Empower
your point!
How to keep people awake during your PowerPoint
presentation
by Mike Lightfoot
Have you ever come out of a presentation, felt a
little dazed, and wondered 'What was that all about?'. Or - even worse
- have you noticed people fidgeting and falling asleep during your
big presentation? If you answered "yes" to either of these questions,
you're not alone. Here's a simple solution that will help you keep your
presentations shorter, snappier and, well, better.
Time is money
One of the most common complaints in business today is that valuable time
- and therefore money - is lost because of long, badly structured presentations.
In fact, if you listen to the water-cooler chat in most large organizations,
you get the impression that there's nothing that angers employees more
than forcing them to sit through a long presentation when they've got
work that needs to get done. With the 'Empower Your Point Principle',
you can boost the quality of the presentations you give - and reduce frustration
levels - by keeping your presentation short and snappy.
20-minute rule
The idea behind 'Empower Your Point' is clear and simple: Keep your presentation
to 20 minutes or less. This may sound obvious, but, as research has shown,
by imposing a time limit on yourself, you'll be forced to think clearly
about your topic and structure your presentation in such a way that you
get your point across quickly and effectively. You don't need to remember
lots of other guidelines or rules because the Empower Your Point Principle
will automatically push you in the right direction.
Changing mindsets
As an additional - and complementary - step, you could also take advantage
of a presentation skills training course (ask your HR representative).
This will help you develop an 'effective presentation' mindset to further
boost the quality of the presentations you give - and, quite probably,
make you even more popular among your grateful colleagues!
| 5
Top Tips for Empowering Your Point |
|
| • | Decide on the goal of the presentation - and resist the temptation to squeeze in additional info |
| • | Keep the text short and snappy on each slide |
| • | Use bullet points - and avoid large blocks of text |
| • | Illustrate! They say a picture says a thousand words - so get creative |
| • | Practise, practise, practise! If you're not ready, then you're in trouble. Be prepared! |
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