The Power of PowerPoint: Create compelling and effective presentations with these two guidelines!

Wednesday: Speak on the Shoulders of Giants

I cannot reiterate more that the need for an effective presentation is one of the utmost important factors of success.

Over the course of my career, I’ve witnessed my fair share of presentations gone wrong.

Sometimes, we focus too much on drafting and rehearsing our presentations that we forget the importance of just merely using a visual aid.

Which is why this week I want you to learn about how to maximize PowerPoint as a tool and strengthen your presentation.

I hope you find this week’s content interesting and beneficial for your next big presentation.

Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute

Speak on the Shoulders of Giants

In a business setting, PowerPoint presentations are often used to help speakers get their message across.

Just like other communication tools, these slides can either “make or break” your presentation.

As a speaker, you have to know the right way of using it.

This is where return-driven presentations come in―you present your topic with the audience’s reaction in mind.

THE POWERPOINT EFFICACY

Are you wondering about how many slides you should have for a 10-minute presentation?

There’s no formula that dictates the exact number of slides you need to have for a specific duration… but you don’t need to have 20 PowerPoint slides in a 10-minute presentation either!

The key is to get your message across in the simplest and most straightforward manner possible.

The slides should only be there to serve as a guide; its contents shouldn’t have everything you want to discuss typed down.

It’s your job as the speaker to effectively communicate your message to them using your words.

Here are two things to consider when building your PowerPoint slides:

1. Horizontal Logic

This takes into account the PowerPoint presentation as a whole. The titles or headlines of each slide fit together to form a cohesive topic or story.

The purpose of horizontal logic is that even if you just read the headlines of the slides without reading the contents, you will still get the main message of the whole presentation.

When using the PowerPoint software, you can check if your headlines are cohesive by clicking on the Outline View button on the toolbar above so you can easily read through each slide.

Ideally, this logic works by beginning your presentation with the outcome or central idea of your topic.

Why?

Because the outcome or the central idea prompts the action from your audience.

According to Harold S. Geneen, Former CEO of Raytheon and ITT:

“You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.”

In the same way you run a business (as stated by Geneen), you build a compelling presentation by beginning with the outcome or reaction you want from your audience in mind.

In constructing the headlines for your slides, it is also important to put in action titles and not descriptive titles.

For example:

Instead of:

“Overview: Diabetes”

You can write:

“Diabetes is the fastest growing disease in Western nations.”

From there, you can discuss in the next slides other information about diabetes such as causes, symptoms, treatments, diet, so on and so forth.

2. Vertical Logic

This focuses on the individual slides of the PowerPoint presentation.

The vertical logic focuses on the reason for every slide. It’s important that the content supports the headline of a slide.

However, the content should only contain keywords or key facts and not whole blocks of texts that are hard to read.

Avoid animations or busy backgrounds for each slide as these may distract your audience.

Keep your slides as clean and crisp as possible.

Use high-resolution images (if you plan to put one in your presentation) so your audience can clearly see it.

These slides, when taken outside the context of the whole PowerPoint presentation, should be able to stand alone and remain understandable. When the slides are taken into context, it should strengthen the presentation as a whole.

These two logics can serve as a timesaver in creating your PowerPoint presentation.

These will also help you maximize the time given to you as a speaker (whether it’s as short as 10 minutes or as long as an hour), especially in getting down to what really matters in your presentation―stating your point and getting your audience to understand it.

The PowerPoint, as a tool, exists for a reason. Use it to your advantage.

Apply the horizontal and vertical logic when you create your next PowerPoint presentation!

Hope you’ve found this week’s public speaking tip interesting and helpful.

Stay tuned for next Wednesday’s Speak on the Shoulders of Giants!