Public speaking in Vevey: can a clear proposal seem too easy to implement?
In SHR — Swiss Human Resources’ “Public Speaking & impact” programme, clarity deserves to be distinguished from simplifying commitments. The managerial question is specific: how can a recommendation be made understandable without leading the committee to underestimate the effort required to implement it?
What the literature establishes
Daniel M. Oppenheimer (2006, Applied Cognitive Psychology) shows, in experiments involving written texts, that unnecessarily complex vocabulary can reduce the intelligence attributed to the author. Processing difficulty contributes to this effect: elaborate words are therefore not evidence of expertise in the reader’s eyes. For professional presentations, these findings invite scrutiny of unnecessary complexity, without directly establishing what happens in spoken communication.
When an easy message makes the task seem easy
Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz (2008, Psychological Science) show that the typographical readability of instructions influences anticipated effort and motivation to perform the activity described. Difficulty reading can thus be attributed to the task itself. This mechanism suggests a reason for caution in project presentations: the ease with which a proposal is processed could be mistaken for ease of implementation.
The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that a clear presentation necessarily misleads its audience, or that speech should be made harder to follow to convey the complexity of the work. These studies support neither conclusion. The useful distinction is between removing barriers in the wording and removing project constraints: plain language can still make dependencies, resources and conditions for success explicit. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
The cited studies concern texts and written instructions, not investment decisions made after an oral presentation in a company. They do not establish that a more fluent presentation causes people to underestimate a project’s actual costs. The committee’s expertise, its opportunities to ask questions and the documents available make it necessary to test this hypothesis locally rather than turn it into a communication rule.
A practical check in Vevey
In Vevey, with its context of global food businesses, group headquarters and Riviera SMEs, a programme exercise could compare two versions of the same recommendation: one using the usual internal terminology, the other rephrased in plain language, with identical content and constraints. Allocate participants to the versions, then individually collect the constraints they can recall and their estimated implementation effort before any discussion. Compare the proportion of constraints correctly recalled using a scoring guide prepared in advance, alongside the difference between the two groups’ effort estimates. If the clear version improves recall while reducing anticipated effort, that would be a signal to investigate, not proof that the audience is mistaken. To go further: explore the Public Speaking & Impact training in Vevey in the canton of Vaud, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Public Speaking & Impact in Vevey
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