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Forget My 7 Presentation Pointers - Talk From Your Heart
By Ron | August 25, 2008
While reading one of my favorite blogs this morning, “Know HR,” I was thinking about the zillion presentations I’ve suffered through in the workplace.
The one thing you could count on in the electronic industry were countless meetings and presentations. I have always had a hard time sleeping at night, but the minute the lights dimmed and some engineer started showing his slides, I was off to slumberland.
Before Power Point and projectors hooked up to laptops, we had overheads (we called them “foils”). Typically presenters would fill up a “foil” with what looked like a page from the New York phone directory. The presenter would then proceed to read each slide. Power Point just made the phone directory page look prettier, but the presentation was still the same - zzzzzzz.
After many years of being subjected to this abuse, I put together a little workshop on how to give presentations. Here is some of the advice I gave to my contemporaries:
1. Just like when we were in the 6th grade doing a report - have an introduction, a body and a conclusion (the old adage: Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and, then, tell them what you told them).
2. Don’t put more than 6 bullets on each slide.
3. Make the title of each slide like a newspaper article heading: “New Design Will Change Industry”
4. Face the audience.
5. Remember, we can read, so…Do not read the slides to us.
6. You know the subject - talk to us. Engage us - ask questions.
7. End with a flourish (I confess - I borrowed this from Frank this morning!)
Actually, the best presentation I witnessed was by a Marketing VP who didn’t use any slides. He just talked from his heart.
Topics: HR, Leadership, Management |
August 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I do think the best ones don’t use slides. That’s just great. Good lessons, Ron.