Another PowerPointless presentation –well, not all of it

A presentation aimed at a room of 25 business owners and managers that filled many slides with 8 to 12 numbered/bulleted points. That means the text was not evident to those beyond the first three rows –provided they had 20:20 or corrected vision.

While the practical sessions helped to make the workshop more meaningful for the participants, a golden opportunity was lost by limiting the extent of the learning outcomes. Promises to send the slides later may seem ideal –but could in fact be just another promise. As one delegate, who had attended an earlier workshop by the same team said in an aside, "well, sending the slides didn't work on the last training workshop, so I doubt they will arrive this time around”.

Maybe the facilitators preferred to achieve a 50% rather than 95% success rate of learning outcomes –actions that delegates take later.

Here are a few suggestions to avoid embarrassment to yourself and irritation to your listeners:

• Use visual aids appropriate to your presentation. Choose from photographs, flip-charts, sample materials, PowerPoint slides.

• Despite research showing that an audience cannot read the slides and listen to the speaker saying the same words simultaneously, too many presenters continue to use PowerPoint slides as notes to be read to the audience.

• When used skilfully, PowerPoint slides can take an average presentation up several notches and make it truly memorable. –for the right reason.

• Do not spend the time apologising for not being skilled in using your visual aides. Instead, prepare beforehand how to use the equipment or have a skilled operator do these tasks for you.

• If your visual aids irritate, confuse or bore your audience, you won’t succeed in giving a stunning presentation, gain the attention of your audience or create a desire in then for your message.

Murphy’s Law about if anything can go wrong, it will, often seems applicable to using visual aids in presentations. So, always check and recheck your visual aids before your presentation. Ensure you have an alternative/ backup way of delivering your presentation in the event Murphy’s Law kicks in and the equipment malfunctions.

Beat Murphy at his own game....

Veronica