Preventing Homicide By PowerPoint: 5 Tips to Better Presentation
Bad presentations are very painful, not only for audiences but also for speakers, who often come off the stage (or Zoom) feeling like they didn’t quite connect with the audience.
Technology consultancy Globant has a video that I watch every time it pops up in my feed, even though I’ve seen it at least a dozen times, that’s how much it resonates with me.
The 45-second video features “Mike” – a nerdy looking guy with glasses, typing furiously at his computer in the middle of an open-plan office full of desks.
A crowd has gathered.
A colleague standing beside him is counting – 995, 996, 997 …
“What’s happening?” whispers a woman to one of the onlookers.
“Mike’s about to reach 1,000 slides in the new client presentation!”
One colleague holds a straw to Mike’s lips, so he can slurp some soda. Another rubs his shoulders, and a third dabs his brow. 998!
“I need to highlight product delivery! Get me an incomprehensible graphic, ASAP!” Mike calls to a co-worker, who sends over one of the “forbidden charts.”
Mike pastes in a graphic that resembles a SEPTA regional rail map sketched by someone drunk. 999!
Mike pauses with his hands over the keyboard. The crowd is silent, watchful.
Slowly he types: THANK YOU!
1000!
The crowd goes wild, high-fiving Mike and cheering: “You da man!”
The point of the ad, spelled out with the added delight of a swear word (“Enough of the old consultancy bullsh*t!”) is to distinguish Globant from other consultancies.
I love it because it parodies one of my biggest pet peeves in client engagement: Endless presentation decks overstuffed with information. (In case you think I’m exaggerating, a colleague of mine admitted that his personal record is 128 slides, and that he once sat through a four-hour presentation comprising 369 slides.) Slide after slide of bullets, sub bullets and sub-sub bullets, incomprehensible charts and graphs, photos and clip art copied right from the internet, and cartoons lifted from the New Yorker website. Please, stop the madness!
Bad presentations are very painful, not only for audiences but also for speakers, who often come off the stage (or Zoom) feeling like they didn’t quite connect with the audience.
And it’s far worse than merely a lackluster presentation.
Whether they realize it or not, they’re committing double homicide—not only killing their audiences with bad presentations, but murdering their marketing at the same time.
Speaking engagements have always been a large part of professional services marketing, and the pandemic accelerated the expansion of virtual events and webinars using technology platforms like Zoom, Webex and Teams, as clients clamored for actionable information timely delivered. Seminars and webinars continue to be in high demand, even more so now than before the pandemic. They are terrific valueadds for clients, especially if they offer in-house legal teams an efficient way to gain CLE credit. And whether for a single client, at association and industry events, or through one of the many legal content platform, presentations offer presenters both the opportunity to be in front of their target audience and a platform to demonstrate substantive expertise.
Your goal as the speaker (whether solo or as a panelist) is to provide useful information in an accessible format.
That’s the floor, not the ceiling.
The best presenters engage audiences with an entertaining interaction on thought-provoking topics.
Here are a few tips to help you avoid committing homicide by PowerPoint.
Your slides are not your presentation
Before you open up PowerPoint and start drafting, ask whether you really need slides. A deck may be required by the organizer or to offer CLE credit, but if slides are optional, consider skipping them. While (good) slides are often helpful for attendees with accessibility challenges or who learn better visually, alternatives may exist for CLE and other learning materials.
If you do decide to use a PowerPoint deck, develop your slides last (or at least later), not first. Many speakers create what they believe is a compelling set of slides only to witness a disconnected or bored audience, because they created their presentation backward. Don’t focus so much on the static parts of your presentation that you forgot the goal of speaking is engaging with humans.
Map out your topics, themes and talking points first, and then consider how best to illustrate them with your slides.
Build a better deck—for you and your audience
In fact, consider building two. (Yes, I know I just told you to skip the slides, but that’s not always possible or preferable.)
I like to think of slides as accessories (think colorful scarf, snazzy socks or elegant tie). You want the slides you display to enhance, not overshadow you as the speaker. If attendees are trying to read your slides, they will not be giving you their full attention or engagement. Aim for clean, streamlined slides with high-impact images, single words or short phrases, minimal use of bullets and lists, and lots of whitespace. (There is no rule that you have to fit all the info for a talking point on one slide, and your audience will figure it out without you including “cont’d” in the title of the slide!)
If the organizer or client wants a slide deck with comprehensive substantive information (usually for CLE or to have in their resources), consider a second slide deck that you provide after the presentation—preferably as either a PDF or as a link to your website. If you go this route, you can develop these slides first, and then create your display deck from them. This is a great alternative for those of you who are comfortable with (and can’t resist) creating slides in PowerPoint as you develop your talking points.
Use a clean, simple design for your deck. A branded template is best, if you have one; at a minimum, display your logo on the first and last slides, and include a slide with your contact information and a good quality (up to date) photo.
Know the tech and tailor your presentation accordingly
How you will be delivering the presentation has a major impact on your talking points and your presentation materials. For example, live, in-person presentations ideally should have fewer, simpler slides, so they don’t compete with you for the audience’s attention and engagement. If you’re presenting virtually or remotely (Zoom, Teams, Webex), however, the content you display isn’t competing as much with you as it is with other desktop distractions—phone, email, work and surfing the Internet. More slides, with higher visual interest, shown at a quicker pace, can help keep your remote audience focused.
Get tech information well ahead of time – ideally before you begin to develop your presentation. Does the venue or platform allow you to play embedded videos, or include transitions or animations in your slides? Who controls and advances the slides – you or someone else? How big is the display, and what size do your slides need to be? Will you have the ability to see slide notes or use presenter mode? Will there be a Q&A or chat function?
Details as simple as whether there is a podium and a microphone often get overlooked, but they can significantly impact both the presenter and the audience experience.
Do not engage in copyright infringement
Please repeat after me: I will not copy images from Google and use them in my presentations.
Copyright infringement is not a good look for lawyers and law firms, and in today’s digital age, it is easier than ever for copyright owners to monitor for use of their works on the internet. Don’t think a CLE you give to a client can be discovered? Think again. Once you provide presentation materials to another person or organization, you lose control of where they might go next. There are a number of resources for royalty-free photos, drawings and clip-art, as well as reasonably priced stock photo and cartoon galleries. The quality of these images is usually much better than you can copy/paste from Google images.
Practice, practice, practice
Perhaps you are comfortable delivering remarks from a set of bullet points jotted on an index card. Or maybe you prefer to fully script your talking points. Whatever your speaking style (as long as it’s not reading the text right off the slide!) running through your presentation a few times with your slides, and perhaps a friendly audience of colleagues, can help you identify and smooth out issues with delivery cadence (too fast or too slow), unclear points, clunky jokes or potential gaffes.
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