Is the time right?

Finally, be certain that your topic—whether chosen or assigned— can be managed within the time allotted. If you're asked to speak for fifteen or twenty minutes on a subject that cries out for thirty minutes, you should decline the invitation, ask for more time, or suggest an alternate topic.

Once in a while, the opposite situation might arise. You may be allotted more time than you can reasonably fill with the assigned topic, and this situation should also raise a red flag. Trying to expand thirty minutes worth of material to fill forty-five minutes is like trying to write a thousand-word article on a subject that could easily be covered with five hundred or six hundred words. The product, whether it's an article or a speech, will be flat, tedious, and boring.

I conduct one-day business-writing seminars for groups of nine or ten people. I'm sometimes invited to conduct a mini-seminar, usually an hour or an hour and a half for a larger group. Although I have plenty of prepared material to fill that much time, I would not want to lecture for an hour and a half because I know that holding the attention of an audience for more than about forty-five minutes is difficult, if not impossible. To solve the problem, I pass out writing and editing exercises for the audience to complete and discuss. This breaks up the time into smaller segments and allows members of the audience to be participants in the program. Audience participation is not always practical, but when it is, it can be a powerful tool for a speaker.

I once accepted an invitation to talk on "Essential Elements of a Community Relations Program." I had no problem with the subject. I know it well, and I thought I could cover it nicely in twenty minutes and allow ten minutes for a question-and-answer session. It never occurred to me that I would have more than thirty minutes, but when I saw the printed program, which the chairman mailed to me just a few days before the event, I was astounded to learn that I was expected to hold forth for one full hour. Because the program was already set and in print, there was no graceful way to correct the problem.

The chairman used bad judgment in not asking me how much time I needed, but I used worse judgment in not asking how much time I would have.