Thursday, January 6, 2011

Stop Reading Your Slides!

Want to know the fastest way to get your audience to stop listening to you and for you to lose credibility? Read your slides to your audience. It's amazing, but some people still think this is an effective way of presenting.

This practice was once quietly accepted, but I have noticed audiences becoming visibly uncomfortable when speakers do this now. And, I absolutely empathize with the way they feel. Why should we sit there and waste our time while you read something aloud that we can read much faster to ourselves? Why don't you either say something that adds value to your slides or just do us all a favor and forget about presenting and send them by email?

Does that sound harsh? Well, it's meant to. It's time that people wake up and realize that reading slides to the audience is one of the worst presentation sins they can commit and doing so has serious consequences for their image and their organization's brand.

I'm sure that most of my readers never even think about doing such a thing, but will you all do me a favor? The next time that someone you know gives a presentation and reads their slides, please gently tell them to stop it!. Thank you.

© 2011 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved

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