Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that if you are giving a presentation, don't
Speaker 1: read your slides. The only reason to have slides is
Speaker 1: to show something visually beyond what you are saying. Every
Speaker 1: meeting will be better if you keep this rule in mind.
Speaker 1: Today's tip was inspired by Bill McGowan's new book, Speak Memorably.
Speaker 1: McGowan is a communications coach. He teaches people from lots
Speaker 1: of different walks of life how to present more effectively.
Speaker 1: As you might imagine, a lot of speakers use PowerPoint,
Speaker 1: a lot of people presenting at meetings use PowerPoint. There
Speaker 1: is almost no getting away from Microsoft's presentation software, and
Speaker 1: it does do some useful things. But you know what
Speaker 1: PowerPoint isn't a script to be read from mcgwen uses
Speaker 1: the phrase good PowerPoint hygiene, and a key part of
Speaker 1: that is that you should not read your slides. There
Speaker 1: is no quicker way to forfeit the engagement of the
Speaker 1: audience than to narrate your deck. He says, the more
Speaker 1: text you have on your slides, the less your audience
Speaker 1: will listen to you. After all, they don't need to
Speaker 1: if whatever you are going to say is written right
Speaker 1: there on your slide. I suspect people do this narrating
Speaker 1: their slides so they know what they should be saying.
Speaker 1: They treat their slides as notes, But then why not
Speaker 1: have notes? In most cases that is okay if you
Speaker 1: are on a big conference stage giving a ted talk
Speaker 1: or something that is different. But if that is the case,
Speaker 1: I hope you know your material well enough that you
Speaker 1: don't really need it written out word for word. Those
Speaker 1: people shouldn't be reading their slides either. The purpose of
Speaker 1: a slide is not to provide notes. It is to
Speaker 1: show something visually that will reinforce the point you are making. Truly,
Speaker 1: that is the only point of having slides. So you
Speaker 1: could talk about boosting sales and then show a graph
Speaker 1: where your sales are clearly going up. Or you can
Speaker 1: talk about a confusing interface and then show a picture
Speaker 1: highlighting exactly why it's confusing. Or you can show a
Speaker 1: picture that illustrates your point that people are always looking
Speaker 1: at their phones, because it is a photo of people
Speaker 1: in front of the Grand Canyon and they are all
Speaker 1: staring at their phones. Those are interesting slides. Your script,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is not an interesting slide. People
Speaker 1: will glance at the words and then tune you out.
Speaker 1: They might wonder why all of this couldn't have been
Speaker 1: an email instead. Longtime listeners know that I don't use
Speaker 1: PowerPoint in my speeches most of the time. Most of
Speaker 1: the time, conference hosts are actually excited about this, because
Speaker 1: the audience has seen so many slides that it's kind
Speaker 1: of nice to have a break. My time management speeches
Speaker 1: are done more as a one woman act, and just
Speaker 1: as with performing a play, I have memorized the various
Speaker 1: versions of my talk that I might give. I know
Speaker 1: that is not feasible for your average two PM meeting,
Speaker 1: where you are simply showing the management team your progress
Speaker 1: on a project. It wouldn't really make sense to treat
Speaker 1: this as a one person show. But that said, thinking
Speaker 1: a bit more about what should be on a slide
Speaker 1: and what shouldn't, and making sure that the slides compliment
Speaker 1: rather than duplicate your talk, we'll go a long way
Speaker 1: toward making that two pm meeting a little less boring,
Speaker 1: and that would make the world a better place. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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