by Cam Barber
Avoid full sentences
Why do speakers fill their slides with full sentences? Usually for one of these reasons: 1) They’re worried about forgetting something. 2) Their slides will be passed on as handouts or emails after the presentation and won’t make sense without full sentences. 3) They believe that more information on the slides shows more research done on the presentation. 4) Everyone else in the organisation does it that way.
Let’s look at each of these reasons.
First, each person needs to decide for themselves how to manage their notes. Some people don’t need any and are happy to talk to a few images or speak from memory. Others want to use their slides to keep them on track. However, reading full sentences doesn’t achieve the goal. Reading can shut down your ability to think freely. And they confuse the audience, who get caught between trying to listen to what you are saying and reading off the screen. The best solution is to reduce the number of words on the screen. You can still use notes as a prompt if you need them, but use your notes to form the sentences yourself rather than reading off the screen. This will keep your brain active and bring the ideas to life more effectively.
Second, a good document makes a poor slide, just as a well designed slide makes a poor document. Trying to achieve both at once will see you fail on both counts. Are you creating a document or a slide? They are different animals. Slides are support to a speaker, while a document needs to convey all the information on its own.
Third, in some corporate cultures, the idea of having no slides, few slides or not much on the slides, is taken as a sign that you haven’t done much research. In other words, throwing more mud on the screen shows how much mud you have been swimming in to prepare this talk (mud equals data in this analogy). So, a lot of people are trying to show that they’re serious and committed to a project by the amount of stuff that they can cram onto their slides. Don’t fall for this.
Fourth, “If your mate Joe put his head in the fire, should you put your head in the fire too?” (When I was a kid, my dad offered this Yoda-like wisdom every time I wasn’t allowed to do something my friends were doing.) Just because your colleagues follow a cluttered slide design, doesn’t mean you should too.
Sometimes full sentences on slides make sense though. It’s not a rule, it’s a guideline. For example, when speaking to an audience in another country or posting slides online. A Vietnamese speaker at a recent conference in Singapore was talking to an audience containing people from the Philippines, Germany, Indonesia, China and Korea. The presentation was in English but the speaker and everybody in the audience had English as their second language. In this case, slides with full sentences (albeit short sentences) were more effective at conveying ideas and developing understanding in the audience.
Bullet points are OK
You might be surprised to read that bullet points are ok. Some good books like Presentation Zen argue that bullet points are bad and we should use more images and much less text. Well, this is a good way to go, but it’s not the only way to go. Bullet points work fine if you verbally bring them to life. Of course, the flip side is also true, your beautiful graphic design won’t have much impact if you don’t explain it effectively.
The essence of Zen design is clean and simple with lots of space and nothing added that doesn’t have a purpose. This trend towards simplicity is a good one. Some people still feel the need to fill all gaps with something, but just like using too many words to get a message across, the more you leave out, the stronger the remaining message becomes.
As always, design fashions can change and people’s preferences will vary. Ultimately, slide design is up to you. And even though bullet points have had bad press, the traditional slide format with a heading and bullet points can be effective when used well. Just don’t pack too many bullets onto a slide, use the minimum number of words you need to reinforce the point, include images and diagrams when you can (and maybe blank the screen from time to time using the ‘B’ key).
Your company logo on every slide?
Good designs tend to have plenty of empty space. Design is not decoration. Who says your logo should be on every slide?! Branding is an often misunderstood term. For example, sticking your logo on every slide is less effective at branding than leaving a branding message in the mind of your audience.
Having your logo on the first and last slide is more effective than putting it on every slide. Why? Because the logo doesn’t help you make a point, but it will clutter your slides, adding to the ‘noise’ and reducing your credibility. How does this reduce your credibility? It makes your presentation look commercial, and we know that people trust editorial content and they distrust advertising content.
So by adding logos all through your presentation, you make it look like an ad, not an editorial-style explanation. We don’t begin every new sentence of a conversation restating our name.
Quote marks can double the impact of a point
Quotes from other people are very powerful. There’s something about the third-party credibility that makes them pop. It’s not you saying it, it’s them supporting your argument.
How many slides per minute?
I’m regularly asked questions like, ‘How many slides per minute is optimum’, or ‘How long should each slide be up on the screen?’
I have no answer because it’s the wrong way to approach visual support. It depends on the slide. A flow chart or diagram may be on screen for five minutes as you explain different parts of it. Text slides would ideally not be up long.
It’s OK to swim in the light of the projector
One of the presentation ‘rules’ out there is that you shouldn’t cast a shadow on the screen. Sure, this is good advice if you are annoyingly standing in front of your slides with the projected colours covering your face like a 1960s LSD trip, and your shadow blocking key components of the slide.
However, this shouldn’t be confused with diving into the light of the projector to highlight, purposefully, an element of your slide that should be highlighted. Standing away from your slide and saying, ‘As you can see…’ without indicating which section of the slide they’re talking about can be ineffective and annoying. So, for example, if you have an image of a scattergraph, don’t say, ‘As you can see, this cluster proves my point’, step into the light and use your hands to show the cluster.
(c) Hans Rosling (TED/leslieimage.com)
Don’t swim the English Channel in the light of the projector, just hop into the plunge pool when you need to focus on a point.
Principle 4: Build chunk structure into your slides
Just as a screenplay is written before a movie is made, it helps to create a speech outline before creating your slides. That way you can embed the chunk structure in the slides to keep both you and your listeners on track. Effortlessly. With the messages and turning points reflected in your slides, you’ll have a guiding hand showing you what to emphasise and when.
Below are three different variations showing how you can use different visual expressions within slides and still reflect the chunk structure. Feel free to combine them to suit your preferences.
1. The Classic Style: Bullet points, headings, images, etc.
2. The Zen Style: No bullet points and a focus on images. This style is outlined beautifully in the book Presentation Zen. Each slide has a key point, while you explain the details verbally. In other words, remove clutter so that only the point/message remains. Consider enlarging your images to cover the entire slide and add your point/message as text within that image. This style can still be built around your structure.
3. The Signpost Style: Use slides for only the key components of your talk. For example, slides only at the start and the end. Or have slides for just 1 or 2 images or charts you want to explain. Or, slides for title, overview, chunk heading and key point. In between, you can have black slides or hit the ‘B’ key. This style gives you great freedom to tell stories or interact with the audience, but you have a slide ready when you
want to make a point or end your talk.
1. The Classic style
2. The Zen style
3. The Signpost style
Should you have a final slide with your message?
It’s your choice to have a slide at the end for your message. Perhaps you list a few words to help remember it. Or, if it’s short enough (like Steve Jobs’ 4-word message, ‘Stay hungry, stay foolish’), you can have the whole thing on the slide. Or, hit the ‘B’ key to blank the screen and deliver your message from memory. The choice is yours.
There are many options for the use of slides. These are just a few examples to get you thinking.
No slides - Jim Collins example
I recently saw Jim Collins speak live (author of Built to Last, Good to Great and Great by Choice). He was terrific. He used no slides at all. During the break, I was chatting with an IT expert about slides versus no slides. He thought it was fantastic to see a speaker who didn’t use PowerPoint. He said that, in the IT industry, virtually every presentation is dominated by PowerPoint. So he asked whether we should dump slides altogether.
When used without thought, PowerPoint can overpower speakers to the point that, after watching three or four speakers in a row, they all seem similar because their use of presentation software is so similar. So he found it quite refreshing to see a speaker with no slides.
Jim Collins tells fantastic stories, all beautifully held together by his leadership principles. However, if Jim Collins was asking for my feedback (of course, he’s not asking for my feedback and seems to be doing fine!), I would recommend some ‘Signpost’ slides. Perhaps 2 or 3 slides at the start, or even just 1 ‘overview’ slide to introduce his topics.
Why? It took the audience a while to understand the scope of his talk, and as a result, it took Jim a while to build momentum and engagement. Slides used solely to create structure at the start can be incredibly effective. They prepare the mind of the listeners in just a few seconds and help them navigate the large amount of content within a long speech. Yet they don’t stifle speakers who prefer the freedom to tell stories and connect with their audience without the distraction of a clicker and a screen.
The wrong debate about slides
When I suggest to speakers that they can have just 1 or 2 slides at the start and then none for the rest of their talk, they usually look confused. The whole debate seems to be about ALL ON or ALL OFF -- pick one or the other. The possibilities for visual support are many and varied, yet the common discussion is a narrow black and white debate of should we have slides, yes or no.
The next level of the debate seems to be a choice between the old style PowerPoint template at one end, and the Zen style at the other end, with slides filled with images and very little text. But this is still a narrow, black and white, good/evil discussion.
Bullet points------------------------------One word per slide
Text-----------------------------------------mages only
The reality is that there is a sliding scale with hundreds of options in between and outside of these 2 perspectives. Don’t waste your energy on a debate about slides versus no slides, use your creative awareness to come up with the best combination of visual options to suit your situation. You get to choose!
PUBLIC SPEAKING RECAP
So, let’s recap the key ideas in this book. There are 3 things that make a great speech.
1. Message. What will they recall that drives your idea into their mind?
2. Structure. How many sections will you have, what are they called and what’s the key point for each?
3. Connection. Give great explanations in the comfort of your own style.
By placing your focus on these 3 areas - and away from the performance rules - you’ll reduce uncertainty and become comfortable in your own skin. And as a result, your anxiety will begin to dissolve. This will effortlessly increase your impact.
SO, TO WRAP UP… BRING YOUR IDEAS TO LIFE!
The word ‘vivid’ comes from the Latin ‘vivere’, which means ‘alive’ or ‘to live’. The heart of this book is about bringing your ideas to life.
Public speaking was my greatest challenge in the past. I spent years feeling out of control, with thoughts bouncing around like a pinball in an old arcade game. This was true for both preparation and delivery. It was out of necessity that I developed the Vivid Method. It dissolves obstacles and reveals a simpler path.
Will this method give you the promised doubling of impact, while halving the effort?
Easily.
In fact, the benefits of pulling away the dark veil from the traditional view of public speaking are much greater. We can now bring our ideas to life more easily. There is such a massive difference between ideas and the execution of ideas. We succeed when we get ideas out of our head and into the minds of others - who can use them and/or share them.
The traditional approach is counterproductive
When presentations are filled with lifeless information, delivered by speakers who are hesitant or full of uncertainty, great ideas are lost as in a fog. The traditional approach feeds this problem by making public speaking seem like a serious, dramatic activity where incomprehensible forces can make you fail or lose control.
But it’s not!
• Preparation is not a big, hairy, directionless exploration, it’s just a process, guided by your message.
• Anxiety is not a mysterious force that attacks you when you are at your most vulnerable, it’s an understandable, observable, natural response to the uncertainty of the spotlight.
• Delivery skills are not a black art that require great acting skills, they are built on breathing comfortably, thinking clearly and being yourself. Recognising this - and having tools to give you clarity and direction - improves your delivery skills effortlessly by opening untapped energy reserves that help bring you to life as you speak.
Ask people: ‘What’s your message?’
Finally, I encourage you to demand greater clarity from people around you. How? Ask them, ‘What’s your message?’
Crisp communication makes a huge difference to the quality of our lives. It helps us manage the growing complexity we must navigate every day. Vivid messages and great explanations help us sort through the noise, sell ideas and get support for projects. Misunderstandings might be normal, but a lot can be done to win the battle against vague and confusing communication by gently demanding clarity.
Let it be known you expect a concise message. Create a culture in your organisation built on the expectation that each person should be able to answer the question, ‘What’s your message?’ when proposing an idea or making a presentation.
This can perform communication miracles.
In the meantime, you now have the tools to bring your own ideas to life. The tools are simple, so you can relax and get on with it :)
Bring your idea to life.
Bring your project to life.
Bring your cause to life.
Bring your product to life.
Bring your story to life…
ATTEND THE TRAINING COURSE…
The Vivid Presentation Skills course has been refined and perfected over 10 years. The facilitator creates a fun, stimulating and non-threatening training environment. You’ll learn the trusted Vivid Method for public speaking, which demystifies presentation skills and shows you step-by-step how to prepare and deliver compelling presentations.
The course gives you;
1. A simpler way to control nerves.
2. A simpler way to structure your ideas.
3. A simpler way to engage your audience with natural delivery skills.
We can customise this course to focus on your immediate needs. For example, participants have an opportunity to develop a real presentation from start to finish so they are ready to persuade immediately after the course.
Contact Vivid Learning to talk about your needs:
Web: vividmethod.com
Email: [email protected]
> Phone: +61 3 9537 2844
Cam Barber is available for:
- Keynote Speaking
- Conference Sessions
- Messaging Sessions
Index
A
acting skills, 91–92
adrenaline physical effects of, 122–126
release of, 124
study on, 97
“Ahs” and “Ums,” 89–90
Alexander technique, 200–201
Allis, Janine, 52–54
“…solving problems and keeping things simple,” 53
“Antennagate” crisis, 34
anxiety
acting skills and, 91–92
adrenaline and, 97, 122–126
Canberra conference, 127–128
caused by public speaking training, 112–114
caused by uncertainty, 96–100, 127–128, 223
control through understanding, 120–129
controlling nerves, 10, 97
controlling symptoms, 125–126, 128–129
dealing with cause, not symptoms, 122–123
distinction between physical symptoms and mental response, 121–122
and lack of preparation, 130–133
muscle contraction, 124–125
perfectionism and, 89–90
performance anxiety, 87–92 (See also performance anxiety)
physical symptoms, 123–126