Your presentation style is part of your personal brand. If you’re still clinging to bullet-point slides, it doesn’t matter how dynamic you are as a presenter, your personal brand will be damaged.
That’s because when you use bullet-laden slides in your presentation, your audience will make five decisions about you and your presentation:
1. This is going to be boring
When an audience sees the first slide of your presentation and they see row after row of bullets they’ll sink just a little in their seats. They’ve had to sit though many boring bullet-laden presentations before and they’re thinking “Uh-oh – this is going to be boring.”
Just like Pavlov’s dogs it’s a conditioned response. Paylov’s dogs salivated when Pavlov rang a bell because they anticipated being fed. Audiences deflate when the presenter uses bullets because they anticipate being bored.
2. You don’t know your stuff
If you knew your stuff, why would you need a screen to prompt you every few seconds? One of our course participants summed it up:
“I’ve been burying my expertise in a barrage of bullets.”
When I see someone presenting with bullet-point slides, I often think that I could deliver the presentation better than they can – even though I know nothing about the topic. Bullet-point slides obviate the need for your knowledge.
So take your notes off the screen, and put them in your hand. Now you can show off your knowledge.
3. You’re not up-to-date
The PowerPoint revolution has happened. People have seen PowerPoint used to show images to inspire and amuse, to show diagrams to clarify and explain, and to show charts that make data meaningful rather than deadly.
So when you show slide after slide of bullets, your audience will make that mean that you’re out-of-date and that you and your organisation are stuck in the past.
4. You’re lazy
Bullet-point slides send the message that you’re not prepared to put the work in to transform your presentation. The audience may be thinking “If you’re lazy about preparing your presentation, what else are you lazy about?”
You may be overestimating the time it will take to transform your presentation slides. Many of our course participants are surprised by how quickly they can put together a visually interesting PowerPoint presentation. See this post about The best PowerPoint slide format to see how long it takes compared to the alternatives.
5. You’re wasting my time
When you sit through a lengthy bullet-point presentation, do you think to yourself “The presenter could have sent me the slides for me to read and that would be a lot quicker!”
Your presentation is part of your personal brand and that of your organisation. If you’re still clinging to bullets, you’re damaging your brand.
Go well with your next presentation. If you found these presentation tips useful subscribe to my RSS feed.
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Bullets are ruining more than Powerpoint. I am beginning to see them abused in text where, for example, 10 paragraphs are bulleted.
Paragraphs are a long established form of navigation, separated from each other with more space than there is btwn lines. Traditionally the first line was indented which helped the break up.
But bulleting each para suggests they are all important. This is is like crying wolf. Bullets are fine for 2 or 3 main key summaries/points if they are very short that is.
In addition, we all know that long bulleted lists of like items can be boring and cause mego (me eyes gloss over). And don’t get me started on bulleted lists where the content isn’t parallel.
I don’t hate bullets. I often break long sentences up by using bullets to list like concepts. They are wonderful when numbered for instructions. We can’t live without them.
But they must be preserved and treasured as the perfect tool for certain tasks. But they fail their readers when authors choose them over other visual and grammatical devices.
Thanks Irene, for a beautiful exposition of the proper place of bullets. Olivia
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