What’s the point of PowerPoint?
The slides are there to support your message as a presenter.
Yet, sadly, many of the PowerPoint slides that we see in English business presentations in Japan distract and confuse the audience.
Here’s an example that I’ll never forget.
Several years ago, I was interpreting in a business meeting. The attendees were Japanese except for a British executive. I was interpreting for him.
The presenter showed a “busy slide.” The British executive turned to me and said, “Jesus Christ, I don’t know where to look!”
The presenter continued his presentation without paying any attention to his confused audience. This was not a successful presentation.
It’s mottainai (a waste or a shame) if your slides cause your presentation to fail.
So let me share some quick and powerful tips.
Here are three reasons why slides distract and confuse the audience. This isn’t a comprehensive list because I wanted to keep it simple and easy to absorb (like your slides should be).
I encourage you to check your PowerPoint (or other supporting material) to be sure you’re avoiding these types of mistakes and instead making your presentations clear and compelling.
1. The title is too long and complex
If your audience needs to spend time reading or trying to understand your slides, they’re not listening to you. Consider which of these three types of title to use on your slide and keep it simple.
Info title. This title tells the audience what the information below represents, e.g.,
・Sales forecast
・Revenue by region
・Company ranking
It doesn’t convey a message about the information. The presenter does that.
Message title. This title clarifies the message that the presenter wants the audience to understand from the slide, e.g.,
・ Sales are expected to double by 2018
・Japan accounts for 70% of revenue
・We currently rank fourth in this market
This helps to reinforce the presenter’s message.
No title. When using an image to support the message, a title may not be necessary.
2. The slide contains a data dump
A data dump is a collection of data with no clear message that the audience should take from it.
Speakers often want to show how much work they’ve put into their presentation, so they include heaps of data. Then, either the audience starts to examine the numbers in detail and stops listening to the speaker or the audience gets confused and stops paying attention altogether.
Ask yourself which data is essential to support your message. Then, highlight what you want the audience to focus on, for example by using a different color.
Make it easy for your audience.
3. The slide has multiple messages
I often see slides that have multiple messages. They have a title, which suggests one message. Then sometimes an arrow to the side with a sentence or two about a different topic. There may even be another piece of seemingly unrelated text below that. And often, we see another message along the bottom – perhaps in bold, or in a separate text box or with a finger icon pointing to it.
I understand that the presenter often wants to impress the audience with all the research she’s done or have the data on display in case the audience asks a question about something else.
But multiple messages on one slide confuse the audience.
Decide what is the most important thing you want to say for each slide and make sure that everything on that slide supports that message.
Anything on your slide that isn’t essential is a distraction.
I could write so much more about how to make your slides clear and compelling, but I want to keep this simple so that you can immediately understand and start to apply it.
The next time you create slides for your presentation, ask yourself these three questions:
1. Is the title clear and concise – and do I really need it?
2. Is the data essential and appropriately highlighted to support my message?
3. Does everything on this slide support one message?
If you want to learn more about charts and slide design, I recommend these two books:
- Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds プレゼンテーションzen (著) ガー・レイノルズ
- Say It With Charts by Gene Zelazny マッキンゼー流図解の技術 (著) ジーン ゼラズニー
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