Public speaking: how many options should you present to support a decision?

A presentation to a committee can describe a proposal accurately without making the decision any easier. For SHR — Swiss Human Resources’ “Public Speaking & impact” programme, the management question is specific: should speakers reduce the number of options they present orally to facilitate an informed decision?

What the literature establishes

Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper (2000, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed across several experimental settings that extensive choice could attract greater interest while subsequently reducing engagement in choosing or satisfaction. Their experiments involved consumer products and a university assignment, among other settings, rather than presentations to executive committees. They establish an important possibility: attracting interest in a range of options and enabling a choice are not necessarily the same thing.

A second study that changes the interpretation

Benjamin Scheibehenne, Rainer Greifeneder and Peter Todd (2010, Journal of Consumer Research) re-examined choice overload in a meta-analysis. The average effect was virtually zero, with substantial variation across studies. This does not mean that overload never occurs, but that it does not systematically follow from the number of options alone.

The premature conclusion

A rule prescribing just three options therefore does not follow from these studies. Shortening a list may make comparison easier, but it may also remove a relevant solution or conceal a genuine disagreement over criteria. The speaker’s task is to make the trade-offs explicit rather than confuse a quick decision with a well-founded one. (our executive and employee training programmes)

What the evidence cannot prescribe

These studies do not directly test professional presentations in Sion, where responsibilities, knowledge and the consequences of decisions differ from experimental settings. They establish neither an optimal number of scenarios nor an ideal amount of time for presenting them. One common practice therefore deserves scrutiny: treating a committee’s immediate approval as sufficient evidence of presentation quality.

A practical check in Sion

In a “Public Speaking & impact” workshop in Sion, SHR could use a simulated case in hydropower, healthcare, winegrowing or alpine tourism, randomly assigning participants to two presentation versions: all options from the outset, or an explicitly justified shortlist with the remaining alternatives available in an appendix. With equal presentation time and identical comparison criteria, each participant would independently record their choice, the decisive criterion and an accepted trade-off. The primary measure would be the proportion of responses correctly identifying both a relevant criterion and an actual trade-off, assessed against a rubric established before the exercise; decision time would be recorded separately. This local test would not yield a universal rule, but could establish whether shortlisting supports understanding rather than mere agreement. To go further: explore the Public Speaking & Impact training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

In pictures: Public Speaking & Impact in Sion

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