and I may be told, hey, we've got an extra half an hour, I'm not going to cover more topics when it comes to public speaking, but I'll give more examples and case studies of clients who were practicing on video and either cried or had some dramatic movement moment, making them realize how important it was to practice their speech on video. So I'll give more case studies, more stories that flesh out a particular point. So it's almost like an accordion. I can stretch it as long as I want. I can Talk and cover five topics for three hours, or I can do it in three minutes if I need, or 60 seconds if I need to. I can stretch contract as much as I want. The other thing is, don't be afraid to use this time, if it's not an audience of a thousand, to ask questions of the audience to engage them more. Also realize that the speech should take more time when you're in front of an audience because you should be walking around more, you should be getting pauses. Plus, there should be opportunities for your audience to ask you questions. So it generally will take longer than if you just read it. Also, the big problem many people have with timing is not that they're too short, it's that they have a PowerPoint deck of 50 pages and they're reading it silently in their mind and it only takes 20 minutes. But then they get up to give the presentation they're having to talk out loud and their 20 minutes is gone and they're not even a third of the way through the slide deck. So that's the far bigger timing issue. The final thing to think of is realize it's one thing if you're a paid speaker at a convention and they have to fill out the slots. But in most business meetings, most board of directors meetings, most business conferences, if you can do what you really need to do in 20 minutes and not 45, you can really communicate the most important ideas and accomplish your objectives. It's okay to be short. I've never once heard someone say in a professional business meeting, I hated the way that speaker spoke in such a compelling, interesting, memorable way, giving us so many useful ideas that are going to help our business. And they let us out of here 20 minutes early. Never heard that criticism from anyone. So good luck, Lee, and hope all of your presentations are not only on time, but are delivered with great impact. I'm TJ Walker. I help people speak more effectively. If you'd like to learn to be a better speaker, go to my website, mediatrainingworldwide. Com, and you can download a couple of my books at absolutely no charge. Plus find information on upcoming workshops, seminars, and live online trainings as well.
