Making a good presentation is hard work and there are a lot of different factors that determine whether a presentation ultimately succeeds or fails. Many people say that it’s all in the delivery and while that may be true, how well you can deliver a presentation greatly depends on your skills as a presenter and improving those requires a lot of practice. In this three-article series I will therefore focus on the absolute basics, on things that you can change right now and that I believe will greatly improve the quality of your presentations. Part one and two of the series are all about the content, the preparation and the actual delivery. In part three, I will then talk about how to make slides that don’t suck, how to make them pretty and how to make them look professional, even if you don’t consider yourself to be especially creative or color-coordinated.
So without further ado, here is the first part of the series:
Tell a story
A lot of the presentations I’ve seen lately were just giving facts; tons and tons of facts. Facts that probably were really interesting, but without a context they were completely meaningless to me. For me, and I’m sure for a lot of other people as well, it’s a lot easier to connect with something on an emotional level when it’s delivered in the form of a story. Take this wonderful talk on education by the brilliant Sir Ken Robinson for example. I’ve first watched this talk maybe a year ago and I still remember most of his points. That’s because he doesn’t just deliver the facts, he also gives concrete examples that I can relate to. But what if you don’t have a story to tell? In that case, just make something up! I had to give a presentation on the SOAP web service protocol a while ago and I started it with an example of a company that was trying to connect their different branches together via the Web. Of course I made it perfectly clear that the example was fictional, but it still was pretty effective.
Control the audience’s attention
If you watch any kind of professionally made movie and you look at the composition and overall aesthetics of each frame, you will realize that it is often done in a way that guides your attention to a particular spot. If the director and his cinematographer want you to look at a particular person, they will probably put that person relatively close to the center of the frame (usually not dead center because that looks boring) and they will probably bring that person into focus while putting everything else out of focus. Look at this picture for example. You instinctively look at the valve before you examine the rest of the photo, because it is in focus and because it is positioned relatively close to the center (roughly following the “golden ratio”). When you’re giving a presentation, you too need to control the audience’s attention. That is why having ten bullet points on a slide is a very bad idea. Lawrence Lessig is well-known for his distinctive presentation style and his slides are a great example of controlling the audience’s attention. He typically has one idea per slide, often made-up of three words or less and he shows his slides at a pretty high frequency. I tried a similar presentation style once and I ended up with 150 slides for a 60 minute presentation. Of course it doesn’t have to be that extreme, but you should still try to put as little text on your slides as possible. People don’t have to be able to look at your slides and understand what your presentation is about. In fact, if they can follow your presentation without hearing you speak, you’ve essentially made yourself expendable.
Don’t read your slides
In my eyes, this is the worst presentation mistake you can make. Actually the worst mistake is to read the slides from the projected image while facing away from the audience and yes, people do that. But reading the slides from your notebook’s screen isn’t great either. Here’s the thing: I know how to read. In fact, I can probably read faster than you can talk. So as soon as I realize that you’re just reading your slides, I’ll read them myself and not pay attention to you anymore. If you’re uncomfortable talking without notes, simply use Power Point’s note feature along with the “presenter view” or if you’re old fashioned, print your notes onto cards that you can hold in your hand.
Practice your presentation
This is such a no-brainer and yet so many people don’t do it. That’s a real bummer because good preparation can make your presentation so much better. First of all, if you practice your presentation before you deliver it in front of an audience, you’ll know almost exactly how long it is. The reason why this is so important is because people will hate you if you go overtime. This is especially true when giving presentations in front of customers or other important people. They probably have places to be and if you steal their time, they will not appreciate it. But practice is also important because it keeps you from making silly mistakes. The other day, I attended a presentation and the presenter said “Hmm, there was another slide right here. Don’t know where it went.” Now a good presenter would’ve pulled a Sarah Palin and just talked about something else, but such mistakes are easily avoided altogether with the right amount of preparation. What’s much more important however is that when you practice your presentation, you can fine-tune your lines. I usually make my lines up as I go, but oftentimes I’m not sure how to best express a particular idea. In those cases, I sit down and think of a good sentence which I then memorize. So when I deliver my presentation in front of an audience, I can be very articulate and still speak freely and without a manuscript.
Continue to part two.
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Apparently, there is also a book of the same name. I really think they should have made something like this a required lecture in the bachelors course.
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