Presentation Lessons from the Olympic Games

The Olympic Winter Games comes to a close today in Vancouver. Our family loves the Olympics and we’ve pretty much been glued to the great coverage that has been provided. After stepping back and thinking about what we have observed the last two weeks, I have a few lessons that we can apply to our presentations.

The first lesson is the power of a story. The moments we will remember from these Games all revolve around a compelling story. Whether it is adversity faced by an athlete before the competition or a tremendous performance way above expectations, we remember because the story touches us emotionally. The lesson for presenters is to use stories to help our audiences remember our key messages. Learn to create and tell stories well.

The second lesson is in how the stories have been told on TV. Television knows that stories keep viewers glued to the TV, so they produce segments well in advance that tell you the compelling story of the athlete, their background, family and past struggles. This gives you a new context for what is going to happen and you emotionally invest in the outcome of the competition. As presenters, we need to make sure we are giving our audiences the proper context for our message, perhaps showing them an angle they haven’t considered before. And when we explain what it means to them personally, we tap into the emotional investment of each audience member.

The final lesson is an observation of some key factors that contribute to an athlete reaching the podium. Yes, they are talented, but so is everyone else in their sport. The difference is that the winning athletes have a burning desire to win and they have the coaching and support that helps them make it. They can’t do it alone, they need the hours of practice and the advice of experts who can help them get better. As presenters, how often do we think that we can just “wing it”? It never works out well. We need to take a page from the Olympians book and rehearse our presentations so they are the best they can be. We need to seek the advice of those who can help us get better, whether that advice is coaching or through books and videos that teach us new approaches and techniques.

The Olympics are a great demonstration of what it takes to create a great performance and tell that story to the world. Take these lessons and use them to make it to the podium after your next presentation.

Don’t put animation on the Slide Master in PowerPoint

The Slide Master is where you should set your colors, fonts, branding and any other graphics that give your slides a consistent look. The one thing you should not do on the Slide Master is add an animation effect. If you do, that animation applies to every slide in the file. This causes a problem that was highlighted for me this week.

Earlier this week I was helping a presenter get ready for an upcoming web presentation. The Slide Master had been given to him and he wasn’t that familiar with PowerPoint. I showed him how to use pictures and visuals instead of bullet point text, and he created some good slides. The problem came when he started to run through the slides in practicing for his session.

The content placeholder on the Slide Master had an animation effect added. This meant that the first element he had placed on the slide was animated, but the rest of the elements were not. On one slide, the first picture he inserted was animated after the rest of the pictures, which were not animated because they had been added later. On a number of slides the text he wanted to appear when the slide was first displayed, did not appear because it was automatically animated to come on with builds. The slides appeared to be randomly animated when viewed in Slide Show mode.

In reality, the Slide Master animation was causing the problem. So I helped him fix his slides by moving the animation effects from the Slide Master to each of the individual problem slides. Then we could delete the animation effects he didn’t need. In the future, I suggested he take the animation effect off the Slide Master as it was bound to cause these sorts of problems again.

The lesson for all presenters is to start by ensuring that the Slide Master has no animation effects added. If it does, remove them before you start creating slides, so that you don’t have a lot of cleanup work like this presenter did.

PowerPoint Tip: “How Many Slides?” is the wrong question to ask

I often get asked in workshops, “How many slides should I have for an x minute presentation?” And I’ve now come to the conclusion that this isn’t even the right question to be asking. In the past, when we put up a slide and spoke to it, we counted the number of slides. Today, I think the relevant measure is how many different visual impressions are used.

By a visual impression, I mean something different on the screen for the audience to look at. For example, let’s say you have one slide and it has a headline and three images with text underneath each image. To explain each point individually, you build the slide so each image appears with the corresponding text. I suggest that you would then have four visual impressions: 1) the slide with just the headline, which introduces the topic you will be talking about, 2) the slide with the first image and text added, 3) the slide with the second image and text added, and 4) the slide with now all images and text appearing.

So if the right question to ask is “How many visual impressions should I have?”, then I think we can get guidance from the visual medium most people are familiar with – television. To get a sense of how many visual impressions TV uses, I looked at two brief news clips on CNN.com recently that are representative of typical TV clips. One was produced by CNN and profiled one of the people considered a CNN Hero for the charitable work they do. The other was a news story produced in the UK by ITV news. In TV, any new segment of the story is a new visual impression, but any new camera angle is also a new visual impression. In the CNN clip, they showed 33 visual impressions in 96 seconds and the ITV piece used 12 visual impressions in 86 seconds. So, on average, they are showing a new visual impression every 7 seconds or even sooner.

Why does television do this? Because it keeps our attention. And attention means we are listening to the story and taking in the message. This has significant implications for business presenters who want their audiences to pay attention to the message being delivered. It is no longer good enough to put up a slide and talk about it for two minutes. People aren’t going to pay attention for that long since they have been conditioned to see visual impressions more often than every few minutes.

Remember that people are not comparing your presentation to a presentation from a colleague. They are comparing your presentation to the other visual media they see. So you are competing with television whether you like it or not. Should you be having a new visual impression every 7 seconds? I don’t think you need to go that far, but here are two suggestions to consider that will increase the number of visual impressions that you use in your presentations without having to change the content.

First, build each point on your slides. If you have multiple bullet points, build each one so you can discuss each item individually and keep the audience’s attention with a new visual impression. If you are using a visual such as a diagram or graph, build the parts of the visual and the callout as you speak about that point. Each new part of the visual will be a new visual impression for the audience. Building points on your slide is the fifth step in my five-step KWICK method from my book The Visual Slide Revolution. In the book I state it as "K- Keep Focus" because building our points keeps the audience focused on what we want them to hear.

Second, remember that you are a visual impression as well. Turn off the slides once in a while and have the audience focus just on you when you deliver a powerful point that does not need visual support. Just by implementing these two suggestions, you will increase the number of visual impressions you use and better focus the audience on your message.

I think you can go even further by using persuasive PowerPoint visuals instead of text slides to increase the impact of your communication. When you are ready to take your presentations to that next level, check out my book The Visual Slide Revolution. You’ll learn how to create a visual to replace text and the steps are easy to apply to your own slides.

Dilbert illustrates Annoying PowerPoint survey results

Check out today's Dilbert comic by Scott Adams:



I think it is a perfect illustration of the latest Annoying PowerPoint Survey that found, once again, that reading your slides to the audience is the most annoying thing you can do as a presenter using PowerPoint. It causes audience members, like Wally in the strip above, to want to harm themselves. Full survey results are here.

Six Presentation Lessons from Grey’s Anatomy

Last night I watched Grey’s Anatomy instead of the Canadian Olympic Men’s Hockey team play Switzerland (love for my wife won out). In the episode, three doctors present cases from their past in order to teach other doctors key lessons (you can watch the episode, titled The Time Warp, online). I think as presenters we can learn some good lessons from how these doctors did their presentations.

First up was Dr. Torres. She is a nervous wreck and in trying to start her slides, she inadvertently shows a personal picture instead of a picture of the patient. Lesson #1 is to not send your laptop image to the projector until you have the correct image ready. Her slides are awful. She has a multi-colored background, every bullet point is in a different color, including dark text on a dark background, and the slides were disconnected from what she was stumbling through. Lesson #2 is to design slides that are easy to see and connect with what you are saying. She is fumbling so badly, that a colleague starts to engage her in a conversation to help walk her through the case. This calms her down and she finally sits on the edge of the stage and just tells the story. At one point, she is asked to show the X-ray that will illustrate the point she is making, so she shows that visual because it adds to the story. Lesson #3 is to aim for a conversation with the audience and use visuals only when they enhance the story.

Next up is Dr. Bailey. She is more comfortable presenting and starts by engaging the audience and interacting with them. She asks questions and throws chocolates to the one who answers correctly. Lesson #4 is to plan how you will interact with the audience. She uses slides, but they are mostly bullet lists and she didn’t really need them because her style of interacting with the audience works so well. Lesson #5 is that you shouldn’t feel compelled to use slides just because you can.

Finally we have the former chief of the hospital, Dr. Webber. He was requested at the last minute to participate, so he had no time to prepare any visuals. He just stands and tells his story. He is engaging, holds the audience’s attention and makes them feel what he was feeling at the time. He needs no visuals and is very inspiring. At the end, he is the only one who gets a standing ovation. Lesson #6 is that sometimes the best approach, especially when you are trying to inspire the audience, is to use no visuals at all.

All three doctors were telling the story of a past patient case. And all three took very different approaches. Keep these lessons in mind when you prepare and deliver your next presentation.

The risk of too much design in our presentations

What could possibly be wrong about too much design in our presentations?

Just so we are all clear, I’m not talking about large keynote style presentations that have a significant entertainment component. Almost none of us will be working on presentations like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” presentation that won an Academy Award (evidence of the entertainment component).

I’m talking about the type of presentations that most of us work on. Presentations such as training programs, sales presentations, project status updates, and reporting on financial or operational results. In these types of presentations, when there is too much design in the graphics and movement, the risk is that it is perceived as slick.

Why is slick a bad thing? Because one good definition of slick from dictionary.com is “deftly executed and having surface appeal or sophistication, but shallow or glib in content.” Here are three problems with “slick” in a presentation:
1) The audience thinks you spent more time working on the look than the content (whether that is actually true or not). The audience for our presentations wants solid content as the primary focus.
2) The audience wonders what you are trying to hide in the presentation. They figure you are trying to dazzle them with a flashy look to cover up something else.
3) Your boss may wonder how much time you spent on the presentation and what other more important tasks you could have used some of that time for.

So instead of aiming to compete with the flashy entertaining keynote presentations, I suggest you focus on making your presentation clear. Create a simple background design that is not distracting. Use headlines to clearly summarize the point of each slide for your audience. Use simple visuals and simple animation to illustrate the point.

Be cautious about overinvesting in the design of your presentation because it takes time that could be better spent on other valuable activities.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #45 - Transforming speaker notes into a visual

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Far too many slides are, in reality, notes for the speaker to remember what they are supposed to say. The slides end up being read to the audience. This makeover takes a wordy slide and the accompanying speaking notes and shows how the clues hidden in the text can lead to a more effective visual.

This slide is based on a consulting assignment, but many of the slides are submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

Good example of calling an audible and other presenter lessons

Recently, Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith, a law enforcement trainer, went to the UAE to do some training. She documents her experience in an article on the Police One web site. There are a few lessons we can all learn from her experience.

First, a strict focus on the audience. She knew this would be a different audience, so she committed to do the research necessary to be prepared. How much time do most presenters devote to studying the audience? Not enough in my experience.

Second, she moved from mostly text slides to visuals. Read what she says about how it freed her to focus on sharing her message and interacting with the audience. If you are concerned that without the text you won’t know what to say, my bet is that you’d be surprised how much you can share on a topic you are passionate about. You don’t need all that text on your slides. It’s not supposed to be group reading, it’s supposed to be a presentation.

Third, she called an audible when she realized that not all of what she had prepared would be appropriate for the audience. She asked the students what they needed to learn. She called this her most valuable lesson and summed it up as follows: “It’s less about what you have to teach and more about what your students want (or need) to learn.” I could not say it any better.

Sgt. Smith was forced to re-examine her presentation due to a totally new situation she found herself in. You don’t have to wait for this type of circumstance to take a fresh look at your presentations. Do it today.

PowerPoint Tip: Drawing on top of graphs

Web content is becoming more and more important to include in our presentations. Whether it is traditional research we do or new content like blogs and Twitter, we need to use our access to a broader range of information to bring the latest perspectives to our audience. I’ll be doing a program in May for the DPI-PDW Conference in Ottawa that includes ideas on how to find and incorporate content from the web. Today’s tip deals with how to effectively use a graph that you have as an image, whether it is from the web or an internal source.

The problem with graphs that are images is that you can’t animate them. They are a static image and can’t be broken into series of data like you can with a graph created in PowerPoint. With a PowerPoint graph, you can build it piece by piece to explain the data one at a time. A graph image can't be built piece by piece. You could try to recreate the graph in PowerPoint, and I have done that on occasion, but some graphs are too complex to recreate in PowerPoint. So what can you do?

In October last year I showed an effective way to deal with this situation in one of my slide makeover videos (to see all the videos, check out my YouTube channel). Some people followed up with me after that video and asked how I had done that makeover, so let me explain.

First, I decided on the most important point the graph was making. In the case of the makeover graph, it was about showing a decline in the measured value over time. In your case it may be a trend line that shows financial data or it might be one of the lines already on a graph that you want to highlight as the key focus of the data.

Second, I placed the graph image on the slide and made it as large as I could. This may involve cropping out excess room around the graph or cropping out the title of the graph (since the slide title will be the headline). After cropping, I can resize the graph, making sure to hold down the Shift key as a drag a corner handle so the graph does not get distorted.

Third, I used the freeform line tool to draw a multi-segmented line through the data points in the graph to show the trend. Depending on your need, it may be a simple straight line or another shape, like a rectangle to go over a bar or column. With this shape, I can set the color and thickness so it is easy to see.

Finally, I animated the line so it built in the direction I wanted and in the sequence I needed to deliver the message.

When you are faced with using an image of a graph, use these steps to make your delivery more effective.

Training sessions don’t need to be boring

In his latest column for BusinessWeek.com, communications consultant Carmine Gallo shares an example of PowerPoint used well to train employees. Training sessions often use PowerPoint, but too often it is not done well. Carmine uses an example of employee training at Wente Vineyards. I’ve been to their location in Livermore, California, so it caught my attention. Here are a few observations about what is described in the article.

First, the presenter, Dan Carroll talked about making it relevant to the audience by using something they are already familiar with. This is the In Context step in my five-step KWICK method for creating persuasive visuals that is described in my book The Visual Slide Revolution. If you use analogies, descriptions and media that the audience can’t relate to, they won’t understand your point. If you use things that they can relate to, they get interested. Look at what caught my attention in the story, the Wente Vineyards. I have been to the winery and we have a cookbook from there, so it caught my attention because I was familiar with it already.

Second, if you are going to use PowerPoint, use it well. Carroll dismisses the notion that PowerPoint shouldn’t be used simply because many people don’t use it well. The tool can be effective and he shows how to use it well. He uses photos and videos, and uses it to reinforce his message, not as a substitute for his message. If you have to present definitions as part of your training program, check out my latest slide makeover video for some tips on how to make definitions interesting.

Third, the underlying key to making training engaging and effective is the attitude you bring to the session. If you are not an expert in the area and don’t feel passionately about the topic, it will show through no matter what you say or what slides you use. Great presenters know when to decline an invitation to speak because they are not the right person to do the session.

Good tips and reminders for those of us who present training programs.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #44 - Making Definitions Interesting

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. In too many training and teaching presentations, the definitions of key terms are read verbatim from text on the slides. This makeover shows that defintions can be interesting if you connect with the audience and leave them with a definition they will remember.

This slide is based on a consulting assignment, but many of the slides are submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.