NAGA News January/February 201624

Whether it is presenting a seminar at the convention or ad-dressing a community event, PowerPoint is generally used as a visual platform for ideas. Using it well is a matter of knowledge and practice.

I t’s easy to develop bad habits, but much harder to break them! We’d like to see everyone kick poor use of PowerPoint. If you feel stuck in a rut with your pre-

sentation slides, imagine how your audience feels! Do people’s eyes tend to glaze over in your PowerPoint presentation? What can you do to liven things up, bring a fresh, new perspective to your presentation visuals, and help your listeners to “get it”?

Replace those bad PowerPoint habits with more effective strate-gies to tell a more engaging story, connect with your listeners, and even change the conversation.

Bad habit No. 1: Following equations of “X slides per minute”There is no such thing as a magic number of slides per minute for an ideal presentation!

New habit: Focus on your audience and message rather than the number of slides. Who are your listeners and what do they care about? Use slides if they help your audi-ence understand or remember what you are saying. Use props or a video to supplement or replace a slide deck. In the book The HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, Nancy Duarte advises, “Don’t worry about slide count. Just make your slides count.”

Bad habit No. 2: Putting too much text on a slideWe’ve all seen slides so chock full of text that there’s no way the audience can even see the words, much less take in the message. In his book Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds aptly calls heavy text slides “slideuments.” If your content can be distributed and clearly understood without a presenter, it is a document, not a presentation. It’s easy to fall into this bad habit when you feel com-pelled to share everything you know with your audience. This “curse of knowledge” leads to information overload that only makes your listeners shut down.

New habit: To help “manage your real estate” and make sure your text is visible to everyone in the room, use a minimum of 30-point type on your slides. That automati-

cally limits the amount of text and pares it down to the key points to convey, or better yet, to one idea per slide.

Bad habit No. 3: Leaving out imagesMaking your slides text-centric takes the attention off you as a speaker. People are compelled to read any text put in front of them. Wendy Gates Corbett, president of Refresher Training and an expert in designing vivid pre-sentations and corporate training materials, describes

the effect this way: “People who can read can’t NOT read.” While your audience is reading slides, they are not listening to what you’re saying.

New habit: Use relevant im-ages that convey the essence of

your message with only a few key words on each slide (a “glance & grab” strategy). Duarte, author and CEO of Duarte, Inc., suggests asking, “What would I like people to remember … ?” and giving that point visual emphasis. The right picture can convey your message in an instant, with-out distracting words to read while trying to listen.

Member Tips by Stephanie Scotti, published online September 2nd, 2015

6 PowerPoint Habits to Break

“Do people’s eyes tend to glaze over in your PowerPoint

presentation?”

Many things are opened by m

istake, but none so frequently as the mouth.

25NAGA NewsJanuary/February 2016

Bad habit No. 4: Assuming you’re stuck with the corporate templateEven if obligated to use a corporate PowerPoint template for your pre-sentation, that doesn’t mean you’re forced to use the same-old poor slide layouts that make your message hard for listeners to grasp.

New habit: When using the typical corporate data and bullet slides, use visual cues that draw attention to emphasis points.

In business, we often use data charts and graphs to illustrate an important point with too many details that impede comprehension. Wendy Gates Corbett, president of Refresher Training and an expert in designing vivid presentations and corporate training materials, advo-cates using simple design techniques that focus attention on your key points and help your audience hone in on your message. First, remove as much text as pos-sible from your slide and make the text that remains big and bold! Next, use some simple attention-getting strategies to draw the audience’s eyes to what you want them to see.

Shading and color: Put a shaded box behind the section of a graph that il-lustrates what you’re talking about:

Call-out boxes: Use call-out boxes or arrows to focus attention on the details you want the audience to look it. Even better, change the colors of the rest of the visual to make it ap-pear “grayed out.”

Build: Don’t include all points on one slide. Your audience will be reading instead of listening!

This is especially true with a bullet slide. Cluster your ideas and control your pacing with a build that shows each bullet as you address it. Unrelated bullet points should have their own slide.

Bad habit No. 5: Feeling compelled to use the latest and greatest slideware toolPicking the appropriate tool for the job is much more important than whether you’re using PowerPoint, Prezi, Keynote or a conference room whiteboard. Your goal is not to impress your audience with your technical savvy. Make it easy for lis-teners to understand and make use of your message.

New habit: Focus on your message rather than the technology. What content will draw attention to your key points and make an impact on your listeners? The right content might be a video or even using a prop

on stage. Once you’ve developed the best content, choose the tool that best helps you conveys your message so it resonates with your audience.

Bad habit No. 6: Using slides as a teleprompterIncluding bullets for everything you want to say just to remind yourself not to leave out anything from your speech makes you feel obliged to talk about everything in your slides. The slides can interfere with your conversational tone and erode your confidence in your knowledge of the material.

There are much better ways to prompt yourself that won’t distract your audience or undermine your confidence!

New habit: If you want to use your PowerPoint to compose teleprompter notes, “HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations” author Nancy Duarte suggests writing them in “notes” view and then select “set up show.” After you attach your projector, select “pre-senter view.” Everything in your notes will appear on your laptop screen or confidence monitor, and only your slides will project behind you.

Use a good, old-fashioned hard copy of your notes (which I suggest you have as a backup). If you’re un-easy about looking like an amateur by bringing notes to the podium, don’t worry! Top presenters know it’s not what you bring to the podium but how you use it that sets apart great speakers. The trick is to refer to your notes while staying connected to your listeners.

Try these strategies, one at a time, and realize the huge payoff in the confidence boost your new habits will bring to your presentations! My clients experience an “aha” moment when they realize how effectively they can engage with their listeners using these techniques. H

Stephanie Scotti is a strategic communication advisor. Learn more at ProfessionallySpeaking.net and ProfessionallySpeakingBlog.com.

www.admani.com.

For more information, please call Leo Windschitl at 218-820-0658.

Performance Proven Game Bird FeedsResearch proven • field proven • nutritional, technical, and general management support