Don't read your slides

Slides should complement, rather than duplicate, a talk

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that if you are giving a presentation, don't
read your slides. The only reason to have slides is

(00:27):
to show something visually beyond what you are saying. Every
meeting will be better if you keep this rule in mind.
Today's tip was inspired by Bill McGowan's new book, Speak Memorably.
McGowan is a communications coach. He teaches people from lots

(00:49):
of different walks of life how to present more effectively.
As you might imagine, a lot of speakers use PowerPoint,
a lot of people presenting at meetings use PowerPoint. There
is almost no getting away from Microsoft's presentation software, and
it does do some useful things. But you know what

(01:12):
PowerPoint isn't a script to be read from mcgwen uses
the phrase good PowerPoint hygiene, and a key part of
that is that you should not read your slides. There
is no quicker way to forfeit the engagement of the
audience than to narrate your deck. He says, the more

(01:35):
text you have on your slides, the less your audience
will listen to you. After all, they don't need to
if whatever you are going to say is written right
there on your slide. I suspect people do this narrating
their slides so they know what they should be saying.

(01:57):
They treat their slides as notes, But then why not
have notes? In most cases that is okay if you
are on a big conference stage giving a ted talk
or something that is different. But if that is the case,
I hope you know your material well enough that you
don't really need it written out word for word. Those

(02:21):
people shouldn't be reading their slides either. The purpose of
a slide is not to provide notes. It is to
show something visually that will reinforce the point you are making. Truly,
that is the only point of having slides. So you
could talk about boosting sales and then show a graph

(02:44):
where your sales are clearly going up. Or you can
talk about a confusing interface and then show a picture
highlighting exactly why it's confusing. Or you can show a
picture that illustrates your point that people are always looking
at their phones, because it is a photo of people
in front of the Grand Canyon and they are all
staring at their phones. Those are interesting slides. Your script,

(03:08):
on the other hand, is not an interesting slide. People
will glance at the words and then tune you out.
They might wonder why all of this couldn't have been
an email instead. Longtime listeners know that I don't use
PowerPoint in my speeches most of the time. Most of
the time, conference hosts are actually excited about this, because

(03:29):
the audience has seen so many slides that it's kind
of nice to have a break. My time management speeches
are done more as a one woman act, and just
as with performing a play, I have memorized the various
versions of my talk that I might give. I know
that is not feasible for your average two PM meeting,

(03:50):
where you are simply showing the management team your progress
on a project. It wouldn't really make sense to treat
this as a one person show. But that said, thinking
a bit more about what should be on a slide
and what shouldn't, and making sure that the slides compliment
rather than duplicate your talk, we'll go a long way

(04:10):
toward making that two pm meeting a little less boring,
and that would make the world a better place. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening

(04:36):
to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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(04:58):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.