Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary – Evan Esar
I’ve sat through, as I’m sure not a few of you have, many maddening hours of reading PowerPoint presentations while ignoring the presenter. My own experience included walking a disinterested audience through a mandatory corporate template. This meant that my 0nce-a-month fifteen-minute opportunity in front of the company decision makers was limited to running through the required metrics and graphics before I got to what they needed or wanted to know.
As confining as this was, there are a few simple things any presenter can do to make their presentations less painful and more effective for everybody concerned. The first one is:
Talk to Your Audience
This seems a bit trivial, but too often we don’t talk to our audience. We turn our back on them and talk to the slides. This gives the slides the focus when the focus should be you. Maybe this is more comfortable than having a room full of strangers staring at you, but it betrays a lack of confidence, or sends the subtle message that you don’t care about them, or both.
PowerPoint has an outlining function, which is a great way to create a presentation. The trap many fall into is then putting it all up on the screen and reading from it. It’s our baby, our creation. Why wouldn’t we share all of it in all it’s glory in every detail? As human beings we do fascinating, but when somebody else does this it’s less than infatuating.
You can avoid this by moving your text to the ‘notes’ section and referring to your printed copy if needed. Leave the main points of your persuasive arguments and conclusion. People will now be introduced to what you’re going to say, but pay attention to you. You should know this printed material well enough to only need to refer to it to get back on track after answering a question.
Making presentations is your chance to influence and build relationships with everybody in the room. Reading from the slides is not a good way to do this. You can assume that your business audience can read. They don’t need you to read it for you. If you put everything on the screen that you’re going to say, they’re just reading ahead of you and waiting for you to finish anyway.
Turn and face your audience. Speak directly to them. Pick a few people in the room and make eye contact with them in turn. If it’s a large audience, this is different people from different parts of the room. If there are decision makers or people you’ve chosen to build a relationship with are present, choose them.
This isn’t just about making it about you, however. People learn in different ways, and only some of them take in what they do by reading it. Graphics is another way. So is a human voice. You are more persuasive if you use all the senses (though trying to be persuasive through smell is a bit iffy.) You are more persuasive if you use both reason and emotion. You are most persuasive when you show confidence in your argument and make a personal connection.
Show only our main ideas in short sentences. Turn and face your audience and talk directly to them.
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