Delighted that you found this article useful.

Olivia

I’ve been told I tend to waffle a lot too. I spoke to my family and friends who said they’ve honestly never noticed it, but in a business environment, I guess its different. Often I don’t realize I’m doing it out of panic and my notes become nonsense and unreadable.

Cutting to the point was another related issue, so I think preparation and knowing the order in which you bring up topics is a key issue. The only time this becomes a challenge is during detailed questioning, which is often followed by the panic.

Hopefully using your post will give me a head start in controlling all of this. Thank you for the great post!

And useful comment – as always!

I agree with you that there is also this type of waffling – which needs a different solution to what I’ve suggested above. I’ve actually just come across it with two recent course participants. The defining characteristic was they spoke in immensely long sentences. What I found useful was to tell them to speak in shorter sentences or to “stop more often”. This enabled them to monitor themselves better and to stop at the point where they had said enough rather than rambling enough.

Olivia

The difficulty I’ve seen is when presenters don’t *realise* they are waffling. I’ve seen presenters think they delivered their content well, when in fact they’ve panic-spoken over a point or two and ended up waffling as they’ve tried to overcome their nerves (or forgetfulness).

The easiest way to identify this issue is timing. Of course, it can be difficult to identify how long a presentation should be, but asking a friend to time you on each slide or point can help the presenter to recognise when he or she has been speaking about a specific item for too long.

At any rate, this is the practice I got into when rehearsing!