Understanding your audience is essential to successful business presentations. Especially if you are presenting to audiences with short attention spans. Digital natives are regarded as having less patience for (traditional) presentations, so what can you do to adapt yourself to your audience?
Well a clue lies in a school in England whose headmaster claim that all teenagers need a lie-in and that classes should start at 11am. The claim is based on the way the teenage body clock is functioning which results in students falling asleep in class. In tests so far memory has improved and received (not surprisingly) good response from the students.
While you may not be faced with a teenage audience, business audiences today are just as distracted and likely to tune out if you cannot capture their attention. If it’s within your control think about the timing of your presentation. Just after lunch most people are sluggish and likely to drift off. Later in the afternoon people’s brains become tired and attention spans drop off. Mid to late mornings usually work well for most audiences. Also, be aware of spacing your content so that you don’t overload your audience with information. Add breaks every 10 minutes or so to allow your message to digest and for a different format of presenting like a video, a story or an activity.
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