Personalizing PowerPoint
By
Michael Landrum
"Vision is the art of seeing the invisible."
- Jonathan Swift
Giving a PowerPoint presentation is like taking a large dog, say
a Great Dane, for a walk. If the speaker is introverted, they’re
hoping that the dog will be the only thing people notice. If the
speaker is an extrovert they hope the Great Dane will add impact.
Either way, what actually happens is that the dog sets the agenda
for the walk, dragging the hapless presenter down the street.
It’s been said that PowerPoint lifts the floor of public speaking
but it lowers the ceiling. Presenters love it, and the worst presenters
love it most of all. The sad fact is the good presenters don’t use
it any better, and they wind up looking merely average. As for the
audiences? Most of them hate it. They groan and roll their eyes,
but they demand it. Polls show that audiences give more credibility
to the speakers with computer-projected slides than to those without.
All those slick, shiny slides give the weakest data, the poorest
argument a professional patina that dazzles and persuades. PowerPoint
holds the business presentations market hostage the way the Yankees
dominate major league baseball.
Why should this be so? One reason is stage fright . . . and the
chief cause of stage fright is lack of preparation. With PowerPoint,
speakers can allay fear in two ways: first, with a large colorful
screen to hide behind; and second, by being forced to prepare on
at least one level. Most PowerPoint presentations are organized
and given a certain polish; they are laid out on a solid track that
the speaker and audience can follow together. With an arsenal that
includes animation, color templates, clip art, font choices, sound,
video, internet access, and unlimited graphics options, even the
most disorganized speakers feel they can deliver at least the basic
information.
So why do audiences often loath these spectacles? Even speakers
who use PowerPoint themselves, cringe when forced to sit through
someone else’s offering. The problem arises when PowerPoint slides
make up the entire presentation: wall-to-wall words, bullet points,
charts and data without end. All of this projected at the same time
a speaker, standing in the dark, reads it to the audience. The presenter’s
entire script is thrown on the wall to admire as though it were
an action film. When PowerPoint becomes a sort of Teleprompter,
projected on a screen and then read aloud to an audience it can
turn a roomful of MBA’s into a lynch mob.
How to fix this problem? Here are seven suggestions:
1. Turn the dang thing off: Push the ‘B’ key at regular intervals,
let the screen go blank and step forward to address the audience
personally. Even better, insert a “buffer” slide – blank, between
each of your few important illustrative slides. Go to your paper
notes instead. Establish contact. Tell them a story. Notice
as you do, the sigh of relief that will issue from your listeners.
2. Trim the content: Three to five strong, valid points are
all most audiences are capable of absorbing in one sitting.
Present the crucial information and cut everything else. Put
the cuttings in a handout, white paper or article, but resist
the impulse to inflict every last iota of information on your
audience.
3. Simplify the language: Get rid of jargon. Written language
tends to use complex, compound words - spoken conversation is
more simple and direct - and much easier to understand. Consider
these events ‘talks’ rather than ‘articles.’ Use repetition
and various ways of illustrating the same point.
4. Give them pictures: Find graphic ways to express the essential
points you need to make. Graphs, drawings, diagrams, photos,
video clips, etc., are visual expressions that work well projected
onto a screen. Words are abstract intellectual expressions that
work best on paper and spoken aloud.
5. Take the time to PRACTICE: Lack of time is the most frequent
excuse for this whole sorry pattern. The exec is too busy, so
she has her assistant create some slides and then all she has
to do is read them off. And if she makes time in her schedule
what does she do with it? She spends it fiddling with the slides,
making them twinkle, instead of practicing her delivery.
6. Make it flexible: Give yourself the option of showing a wide
variety of graphics if the need arises. Make your presentation
capable of answering the audience’s questions. Have an assistant
who can switch to any of your slides on request. This lets you
jump over un-needed material and adjust to the listener’s needs.
7. One input at a time: Let the audience either read the text
slide or listen to your speech, but don’t ask them to do both
at once. If it’s a graphic, give them a moment to absorb it
before you begin explaining. As with comedy, PowerPoint presenting
requires a good sense of timing.
The plain fact is that PowerPoint cannot create rapport. It’s
a strictly passive form of communication. There is no closing
of the loop, no feedback possible; it does not respond well
to the immediate concerns of the humans in the audience. It
is indifferent and unrelenting. That is why audiences feel so
overwhelmed and helpless under a PowerPoint barrage. There is
no way to affect the thing as it is normally used these days.
But it’s still a powerful tool with great potential and in the
right hands it can deliver results better than any other audio-visual
aid for speakers. The solution is to become stronger with the
human element of the presentation and find new ways to tap the
strengths of the software to support and illustrate the communication.
The new tablet-style laptop computers which can display hand
drawn diagrams in real time could give PowerPoint a flip-chart
capability, for instance. Anything that makes the program more
responsive in the moment like the ability to select only a few
from a great number of slides, or to include video, or web pages
are all points in its favor.
Mark Sanborn, past president of the National Speakers Association
says “Audiences do not want information. They already have more
information than they can possibly deal with. What they want
from us (speakers) is insight.” PowerPoint is the ultimate information
tool but it often squeezes out the process that leads to insight,
to meaning. So long as audiences are made up of people, it will
always remain for the person at the front to pay attention to
them, make adjustments when their interest flags and return
to the process of communication. The essential element of all
communication must be human rapport. That’s the only way to
re-raise the ceiling of business presentations.
©2005 Michael F. Landrum
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