How we use language says a lot about the way we think. Quite often clients ask me, 'Should I send you my presentation?’ What they're really asking is, 'Should I send you my slides?’ What's the difference?
In my opinion, the difference is huge! Your slides are NOT your presentation! They are a tool to support your presentation. Your presentation is you and your message. When we start thinking about our slides as our presentation, it affects how we prepare and deliver our presentations.
Let's look at preparation first. Think about how you start preparing. What's the first thing you do? Do you open up PowerPoint and start designing your slides? If yes, you are missing some major steps in your preparation. Instead, you should get away from your computer and think about your objectives, your audience and their objectives, your core message etc. One of the LAST steps you should take is creating your slides.
Why? One reason is that when you make a slide, you have some kind of commitment to it and it's very hard to eliminate it later. If you go back later and think that the information you included in the slide isn't important to the audience, you might be reluctant to remove it because you have already put a lot of work into it.
Another problem when you think of your slides as your presentation is that you are compelled to put too much information onto your slide instead of just saying it . Your audience is then forced to make a decision - should they read your slide or listen to you speak? The easier option is always just to read and ignore you. I assume that that isn't the reason you are speaking to people.
Create slides that inspire curiosity in your audience. How about just putting one or two words or an image on a slide and then making your audience listen to you in order to learn something?
More on slides next time!
