When Done Well: PowerPoint / Keynote Slide Slide Shows Help the Audience GET IT!
SlideThere are three styles of learning.
Auditory – Learn by hearing.
Visual – Learn by seeing.
Kinesthetic – Learn by doing.
We use all three to different degrees. Nothing is good or bad. It is what it is.
For speakers, if more than one of these styles can be addressed to convey your message, the odds they’ll GET IT are dramatically increased. Combining high quality, universally understood images on a screen with you, the speaker providing the “text” is an excellent way to do this.
Unfortunately, the majority of slide shows are designed with lots of text, bullet points, corporate templates and logos. If they include any images, they are often cheap clip art or graphics that have the audience scratching their heads wondering what they are.
Sometimes you wonder why the presenter even showed up! They are standing at the lectern, with their back to the audience, and are reading each and every bit of text to the attendees. Yech! They could just have well emailed their powerpoint presentation to everyone!
So your audience GETS IT! here are better ways to use slides in your presentation:
Use very little text and as few bullet points as possible.
Here’s why: Text and bullet points do not reinforce the presenter’s message. They confuse, compete and complicate it. The audience will be reading at a different speed than the presenter is speaking the words. They will be ahead or behind the point the speaker is making so the words they “hear” will not coincide with the sentences they are “seeing.” The result is a lesser understanding than the speaker desires.
Use high quality graphics, eliminate the clutter, and deliver your message in a conversational manner.
Your slides, like the words you use, should be clean and simple.
Here’s why:
Our minds work by associations and we think in terms of pictures.
Example: If I say, “Apple.” you probably don’t see the letters a-p-p-l-e. My experience tells me you see something round, probably red, and there is a stem coming out of the top – Correct?
The images on a slide are used to supplement your words and help the visual learners (65% of the population) GET IT! The slideshow is not the presentation!
When using a slide, as your talk goes forward and before the next slide, many times it is helpful for your delivery to press the “B” Button on your keyboard or remote control. This will blank the slide. The eyes of the audience will immediately move from the screen to you, the presenter – where they should be!
Allowing a slide to stay “on” for an extended period makes it a distraction. Because our eyes are drawn to the light and the image(s) you’re projecting, while you are speaking, the audience is looking at the screen . Since our nonverbal communication (gestures, facial expressions, posture, and body movement) is 55% of our communication pyramid (tonality being 38% and the words we speak only 7% ), the audience could potentially miss a great part of your message!
Do not use fancy transitions, build-ins, build-outs, special effects, fancy templates or any of the other “cool” things available to PowerPoint and Keynote users. Here’s why: It’s clutter! All those things distract from your message. Keep things Zen-like: Clean and Simple – Less is More!
Follow this suggestion the next time you use slides in your presentation. Do that, and my prediction is this: That speech will be absolutely, positively – No Sweat!
For reading, and/or listening, this far I’d like to give you a FREE Gift. Go to: https://nosweatpublicspeaking.com/freegift to receive it!
About the Author Fred E. Miller is a speaker, a coach, and author of the book, “No Sweat Public Speaking!” Businesses and individuals hire him because they want to improve their Public Speaking and Presentation Skills. They do this because we perceive really great speakers to be Experts. Perception is reality and we rather deal with Experts. They also know: Speaking Opportunities are Business Opportunities. Speaking Opportunities are Career Opportunities. Speaking Opportunities are Leadership Opportunities. He shows them how to Develop, Practice, and Deliver ‘Knock Your Socks Off Presentations!’ with – No Sweat!
Fred E. Miller Fred@NoSweatPublicSpeaking.com nosweatpublicspeaking.com
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