Thank you for your attention

The most overrated speaking advice is to never say “Thank you for your attention!”

It will ruin your talk, the advice goes, because

  • it’s boring (at least not energising)
  • it’s disrespectful to the audience because you can’t be sure they actually paid attention (although great speakers usually can)
  • there are much stronger ways to close your talk (which there are)

The advice is (mostly) valid. It makes for some great anecdotes about bad talks everyone can relate to.

And it has close to zero effect.

I have yet to see any talk where that closing line makes or breaks the talk.

If it does break your talk, you almost certainly have much bigger problems than that line.

Ditch that line. But also, don’t waste your time with the unimportant stuff.

Get Daily Insights on The Art of Communicating for Free

Check out my new book
The PATH to Strategic Impact

Read More

Less

We often default to adding more details to clarify our points. But did you ever notice how more details sometimes lead to even more confusion?

Read »

I don’t know much

We had this mathematics professor at the University. During a discussion about some topic or another, he would often emphasize that he was not very

Read »

Daily insights on
The Art of Communicating

Find the right words and
make a bigger impact!!
You can opt-out any time but I think you’ll really like what you get. Please see my privacy terms.