Great presentations are built around connection, storytelling and engagement – not endless PowerPoint slides. Too often, speakers rely on slide decks as a safety net, forgetting that audiences are there to hear a message, not simply watch information appear on a screen.
Why is it that after so many years of painful, boring and overlong PowerPoint presentations, this whole process hasn’t been confined to the scrap heap?
Your audience isn’t there to watch slides; they’re there to hear you.
If you have something to impart that your audience needs to know, make it engaging, urgent and interesting by telling stories, opening their minds to something new and not using a single slide.
What Is Death By PowerPoint
“Death by PowerPoint” is a well-known phrase used to describe presentations where slides overwhelm the audience rather than support the speaker. It is often used when a presentation becomes too focused on slides, excessive information and reading from a screen rather than creating genuine engagement. However painful this is to the person in question, it almost never stops them from inflicting the same on others when it is their turn to speak.
Using slides is a habit which has become way out of control. I was hoping that as the years passed, people would just ditch using slides and begin to properly engage their audiences to the maximum benefit of both audience and speaker. If one knows that it is terribly annoying when you are on the receiving end, why dish it out to others? They feel the same way about your presentation as you do about theirs.
Break The Habit
Bad habits can be difficult to shift, especially if peer pressure dictates that this is “the thing” to do. Human history is littered with examples; some people overcome their bad habits and others continue unabated. Presentation slides are misused and offer very little to the audience and in effect offer very little to you. Consistently slides are used as an aide-memoir, or to provide something to hold (the device that changes the slides) as it is perceived, not always correctly, to help with nerves. Many cigarette smokers feel the need to have something in their hands to help them feel more comfortable or confident in a given situation. In both examples it may well make you feel better but they create long term damage and don’t have the desired effect on other people.
Poor Teaching
The reason that so many people use slides is because other people do, it is what they perceive as the expected requirement and it what they have been taught to do. It is like a doom loop, one person does it, demonstrates to the next who uses slides and then demonstrates to the next person who follows accordingly… rinse and repeat! If you are on the receiving end of poor teaching, you will just exacerbate the poor learning and spread it to others. It is now time to disregard what you have been taught and leave the slides alone.
Slip-Sliding Away
Some years back I helped a lawyer with her presentation she was delivering to prospective clients a week later. She had a presentation that she wanted me to look at which, inevitably, was accompanied by a deck of slides. One of the slides displayed a photo of the exterior of a Marks and Spencer store. I questioned what the purpose of the slide was? She explained that she was working with M&S and wanted to share this fact with her audience, as it was relevant. I questioned whether any single member of her audience would be unaware of that particular brand and she was confident that 100% would know Marks and Spencer. She agreed that it was an unnecessary slide and that she was spoon-feeding an intelligent group of people. One by one each slide was deemed unnecessary until she had removed them all. A week later she delivered a impactful, memorable and slide-free talk which had its desired effect and more. Slides are rarely, if ever, any use, let them slide.
Let’s Chat
If you are engrossed in a conversation in which both you and the person you are talking with are fully engaged it would be somewhat peculiar if you suddenly brought out your laptop and showed slides, no longer connecting directly with the other person and requested that they no longer look at you and look at your screen instead. The technology has become a barrier to making a real connection and alienates the other person without you noticing. If changing the conversation to accommodate the tech seems clumsy when talking one-to-one, it has the same effect when its one-to-many. Instead transport the intimate conversation to the stage. The more relaxed, conversational and informal your presentation is, the increased likelihood of a successful outcome.
Alternative Engagement Tools That Deliver With Impact
By removing the slides you now have a wide open space to work with your audience giving yourself the opportunity to invite them to interact with you and to ask good open questions while you are presenting. When they need to see something written down, write it down so that they are watching you do it. This helps them commit what you are saying to their memory. Flip-charts are the answer (not white boards as you may need to wipe out something you have written to accommodate the next bit.). Don’t write on any of the flip-chart pages before the session, that is nearly as ineffective as a slide. In addition, or as an alternative you can use props or simply draw with your hands, it has real subconscious impact on the audience.
Centre Fold
It is vital that you are the centre of your presentation and everyone is focused on you and your message. When you use slides you need to stand aside and allow the screen to take centre stage. Slides are stealing your air time and drawing attention away from you the presenter.
Risks
When using slides for a presentation you are risking irritating all of your audience all at once. Assertive people (iMA High Reds and High Yellows) require that you pick up the pace and move on to the next slide, while non-assertive people (iMA High Greens and High Blues) need you to slow down and take more time with each slide. That covers everyone in the room, no one is happy with the pace. Other risks include darkening a room, which makes some people sleepy, and the risk of the technology failing. If you speak without slides you remove all of these risks, in fact you are almost risk free.
In Conclusion
I have covered a number of reasons why not to use slides when presenting to an audience. What I haven’t done is give any reasons for using slides. The reason for that is that I strongly believe there aren’t any.
If you’re still not convinced that presentations are better without slides, read my article, 6 Reasons Why PowerPoint Is Killing Your Presentations (And What to Do Instead), where I explain why audiences remember stories, not slide decks.
