Delivering presentations is becoming a reality for more job roles. Whether this be for managers explaining changes to the team in a meeting, researches presenting their findings to a conference, lawyers explaining their services to a prospective client, or project leaders presenting an update to seniors in a meeting. But how can we do this with more impact without trying to be something we’re not?
The fundamental point is that your audience is there to listen to you. The slides are important, but only as a support. You are the main event.
So spending a lot of time on slides and slide design, transitions, images etc may well be important but they are no replacement for you and what you say. Consider any presentation you have attended in the last year and think about what you remember. Do you remember the slides or the person? Chances are you remember maybe one key point from the talk.
If you are thinking about how much time to spend in preparing slides and how much on what you are going to say, how you are going to say it and how to engage your audience, it may well be worth considering a 70:30 split. Powerpoint is a fabulous and effective tool, but it can absorb a lot of time. Time that may well be better spent on planning what to say and how to say it.
One way of planning is to consider presenting without slides and then looking at how to add them to emphasise key points, or as a navigation background to your presentation.
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Developing & delivering a power point presentations with more impact