InVisibleLight

Stop With the “Thank You’s” Already!

15th April, 2010 - Posted by janebeard - No Comments

Your mother was wrong: You don’t always have to say “thank you.”

“Thank you for your attention.”

“Thank you for taking time out of your day to be here with us.”

How many presentations have you heard begin and end with, ”thank you”? How often have you actually felt thanked?

From the audience perspective, it’s not like we have a choice to attend most presentations. It’s part of our job. We have to be there. Whether we travel across the hall or across the country to get there, someone wants us to be there, so we are.

So skip the opening “thank you” – starting with the one to the person who just introduced you. Start where you’d start once you get all that gratuitous politeness out of the way (and it is gratuitous). Don’t waste the most powerful part of any presentation with an empty sentiment.

And if you are going to say “thank you” at the end of the presentation, we say this: mean it or skip it.

Most of the time, the “Thank you” is so perfunctory that we know what the speaker really means: “Thank goodness I got out of here without a major screw up.” “Thank God I didn’t get any impossible questions.” “Thank you for not walking out while I was talking.”

There are two ways to avoid saying an empty “thank you” as you close your talk.

First. Find a way to close with words for a final message, relevant to your topic: “When you use these ideas, you’ll be able to reduce your carbon foot print in the office. And that’s good for all of us.” If you intend that to be your close, we in the audience will know you’re done. Sometimes, even just thinking, “The end” or “thank you” in that classic “I’m-done-speaking-now-you-can-clap” way will help us feel that you are done.

If you actually do speak, “thank you,” MEAN IT! Actually send us your gratitude for being engaged, or for the tacit promise of using your ideas when we go back to work. So thank us for putting (insert your Big Idea here) into action, for example.

Thank you for no more gratuitous “thank you’s.”