The most deadly weapon in the arsenal of the harried business professional is the mind-numbing PowerPoint presentation. Far too often, presenters try to overcome their fear of speaking in public by simply writing their entire presentation on slides. Then they proceed to read each slide aloud to their listeners, who slowly slip into an irreversible coma. Don't let this happen to you! Here are five sure ways to overcome "Death by PowerPoint."
Don't Write a Script: Create a Design
To be effective, a presentation needs to be designed, not just written. Using what you know about your audience (its interests, needs, levels of expertise, etc.), you need to create a fluid and flexible outline of your presentation, incorporating these key sections: Opening, Objective, Main Point(s), Q&A (if applicable), Conclusion, and Close. This structure is shown in the image of the presentation diamond. Once you have determined what goes into each section and how long each section should be, then and only then should you decide what to put on your slides.
Engage Your Audience
Devise ways and means for your audience members to respond to you. You can engage them in several ways:
1. Ask questions. These can be rhetorical ("It's been a great conference so far, don't you think?") or information seeking ("Who here has ever been to Beijing?") or retention-confirming ("OK, once again, what are the key sections of a presentation?").
2. Give the audience something to do. Have them play a game, get into small groups and discuss something, draw pictures--any activity that will energize them and support your presentation's objective.
Keep It Simple (not Stupid)
The K.I.S.S. strategy applies to presentation design as well. Resist the urge to amaze your audience with animations that are cute for the first couple of seconds (maybe), but that soon become annoying and distracting if left on the screen for too long. Be sure that your charts and graphs are not horribly complex and difficult to read from the back of the room. Best of all, use pictures rather than text whenever possible.
Add Appropriate Humor
Don't tell jokes. Instead, tell stories that illustrate your main points in potentially humorous ways. Any story that tells about the time you made a complete idiot of yourself, or narrowly missed death, usually turns out to be hilarious in the retelling (primarily because we know you didn't actually die, even if you wanted to at the time). The best humor is self-effacing--you offend no one when you make fun of yourself.
Don't Use PowerPoint at all!
Many business professionals assume that their business audiences always want to see a PowerPoint presentation. What if you surprised them? What if you presented the old-fashioned way--with just yourself and maybe a flip chart or white board to sketch upon? Your most powerful audio-visual aid is yourself. If you refuse to rely on technology to transmit your ideas, you may just come up with a more creative (and persuasive) presentation.
