How Leaders Speak. Jim Gray
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the audience more of you and fewer words, numbers, and graphs on a screen.
Make sure your use of PowerPoint is appropriate. For example, it has no place within communication that evokes strong emotion, such as the announcement of layoffs or expressions of sympathy. Here, listeners require the full human connection.
Make sure your story comes first
The best presentations result from the careful preparation of a written draft, from which your main points are extracted. You can then display and speak to those points.
The script comes first and the points second, not the other way around.
If you simply produce points and attempt to link them, your narrative will never be as smooth or as cohesive as it would be if you’d created your script first.
Presenters sometimes borrow, inherit, or are saddled with PowerPoint decks created by others. It’s always difficult to tell someone else’s story, even if it’s one you’re familiar with.
My advice here is to build a new introduction, before rolling into the slides, linking your experience and responsibilities with the material to come.
Try and make at least some of the story your own.
Don’t overload your deck
Everyone has, at one time or another, been subject to an assault by a speaker displaying slides so laden with information as to be indecipherable. What does that say about the presentation and, more importantly, the presenter?
Not much.
It’s simple: the more material you jam onto a deck, the harder it is for members of the audience to read (especially those at the back of the room) and the more challenging it becomes for you to present.
If you have detailed information you believe listeners require, include it in a handout.
This will make you look quite smart. You’ll have, in fact, two versions of your slides: the comprehensive handout and the cleaner, eminently simpler presentation version, from which you’ll speak.
Display three points per slide (remember our Power of Three template), four maximum. The fewer words per point, the better.
For years, the generally accepted rule of thumb was to deliver one PowerPoint slide for every minute of delivery time. Skilled presenters can certainly cover off a slide in less than sixty seconds, especially if it doesn’t require a ton of explanation, but the “one for one” rule still isn’t a bad one to keep in mind.
For a thirty-minute presentation, thirty slides are plenty, unless you’re a consummate raconteur with a tight, superbly well-choreographed show that moves the story along seamlessly. Most people don’t operate at that level. And I always advise erring on the side of caution.
Go light on the slides, and heavy on your relationship with the audience.
Think symmetry
Speaking effectively is all about taking the pressure off yourself so you can be yourself.
Forget about any slide transitions for at least the first ninety seconds of your presentation. Instead, use that time to establish a bond with your listeners against the background of a slide featuring your organization’s brand or logo.
Conclude your remarks with your brand or logo coming up again. It will communicate to your listeners that you’re coming to your close, without you having to say “in conclusion” (please don’t say “in conclusion,” it’s cliché) or “as I wrap up.”
Presentation symmetry is a good thing.
It will make you look organized and, just as importantly, eliminate the need to ever create concluding slides that read, “Thank you” or “Questions?’
We’re not in elementary school here. Let’s have some dignity.
Maintain the connection
All over the world, presenters have fallen in love with PowerPoint and left their audiences behind in order to consummate the affair.
You’ve seen them, their backs to their stricken listeners, reading aloud some arcane reference from a slide groaning with data, the proceedings entirely comatose.
As a responsible speaker, it’s essential that you begin and end each slide transition with eye contact to maintain your critical relationship with the audience. Once you’ve confirmed that the appropriate slide is in place (and you can do that by glancing down at your laptop, not turning around to gape at the screen behind you), “square up” to the crowd and begin speaking.
You can, of course, turn and refer to a slide, but not every slide. If there’s something important on the screen you choose to emphasize, walk to it (backwards if you can; you want to minimize the time you have your back or even your side to an audience), and point to it, facing your listeners.
“Look at this,” you might say. “Our sales were up 20 percent this quarter — let me tell you why.”
See if you can do all this without a laser pointer, which can vibrate and shake in the hands of even slightly nervous presenters, and can distract listeners. There’s an old saying in presentation skills: anything that distracts, detracts.
If you must hold a laser pointer, grasp it in your right hand and support it on your left forearm, or vice versa.
All slides aren’t created equal; some will be more important than others. Nor will every point on a slide carry the same significance as others. Perhaps, on certain slides, you’ll want to speak to only one point. That’s cool. You’re the one telling the story.
Be creative
Want to make an impact?
Embed a digital clip or two in your PowerPoint presentation. They can generate a great deal of impact when utilized well, but many speakers don’t use them well.
They’ll play a somnolent, self-serving twenty-minute feature on their organization’s environmental initiatives and wonder why listeners are tromping off to the bar.
Solicit the opinions of respected peers on the suitability of your clips before playing them on presentation day. Will they enhance audience understanding in a captivating way, and in a reasonable amount of time? If so, in they go. If not, save them for the company retreat.
Use restraint
Just because we possess the technology to feature assorted elements of our every experience doesn’t mean we should.
I once watched a speaker at a major conference, a widely respected professional, embarrass himself and his audience by including family photographs and cartoons in his PowerPoint presentation.
Someone should have reminded him that the speaking venue was a business function, and that his photos and caricatures were, well, unfortunate.
Clearly, he wasn’t communicating like a leader.
Ten Rules for PowerPoint
1. Determine if you really need it.
2. Make sure your story comes first.
3. Keep thinking of ways to reduce the number of slides.
4. Aim for three points per slide — the fewer words per point the better.
5. Consider a presentation and handout version of your deck.
6. Think symmetry — with a title slide to open and close.
7. Utilize eye contact to introduce and conclude each slide.
8. Be creative — consider embedding digital clips.
9. Keep it professional.
10. Do not include “Thank you” and “Questions?” slides.
WHEN IT’S A TEAM GAME
In a follow-up discussion with your CEO about “Industry 2020,” she brings