How to Make Sure Your Next Presentation Doesn't Suck

I am rather passionate about public speaking Making group presentations is an amazing opportunity to move people.

Or, on the other hand, to bore and confuse them.

So many presentations fail to deliver. Why?

To be blunt: The culprit is bad communication design. The greatest content in the world will die an undeserved death if it is not designed well.

Each spring, I attend the annual conference of the Life Sciences Trainers and Educators Conference (LTEN)*. This year will mark my 28th year of affiliation with that wonderful organization. And what a challenging group it is to present to - these people are professional communicators!

Nonetheless, some presenters squander their opportunity to win the audience, through bad presentation design.

Here's how to make sure your next presentation is a winner:

1. Don't try to pack in too much.

This is the number one complaint I hear. TMI (Too Much Information) is what kills most presentations. We, the audience, want a refreshing glass of water, not a spewing firehose.

Complexity and confusion will lose an audience quickly. You are presenting in order to inform, not overwhelm.

Streamline and focus - seek to make one point well, not many points poorly. It's real work to prune, illustrate, and simplify, but it's worth it. People love to recommend a speaker that is focused and easy to follow.

2. Don't hide the point.

Another common complaint I hear from others is that we don't know where the speaker is going. This is a way to make sure everyone tunes out after about 3 minutes. If we, as audience members, have to put in lots of effort to figure out what's going on...well, we won't.

You're competing with smartphones.

What's the point? Tell us right away. We don't want to work to find it.

We didn't come to sort through yet another haystack of information. Please give us the needle, right up front. When you've shown us the relevant point, we can relax and enjoy the ride.

3. Don't overwhelm our eyes and our brains.

Slides packed full of words, images, and data points are visually confusing. If we have to squint and interpret and sort, we can't listen effectively.

Too many ideas, words, and images shut the brain down.

Go strong on single-point, single-image slides that we can grasp in seconds. Serve up distilled information that can be immediately grasped. Keep it simple; use large-font text; and be generous with white space.

Be a presenter, not a slide-narrator.

4. Tell audience members how to apply it.

In an ideal world, people will draw excellent, practical conclusions all by themselves. A few might. But we've assembled to grow and change, and we want your suggestions.

Give the audience some "Now what?" conclusions.

You're there to impart practical wisdom, so sprinkle the talk with actionable ideas. What do you want your audience members to do differently as a result of your presentation? Begin with the end in mind.

Applying these four suggestions will take some preparatory work, but that's the whole point - you, as the presenter, do the work so your audience doesn't have to. If they want a firehose of information, they can use Google or ChatGPT.

A huge part of your value as a speaker is to focus, simplify, and apply. From your engaging opening to your actionable finish. That’s effective communication design. That’s clarity.

If you’re looking for a speaker/trainer/facilitator who will help your people get to the point with clarity, contact me.

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* If you're going to attend the LTEN conference, ping me and let's meet up!