Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership.

An ongoing series of executive coaching tips

designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.

I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking

about the concern I talk too fast. At the beginning of my presentation skills coaching course, I ask participants to identify two presentation behaviors.

One they think they do well and one they think they do poorly.

On the needs improvement side, people frequently list I talk too fast.

My contention is it's not physically possible to talk faster than our brains can compute.

Here are some statistics that support my point.

On average, American speakers talk at a rate of about 150 to 160 words per minute. Of course, New Yorkers put us all to shame on this scale, but in general

that number 150 words per minute has become standard. For example, that's the pace that's

recommended for people who record books on tape.

Our ears are comfortable with that rate.

But researchers have proven that adults can fully comprehend what they hear at a rate of 300

words per minute.

That's twice the average rate.

Are you old enough to remember John Machida?

He's the actor who made a series of Deadpan

fast-talking ads for FedEx in the 1980s. The Guinness Book of World Records

clocked him at a mind-boggling 586 words per minute. And the fun of those

commercials was that we could understand him at that rate. So is it

really possible for people to talk too fast? I don't think so. But do we hear some

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