If you ever have some good information to share, I’ve learned a key lesson in how to share that information better. Ready? Here it is: less is more. You’ve probably heard that before. I’ve heard it a lot, but I’m just really starting to understand it now.
It’s easy to want to give lots of valuable information. I’m sure that you have lots of good stuff to share. But we need to be aware of our audience and their capacity to integrate and benefit from all that good information.
We could be writing a blog or an article or giving a talk or a presentation. It could be in front of a large audience or just a small team. Whatever the format, we want to make sure the people benefit from the information and that it doesn’t just go over their heads.
So, I went to give a talk a few months ago and I was providing a handout with my talk’s outline. The day before my talk, I finally realized that I was trying to give too much information. On the morning of the event, I was on the phone with my printer, asking him to wait while I re-did the handout to make the talk simpler. The guy who was helping me said, “Yeah, I’ve heard that less is more.” And I thought to myself, “Man, I can’t believe this guy gets it and I’m still struggling with providing too much information.”
After that talk, I realized I should have simplified it even more. I had an overarching message with three points. I really should have made those points more about the main thing. Even now, I continue to improve the information I provide.
Blogging has been a great practice for me to learn to keep on track. I try to keep it to between 300 and 600 words. It’s all about keeping it to one main idea. If you want to get some practice on brevity and focus, try blogging with a similar length constraint. It’s surprising how challenging it is.
We started doing an introductory seminar and we’re making it even better. You may have guessed that we are removing some content. It’s all good–even great–stuff. But if people are struggling to integrate it all in, we aren’t really serving them as well as we could. So we are teaching less and helping people integrate it more. Actually, it leads to a more powerful and life-transforming experience.
Keep these things in mind next time you have some information to deliver. What do you really want the audience to know? How can you help them to get it better?
And one last tip, if you ever do PowerPoint presentations, be extra careful of giving too much information. I know a woman who teaches on “how to not kill people with too many PowerPoint bullets.” A slide presentation should support rather than drive the information.
If you present information to people in any capacity at all, remember that the point is for them to be able to take it in, integrate it and use it. So do that as effectively as you can.
