Why PowerPoint is ruining your presentation

Speaking
Written By Liam Sandford

When you have a presentation coming up the first thing you do is open PowerPoint. Quickly followed by creating an ‘agenda’ slide. Then comes adding bullet points to your main slides. A couple of images might feature, and maybe even slide animations.

It is possible that once you have completed your slides, you close PowerPoint and your preparation is done. You don’t look at it again until it is time to present.

This is destroying your presentation.

You have made everything about you. The slides were made for you as a prompt on what to say. Maybe you even read straight from the slides during your delivery. If the tech fails so do you — you have made PowerPoint your crutch.

Luckily for you, it does not have to be that way.

Here is what you should do instead:

Make it about the audience

Before you do anything else, pinpoint exactly what the audience need and want from you. This includes:

  • The topic they want you to cover

  • How they want to receive the information

  • Actionable items you can give them

  • Moments (or stories) they will remember when your presentation is over

Only when you have this information should you start designing the slides. With everything you put on a slide, consider if there is a better way that you can portray it to the audience, or whether it adds value to them.

If you put something on the slide for your benefit rather than the audience, delete it.

Always look through the lens of what the audience want and need.

Structure for attention

If you have a 30 minute presentation, the 10/10/10 structure is common but unhelpful. This comprises of:

  • 10 minutes telling the audience what you are going to tell them.

  • 10 minutes telling them.

  • 10 minutes telling the audience what you just told them.

What a waste of everyone’s time.

Instead, skip the agenda and open with something that captures attention, is relevant to what you are going to tell them, and let the audience know why they should care about what you have to say.

Then give them the main points.

And end with a call to action — give them a very clear action that they can take right now.

This is the only structure you need. Open, Body, Close.

If you are opening with a slide with an agenda on, you have lost 50% of the audience before you even started. The first second counts — use it wisely.

Make the audience need you

If your audience could recreate the whole presentation by being sent the slides, you don’t need to be there. Make the slides the supporting act to what you are saying, not the main part.

Make what you say the main content for your presentation, not what is on screen. This is how you start creating more engagement with your audience. When something is on screen and you are talking, you are giving people two places to focus their time.

Instead, make your slides the support act rather than the headliner, and use any visuals to help explain your key points — direct the audience focus to the screen at the relevant times.

If you rely on the slides to get you through the presentation you are a public reader, not a public speaker.

By making your audience need you:

  • You deliver a better presentation

  • You create a stronger connection with the audience

  • You can deliver without the slides (in case the tech fails)

Actionable takeaways

  • In any type of communication it is not about you, it is about your audience. Start thinking about who you are speaking to and shape everything around their needs.

  • Use the open, body, close structure, and stop opening with an agenda first — it loses your audience.

  • Start using PowerPoint as your support act rather than the headliner. Everything on the slide should be to help your audience. If your audience do not need it, leave it out.

For more tips on how to create PowerPoint slides that do not destroy your presentation, there is a chapter dedicated to it in Effortless Public Speaking. Get your copy today!

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Liam Sandford
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