5 steps to effective Powerpoint Presentations

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Stepcase Lifehack just published a blogpost on tips for more effective PowerPoint presentations. I was surprised to see some outdated and unhelpful advice. Here are my five steps to create an effective PowerPoint presentation. I’ve written about many of these steps before, so I’ve provided links to more detailed posts if you’d like more information.

1. Plan your presentation on paper first.

Keep away from the computer. Garr Reynolds from PresentationZen calls this going analog.

Instead focus on your audience and what you want them to take away from the presentation. What do you want them to do? How do you want them to think differently? What do you want them to remember? This will become your Key Message. See this post for more guidance A Simple and Concrete Key Message.

Then structure the flow of your presentation around what your audience will want to know - see Answer your audience’s questions.

The Lifehack post recommends writing a script. I don’t recommend this. Here’s why:

• Unless you’re a skilled dialogue-writer you’ll find it difficult to write your script in conversational language. And conversational language is what works best in a presentation.
• Once you’ve written a script, you may find it hard to keep from reading it. Reading to your audience is an effective way to put them to sleep.
• You may think that you can memorise it - what that means is that you’ll end up “reading” from the script in your head. You’ll still sound artificial and stilted. And you’ll be focusing on remembering what comes next rather than focusing on getting your ideas across to your audience.

Presenting is about communicating ideas - not exact words and sentences. So instead of a script create a set of notes for yourself. Your notes don’t say what you want to say - they remind you of what you want to say. For more guidance on creating notes, see this post The lost art of notes. Then you can focus on connecting with your audience.

Once you’ve created the structure and flow of your presentation, you can start creating slides. There are many different creative ways of creating slides. In this post, I’ll take you through a quick and easy way to use when you’re short of time.

2. Put one statement on each slide

Take each main point of your presentation and express it as a short and succinct statement. Put each statement on one slide.

That’s the only text you put on the slide. The Lifehack post says ‘No paragraphs’! I go further and say ‘No bullets’! Here’s why:

• Bullets are the speaker’s notes in disguise. Take them off the screen and put them in your hand or on the table/lectern in front of you.
• Having bullets on your slide and talking at the same time harms the ability of your audience to take in your message. See The problem with traditional bullet-point slides and New scientific evidence for banning bullets from your PowerPoint slides.
• Bullet-points are outdated. See 5 ways bullet-point slides damage your brand.

If you run out of time, these simple one-statement slides will work fine. If you’ve got time, go onto the next step.

3. Add a relevant visual to each slide

Now look at how you can add a visual element to each slide which helps back-up the point of the slide. There are four main types of visual:

1. An image or photograph which directly represents or is a metaphor for what you’re talking about.
2. A diagram which helps your audience understand the concept you’re describing.
3. A graph which shows the meaning of your data.
4. A flowchart that demonstrates the process you’re explaining.

For more description of each of these see this post on The application of visual thinking to presentations.

I agree with the Lifehack post that irrelevant, distracting images and cliched clipart shouldn’t be used. Watch out also for cliched images - the Slide:ology blog has lots of examples of these.

4. Pay attention to design

The Lifehacker post says:

Avoid the temptation to dress up your pages with cheesy effects and focus instead on simple design basics.

I agree. The key design principles are:

• Use a simple background - decorative templates add clutter.
• Use a sans serif font such as arial or helvetica.
• Use text which contrasts well with the background.
• If you’re using photos have them fill the whole screen and put your text on top of them. If necessary use a semi-transparent rectangle - a mask - behind the text to ensure that it is readable.

These two posts expand on these points:

• Powerpoint slide design - the basics
• PowerPoint slide design - adding elegance

The Lifehacker post says avoid dark backgrounds if you can to help with readability. This used to be true with older dimmer datashow projectors, but now with brighter projectors it’s not an issue unless you’re in a very light room like a conservatory or direct sunlight is hitting the screen.

5. Dance with your slides

You know not to read from your slides. But don’t go the other extreme of ignoring your slides like a wallflower at a dance. Dance with them. They are your partner in the presentation - sometimes you lead, sometimes the slide will lead. For more ideas on how to do this see my post Are you missing out on half the power of your PowerPoint slides?

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5 ways bullet-point slides damage your brand

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.

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I wish I’d spoken at my father’s funeral

Being able to express yourself publicly at important ceremonies and celebrations - funerals, weddings, christenings and birthdays - is one of the greatest gifts.

My father died 10 years ago. I was going to speak at his funeral. But when we arrived at the church all I could see were the distinguished, CEO-looking men in the audience (my father was an international businessman).  I felt intimidated and chose not to speak. That’s something I regret.

I’ll never turn down an invitation to give a eulogy again.

Don’t make the same mistake I made at my father’s funeral. If you’re given an opportunity to speak at a funeral or other family celebration, think of your regret if you don’t express yourself and your love for that person. On one side you’ll have your anxiety urging to stay quiet. On the other, you have your love for that person that that you would like to express publicly. Focus on the love, not the anxiety.

Take the pressure off

Here is some advice for taking the pressure off yourself as you prepare a eulogy or a speech for a family celebration.

1. You don’t have to provide an outline of their entire life.

The best eulogies are a snapshot or series of snapshots of the person’s life.  Comprehensive accounts of a person’s life are best left to written tributes and obituaries.

2. You don’t have to do a ton of research or talk to lots of other people.

Give your own recollections and your own perspective about the person. In a forum thread on giving a eulogy the most repeated advice was to share your personal memories.

3. You don’t have to lie.

Every person has some flaws. Don’t feel you have to avoid them. Be compassionately honest about the person - don’t idealize them. From the eulogy forum thread comes this beautifully written thought:

In the wan light of grief, annoying habits become endearing eccentricities; it feels good to honor the person who really lived, and not some idealized version that never existed.

4. You don’t have to make people laugh.

Moments of levity and humour are fine, and even welcome during a funeral service. However, if humour doesn’t come naturally to you, don’t force it. A trivial detail which people can relate to is often all that is required:

The only thing I remember about my grandmother’s eulogy was the priest describing how he could always tell she was in line for the Eucharist, because he could hear the tinkling of the armful of bracelets she perpetually wore. It was such a wonderful detail that it captured so much about her — her faith, her style, her position in her church. It was a lovely detail and I remember how much we all smiled and laughed when the priest said it — a bit of joy in the midst of our grief.

5. You don’t have to get it exactly right.

The exact words that you use and whether they come out right or not - is not important. This is not a business presentation. Nobody’s taking notes.

6. You don’t have to have a complicated structure.

Here’s an easy formula for your eulogy or speech. Think of three qualities the person has. Talk about each quality with a short story or anecdote to illustrate each one.

How to get through a eulogy without crying

1. Rehearsal is critical

The hardest thing about giving a eulogy is coping with the effect your words will have on you. Rehearse your speech several times so as to desensitize yourself to your own words. During your first rehearsal, you’ll probably find yourself tearing up. The second time it will happen a little less. The third time, hardly at all. Eventually, you’ll be able to give the speech without emotion welling up.

2. Have two sets of notes

I normally recommend against a full script - but a eulogy is one time where it can be very useful. The beauty (and normally the downside) of a script is that you don’t have to think about what you’re saying. In a normal presentation or speech this is deadly for the audience. But for a eulogy it maybe just what you need to carry you through it. So have brief bullet-point notes that you intend to use. And a fully-scripted set that you can fall-back on, should you get stuck.

3. Have a back-up

Despite the rehearsals you may find that in the highly-charged atmosphere of the funeral, emotion overcomes you. Allow yourself some silence to gather yourself. But arrange a back-up person to read your speech if you find yourself unable to carry on.

Other eulogy advice

In doing research for this post, I found a lot of impersonal rubbish about writing eulogies. But then I stumbled across this gem How to give a Eulogy by Tom Chiarella. I highly recommend reading this moving and insightful essay in full. But here are two of the insights that hit home for me:

1. Think of your audience in concentric circles

Your primary audience are the people most closely related to the deceased:

Standing there on the dais, consider the world as a series of concentric rings of loyalty. The people in the nearest ring, those in the front row, are owed the most. You should speak first to them. And then, in the next measure, to the room itself, which is the next ring, and only then to the physical world outside, the neighborhood, the town, the place, and then, just maybe, to the machinations of life-muffling institutions.

2. Think small

The writing and reading of a eulogy is, above all, the simple and elegant search for small truths. They don’t have to be truths that everyone agrees on, just ones they will recognize. This can be surprisingly hard, to take notice of the smallest, most unpolished details of a life and set them up for us to stare at in the wonder of recognition.

There’s one piece of advice he gives that I disagree with: “You must make them laugh”. I don’t think there’s anything we “must” do in a eulogy. And putting that sort of pressure on yourself could put you off doing it altogether. It’s far more important to give an imperfect eulogy, than not to give a perfect eulogy.

My latest opportunity to speak was at my daughter’s 21st birthday party. I was in charge of preparing vegeterian canapes for fifty, so I didn’t have time to sit down and prepare.

But I knew that in this particular context, what I said was not critical, and given the superb 50 year old brandy that we were toasting her with, unlikely to be remembered.

What was important was the emotion. My words were only a vehicle to express that emotion. And only one member of the audience really mattered - my daughter. And all I had to get across to her was that I loved her.

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Stop being a slave to your PowerPoint slides

In my last post The lost art of notes I suggested that you have your own set of hard-copy notes so that you’re no longer reliant on PowerPoint for your notes.

The second step to break free of PowerPoint as your autocue is to have a printout of your PowerPoint slides.

The benefits of a printout of your PowerPoint slides

• Having a printout of your slides means that you know the next slide before you click your remote. No longer do you have to click before you open your mouth. You can introduce slides, you can take turns with your slides - you can dance with your slides.
• Your audience will be more engaged, because your presentation is not a repetitive sequence of click-speak, click-speak, click-speak.
• You can jump between slides to respond to an audience question.

But none of the print options within PowerPoint give you quite what you need. The ideal printout of your PowerPoint slides has:

1. The number of each slide so that you can jump between slides (enter the number of the slide on your keyboard and press ‘Enter’).
2. About 15 slides to an A4 landscape page, so that you can see a large chunk of slides at any one time and don’t need to constantly turn over the page to see what’s next.

The ideal PowerPoint slide printout

This screencast walks you through the steps to create the ideal PowerPoint slide printout:

And here’s the steps in hardcopy if you want to be able to quickly refer to them:

1. Click on View menu, then click on the Slidesorter View.
2. In the Slidesorter View adjust the size of the slides so that you can get the right number within the screenshot. 66% gives you 15 slides which I find about right.
3. Press the “PrintScreen” key on your keyboard. This will paste your current screenshot into the clipboard.
4. Go back to the View menu and click on Normal View.
5. Create a blank side at the end of your presentation.
6. Right-click on the slide and click Paste to paste the screenshot from the clipboard onto the slide.
7. Click on the screenshot to select it - this will bring up the Picture Toolbar. Click on the Crop button and crop the screenshot so that you’re left with only the slides.
8. Print the slide by clicking on File, Print. Click on Current Slide or enter the number of the slide and click OK.

The next time you present with PowerPoint, create a printout of your PowerPoint slides, so that you can dance with your slides and engage your audience.

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The lost art of notes

In my post The PowerPoint Revolution hasn’t gone far enough I said that PowerPoint should be an equal partner in our presentations.

There’s a major obstacle to implementing this principle. That’s using the PowerPoint slides as your notes. If you use PowerPoint as your notes, PowerPoint always cues you. You click, you speak, click-speak, click-speak.

If you use PowerPoint slides as your notes, you’re relegating PowerPoint to an administrative role - a crucial one - but still administrative. That means it can’t be an equal partner with you. Until it can break out of that role, you can’t exploit it’s full power.

When you dance with your slides as equal partners, sometimes PowerPoint leads, sometimes you lead. For examples of this, see my post Dancing with your PowerPoint Slides.

To be able to dance with your slides you need to know what’s going to come up on the screen when you click. No longer do your PowerPoint slides cue you. You cue your PowerPoint slides. That means you need notes.

Notes used to be an essential item for every speaker, but as PowerPoint took over, the slides became our notes - much to the distress of audiences. The younger participants on our courses have never used notes, and the more mature ones have forgotten how. Notes are a lost art.

Notes are not a script. They are like a high-level road map which show you the main way-points, but not every little lane you might go on. Notes don’t say what you want to say - they cue you to say what you want to say.

Guidelines for creating notes

1. 6×4 unruled system cards are an ideal size for notes. Big enough to fit a few bullet-points, but small enough to be able to hold in your hand without distracting the audience.
2. Write in large enough writing that you can read your notes when held in your hand at arm’s length or when placed on the table in front of you when you’re presenting.
3. Use colour in your notes to code different types of content in your presentation. For example, you could use a specific colour for your Key Message, a specific colour for stories, and so on.
4. You can create notes in PowerPoint (as we know PowerPoint is great at creating bullet-points). Print out the slides as “Handouts” two to a page, cut them out and then stick them onto the system cards.
5. Number your notes.
6. Punch a hole in the top left-hand corner of your notes and use a key ring to hold them together.
7. Use a format for your notes that works for you. The most important thing is that you should be able to glance at your notes, find your cue, and look up again. Here are two options - bullet-points and a spatial mind-map:

Rehearse with your notes

Once you’ve created your notes, rehearse with them. Check out if they work for you. After a couple of rehearsals, you may find you don’t need as many words on your cards. Rewrite them with less words.

So now you’ve got notes for what you want to say - but how is that going to integrate with your PowerPoint slides. We’ll look at that in the next post…

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