10 Presentation 'Sins' : Are You Guilty?

Many of us have heard that 99% of presentations are bad and not effective. Today I though I would briefly look at why so many presentations are so bad, and perhaps suggest how to avoid these common mistakes.

1.     No clear message- When preparing your presentation, you must make sure you are clear on what your objective is. It may be to just inform, to advocate a point of view or you are seeking an approval. Whatever it is, make sure you are clear why you are giving the presentation. If you start with the end in mind the rest should be easy.

2.     Your slides are boring- Unfortunately 99% of presentation slides are really bad and will not be able to grab the attention of the audience. Nobody likes to look at page after page of hardly visible text on the screen, which the presenter is reading like a story book. Generally, less text works better. Simple text with powerful images work best. Remember the slides are there just to help you as visual aids, do not rely on them. You are the ‘star’ who needs to ‘wow’ your audience.

3.     Not enough material/content- Sometime your presentation fails due to insufficient content to make a convincing case for the audience. For example, you did not provide enough evidence to back up your argument or point of view. Another example would be a new business proposal which did not include risks and the mitigating contingencies you will put in place.

4.     Too much material- Just as bad as not having enough material is having too much material covered in your presentation. Firstly, people have a very limited attention span that rarely exceed 20 minutes. Secondly, having too much material to cover will make it harder for you to highlight the key message or objective of your presentation.

5.     Monotonous voice- Nobody enjoys listening to a robot. You need to modulate your voice so that there are times when you raise your voice to emphasise a point and there are times you pause and say nothing, to give your audience time to absorb what you just said. There are times you will speak quickly and times when you will speak slowly to highlight a point in your presentation.

6.     Not rehearsing- The vast majority of people do not bother to practice giving their presentation thinking that they are already quite good at it. Unfortunately, they are not! And that probably includes you too. Even the late Steve Jobs spent a lot of time rehearsing his legendary presentations. Take the time to practice and make it a habit. It will make you comfortable with the material and make you far less nervous. This will create confidence that the audience will be able to spot and makes you case stronger. Alternatively, if you do not practice, you will appear less confident and you will not be as convincing.

7.    Complicated language- Depending on your audience use language that is as simple as possible. The less the audience has to think about what you are trying to say the better. Avoid jargon and complex terminology unless you are speaking to a room full of experts. Use simple words and short sentences, your audience will appreciate it.

8.     Not getting to the point quickly- People hate waiting. Try to get to the point of your presentation quickly. Often it is best to tell them up front what the objective of the presentation is at the start of the presentation. Also another tip is to tell them how long your presentation will take before you begin, this will put the audiences feeling of anxiety at ease. Unless you are told how long a presentation will take, your audience will be speculating and wondering when you will get to the point.

9.       Poor structure- To be effective your presentation needs to be properly structured for the objective you are trying to achieve. Like any good story, it will need a start, middle and an ending. A good basic structure is to start with an introduction of the problem or issue you wish to address, and then go into the implications for the audience of the issue. Only then do you go into introducing the solution and also address any possible concerns relating to the proposed solution. Finally you have a call to action, what you want the audience to do. This is just a basic example; the main point is that you need a logical flow in the structure of your presentation.

10.   Giving out hand outs too early- A common mistake many people do is to give copies of their slides before the present. This is a guaranteed way of ensuring the audience will not listen to you because they will be busy reading your slides and they can read much faster than you can present. They will be on your fourth slide when you are still on the contents slide. Give your hand outs at the end of the presentation so that you will have their full attention.

      Each of these issues is worthy of their own blog post and I have touched on some of them before. If you have any other common causes of bad presentations, please share them in the comments section. I would love to hear what you think.

Say it with pictures: Get your point across visually and tell a story

Two weeks ago I was invited to give a refresher course on marketing to a group of entreprenuers, most of whom had little or no formal marketing training. While preparing my materials I came to a point where I had to touch on the concept of "Marketing Strategy". Below is the slide that spells out a formal definition of "Marketing Strategy".

Wow! That's quite a mouthful. I then thought, how could I explain this visually? It took a while but I then decided that I would use the idea of a battle to illustrate what the above definition of marketing strategy was trying to say. This is the first slide I used.

It show the battle formation of two opposing forces. The army on the left is outnumbered and outgunned but it has a single tank. The tank represents a competitive advantange. Based on the current formation, the army on the left has very little chance against the army on the right which has more resources at its' disposal.

However if the army on the left rearranges its' battle formation and focuses its strength i.e. the single tank that it has on a narrow front with the rest of the army providing close cover, the situation can take a totally different course.

The army on the left could effectively punch a hole into the defensive lines of the army on the right as shown below:

Once the defensive line is broken, the army on the left is then free to charge through and capture the flag and consequenly win the battle.

Instead of just elaborating on each keyword in the definition slide, tell a story around your explanation and make it as graphic as possible. In this example we have taken a very conceptual idea (that was potentially sleep inducing) and illustrated it in a dynamic and engaging way that was easy to understand.

Psychologists have done extensive research that suggests that people are better at remembering what they see rather what they hear. Use this to your advantage the next time you are presenting. This is just a simple example of how the use of simple graphics and images can help you to illustrate complex subject matter in a very short time. You could of course just verbalise an explanation of whatever you need to say.

However, you risk losing your audience which has a very short attention span. The human brain is wired to be as economical as possible and will try as far as possible to minimise its work load. We all have filters in the most basic parts of our brains that constantly scan all information we are receiving, if it looks or sounds like it will take a great deal of thinking to understand and does not threaten your well being in any way, the most common reaction is to shut off and disregard the information.

As far as possible try to weave a story around what you are trying to say. This helps to create a connection with the audience. People love to hear stories and most people love to tell them too. Unfortunately we often forget this when we are presenting.

Remember, always use pictures and images to support what you want to say. Also build a story around what you wish to say to keep the audience who have a short attention span engaged and on your side!

Language- Don’t complicate, Keep it simple!

One of the things I noticed during my career was how people seem to think that if they use jargon and complex sentences, they will appear smarter. Think about it , listen carefully when you are at a high level meeting and the senior leadership is present.  How much of it did you really understand? How much actually contained useful content, and how much sounded like random jargon strung together ?

I find it amusing that we all know how to say something in a simple way, but choose not to. Usually because we do not want to appear dumb in front of peers, so we resort to complex sentences and jargon.( At other times, we do it when we really do not know what to say, and use it to purposely confuse the audience and hope they don’t notice!)

In the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Captain Jack Sparrow said,

"I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request",

what he really meant to say was simply, “No”. This is of course a rather extreme example but illustrates the point.

Here are some gems that I have heard which you may have heard too.

“We must leverage our core competencies” — which actually means, “We must do more of what we are good at”

“We must critically engage with our customer base” — what he wants to say is, “We must do what our customers want”

“We facilitate an environment of empowerment” —which in simple terms means, “We let you get on with your job”

''Our focus must be on execution excellence in all our prioritized projects going forward'' — which is a complicated way of saying, “We must focus on making a success of our most important projects”

''The implementation of Project X was a learning experience for the company'' — which is a polite way of saying, “We screwed up”

“Moving forward, the outlook is positive” — a more lengthy way of just saying, “Things will be better in the future”

''To remain profitable, we must re-align salaries to the market average'' — is management speak for , “We must ensure that we don't pay our employees more than other firms”

''We have challenging goals in a resource-constrained operational space'' — what the poor fellow is trying to say is, “It will be difficult to meet our targets when we are so short of money, time, and staff”

Do the words you use help the audience to understand what you want to convey? Be clear in your mind what you want to communicate and say it as simply as you can. Remember the saying, “Less is more”. Your audience will appreciate it.

Do the unexpected

Surprise your audience with an unexpected fact about yourself! Instead of just giving a long mini-biography of yourself, try a short introduction but include something little known and unexpected about yourself. This will get the attention of the audience early and show that you are different, most audiences will be expecting you to be boring and uninteresting. But make sure your 'interesting fact' is really something interesting like you 'once did stand up comedy' or 'you sky dive' or 'run marathons'. Even if you don't think there is anything interesting or unusual about yourself, if you think hard enough you will find something. If you really don't have anything, then perhaps you can use one of my other tips instead.... :-)

Creative use of pauses

Even the most thrilling of action movies have quiet moments for you to catch your breath, so should your presentations! There is no need to keep on talking non-stop while presenting. Used in the right way, a brief pause just after you have made a very critical point will allow your audience to digest what you said and amplify the significance of that point. Remember the phrase " The silence was deafening" ? In your next presentation, remind your self to slow down, at the critical points pause for a moment and allow what you just said to sink in.

Practice makes Perfect

Rehearse, Rehearse and Rehearse. You should always make an effort to practice your presentation prior to giving the presentation. The more important the presentation the more you should practice. The reason why Steve Jobs' legendary presentations looks so effortless and un-rehearsed is because he spends a LOT of time preparing and practicing before major keynotes like the launch of the iPhone or iPad. Very often people in Malaysia, think they can just talk through their slides without doing at least a single dry run. If Steve Jobs needs to practice and he is considered among the best in the business, what makes you think you can get away with no preparation? The more you practice the more confident you become and the audience will recognise this. You will come across as more confident and convincing. You often get only one chance with the boss, the customer or even the Board, so do not waste that chance. It could change your life!

Be visual

Use images to reinforce your message. How often have you had to suffer 'Death by Powerpoint' with slide after slide of hardly visible text that the presenter reads? It does not take long for the mind to quickly shut off an...d start thinking about other more interesting stuff like what will be served for lunch after this boring presentation. The human mind remembers more if there are visual cues which accompany the text on screen and the words being spoken. In fact the less text the better if you can choose a visual that expresses what you want to say very graphically. The master of this principle of " Picture superiority" was the late Steve Jobs, many of his slides were just a single evocative picture that literally said " A 1000 words".

Begin with the objective

Always tell your audience the objective of your presentation i.e. why they are listening to you, what you expect from them and how they will benefit. This will stop them guessing and speculating while you are presenting. If while you are presenting they are trying to guess what you are getting at, they will probably be missing the key points you are trying to make. They may make false conclusions that are opposite to what you intended. This will make it very difficult for you to get them to agree with you and take the course of action you want. One more thing, tell them at the start how long you will take and keep your presentation to 20 minutes or less. People do not have attention spans that stretch longer than than that.