How to avoid Death by Powerpoint in your next video call

No one should have to suffer through a boring online Powerpoint presentation again.

And yet, a major complaint to have emerged in 2020, the year of multiple lockdowns worldwide, is that “death by deck” is an everyday reality.

A statement from fashion retailer Next, described that employees working from home suffered from

“slideshow presentations that transform meetings from productive exchanges of ideas into boring, one-way lectures; with the “presenters” rattling through bullet points already visible to their stultified audience”“slideshow presentations that transform meetings from productive exchanges of ideas into boring, one-way lectures; with the “presenters” rattling through bullet points already visible to their stultified audience”.

I went as far as to write to Lord Wolfson, CEO of Next, offering to help him by providing virtual training to his employees.

What if your company could learn to deliver engaging and useful presentations?

I’ve made it my personal mission to help as many companies as possible to put a stop to boring presentations.

Here are some of the common mistakes made by companies and how to avoid them:

Mistake #1: Reading what’s on the slide

A common approach for presenters to take is to write their script, copy and paste it into slides, and then use the slides as a fancy teleprompter. Job done, right?

False. This approach makes you, the presenter, completely unnecessary. You are not adding anything to the slides, or helping them find their way through the information shared.

In fact, your audience is more likely to be able to understand your content by reading it in their own time than sitting through your presentation.

But they are sitting through your presentation, so how can you switch things up to be more engaging?

Alternative: One great rule to live by is “one point = one slide”.

If you want your audience to take in information, then you need less content and more slides. This is not the time nor the place to delve into the minutiae of every footnote of a report.

Keep each slide light on the text, and choose instead an image with a big visual impact.

Here's an illustration of what I mean:

The slide on the right has a lot of great information and more context, but the temptation for the speaker is going to be to read it all.

The slide on the left on the other hand has pared the information down to just one key quote and an image that suggests that there’s a story waiting to be told by the presenter.

Mistake #2: Talking at your virtual audience

Unlike a face-to-face presentation, it’s easy to forget that your audience is there. After all, they’ve all muted themselves, and you’ve switched your view to your slides, so you might be tempted to power through without checking on them.

Believe me, if you do that, they’ll notice and quickly tune off.

Alternative: work your audience into your presentation plan.

For example, you could ask for your audience’s input during the presentation. If your audience is a decent size, you could use the poll function of your conference call software, or use an outside audience engagement like Mentimeter. This is also great at breaking up the presentation which, as we will see in next point, is important! Use the names of members of the audience where you know them.

Read the rest of this blog here.