Guest Post - Weber Schulz

Weber is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about presentations.

Not So Much Power… Point

If I were to ask you to give a presentation on a topic of your choice, what would be your default method of presenting? Would you use props? A Whiteboard? PowerPoint? Just from simple observation, when there is a presentation, there is usually PowerPoint. The PowerPoint presentation has become a staple in most classrooms, meetings, and information sessions. From observing this, one might conclude that this is because a PowerPoint slide deck is the most effective means of communicating ideas and information.  Being a student, I am exposed to between 5 and 10 PowerPoint presentations a week, and not only are they most interesting part of my day, but they inspire me to be an overall better person.

Let me pause to wipe the sarcasm dripping from my brow. Most PowerPoint presentations I see are information heavy, aesthetically unappealing and do a poor job of enhancing the presentation. That is what PowerPoint is supposed to do, right? Enhance? However, instead of enhancing a presentation, more often I see it taking over the presentation. It steps out of the role as a visual aid, and becomes the backbone of the presentation. As a presenter, it is all too easy to dump all of your information into the slides and reiterate the content back to the audience. At this point, the presenter assumes the role of an assistant to the slides while they present the information. This approach takes most of the pressure off the presenter, and requires little creativity or audience interaction. It also leaves the audience bored, uninterested and disconnected. 

A survey was conducted by Dave Paradi (www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com) asking people the top three things they found most annoying about PowerPoint presentations. When asked, 73.8% said “the speaker read the slides to us,” 51.6% said that there was “full sentences instead of bullet points,” and 48.1% said “text was so small I couldn’t read it.” These three complaints scream one thing loud and clear: the slides are doing the presenting, and the presenter is just the aid. 

This begs for the question: how can we reclaim what PowerPoint has so tactfully taken? How do we become the presenter again, and effectively use PowerPoint as a visual aid? Here are a few suggestions to make your PowerPoint less, well, powerful. There are many answers to this, but I think the first step is to continually remind yourself of whom is presenting. YOU ARE. Make sure that you and your PowerPoint line up, but that your slides compliment what YOU are saying. They shouldn’t say it for you. If they do, then why are you saying it? Slides should be visually stimulating, and should make the audience want to hear what YOU have to say. Lastly, keep it simple. The amount of text, the variety of colors, and assortment of fonts should be tasteful, yet not distracting.

Remember. It’s your presentation. It’s your PowerPoint.