Can I have your Power Point Presentation Slides?

A speaker is often asked, “Can I have your powerpoint presentation slides?”

I speak on Storytelling at least once a month and I am yet to come across a time when I was not asked, “Can I have your Power Point Presentation Slides?”

What is my response?

“My slides are pictures with a few words on it. They have no meaning without me. So, I am not sure what you will do with it?”

There was a time in my career when I used to ask speakers for slides as well, and till today, I have never looked at those slides. I feel the reason we get asked for slides is because people do not understand some basic things about Powerpoint Presentations.

So what is it about Powerpoint Presentations that we don’t get?

I will share 4 things

1) PowerPoint was developed by engineers as a tool to help them communicate with the marketing department — and vice versa. It was a fabulous replacement to Overhead Projector Slides but we have now made them either a report with every bit of information on it or it’s a teleprompter that we read off.

2)*Make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them.

3) We know that we are not good at multi-tasking. So, if you put too much information on the slide, people are reading the slide and not listening to you. Might as well cancel the presentation and send them a report.

4)* Over the last couple of years I have started giving a written document with my presentations which details what I presents. But what I have learnt is not hand out the written stuff at the beginning. Don’t! If you do, people will read the whole thing while you’re talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your presentation.

Sadly, Powerpoint Presentations remain the most used, yet the worst outcome form of communication in corporates.

*Source: Really Bad Power Point (and how to avoid it) by Seth Godin

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