by Gilda Bonanno LLC www.gildabonanno.com
The answer, of course, is it depends. It depends on your purpose, your
message, the time limit, the audience and the technology available. Consider the question carefully before you
automatically assume that you have to have a slide deck.
For more on this topic, see my blog post, What Should You Include in Your Slides? http://gildabonanno.blogspot.com/2013/04/presentation-skills-what-should-you.html
Gilda Bonanno's blog www.gildabonanno.blogspot.com
When you are preparing a presentation, an important question to consider
is: Do I really need to use slides?
The answer, of course, is it depends. It depends on your purpose, your
message, the time limit, the audience and the technology available. Consider the question carefully before you
automatically assume that you have to have a slide deck.
In the days of overhead projectors, we used the term “visual aids” to
refer to the projector or other things that were supposed to aid your presentation. Unfortunately, with the prevalence of
presentation software, we’ve come to the point where the slides are becoming
the presentation rather than helping the presentation.
YOU should be the presentation. The slides are just the visual aids there
to help you.
Slides can actually get in the way of your presentation, interfere with your ability to connect with the audience and distract from your message.
Slides can actually get in the way of your presentation, interfere with your ability to connect with the audience and distract from your message.
If we had a choice between you or the slides, we would choose you because
you are the content expert. You’re the one who has the knowledge. The slides
are just there to help -- to enhance, not to replace you.
So before you automatically start creating slides, consider these
questions: Will your presentation be enhanced by slides? Will the slides really
help? Is there information that needs to be communicated in a slide format?
If you are an interior designer presenting at an industry conference, for
example, filling the slides with high-quality photos of your designs can be
very helpful. They would enhance your presentation by showing people what
you’re talking about in terms of color or placement of objects in a space.
On the other hand, if you’re a project manager presenting for ten minutes at
an internal department meeting, will slides of bulleted text and sentences
really help your presentation?
Perhaps it would be better if you handed out a project plan, or sent an
Excel spreadsheet before or after the meeting, or drew something on the
whiteboard. And then you focused on
speaking directly to the people in the room, engaging their attention and answering
questions, rather than going through a “group read” of the slides.
(I understand that there are some companies where, for better or worse,
the corporate culture expects you to use PowerPoint or Keynote. I would still encourage you to question whether
slides will enhance your presentation and if not, then challenge prevailing corporate
culture. However, I realize that unfortunately, you may not win that battle.)
So the next time you have to deliver a presentation, consider carefully
whether slides will help you communicate your message more or less
effectively. And if slide will not
enhance your presentation, then speak without them.
For more on this topic, see my blog post, What Should You Include in Your Slides? http://gildabonanno.blogspot.com/2013/04/presentation-skills-what-should-you.html
Gilda Bonanno's blog www.gildabonanno.blogspot.com