In this episode, we break down some of the practical advice for how to use your visuals or PowerPoint presentations with added tips that will put in the top 95% of PowerPoint users when it comes to effective presentations that keep you as the focus without the distraction of technology mistakes or mishaps.
Show Notes:
Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen, your host. Now, if you were following me last week, I covered an episode around visual AIDS. This is the second piece to last week’s episode. So if you missed last week, guys, do me a favor. Go back and pay attention to last week’s episode first, and then join me on this one.
[00:02:05] We’re covering today is the second major bucket on how you use your visuals. In last week’s episode, I spent a fair amount of time talking about crafting your sides, not detailed things, but simple ideas that will keep you the center of attention. Everything that I talk about around communication boils up into three major buckets.
[00:02:33] How do we build trust? How do we build engagement, and how do we build a relationship? And when it comes to this use of visual AIDS, building that trust and building relationship is critical to your success, whether using PowerPoint, a whiteboard, chalkboard, a flip chart, or you’re showing some type of a prop, maybe a piece of equipment that you’re showing them.
[00:02:59] I want you to remember that you need to be the center of attention, not your visual, not the whiteboard or the chalkboard people buy from people. They buy from people that they like. They’re going to buy you first and then get your slides. So everything that you do, you have to keep yourself the center of attention.
[00:03:21] Now, on last week’s episode, I asked you to take a paradigm shift around how you craft the slides and today’s episode. I’m asking you to take a paradigm shift around the way you use your visuals, how you interact with a whiteboard or a chalkboard, how you interact with your PowerPoint, which is the visual itself on the screen, your laptop, that equipment, and your audience.
[00:03:48] If you will take that paradigm shift for me if you’ll take everything I’m sharing with you and make sure that you are the center of attention, here’s what you’re going to find. Number one, you’re far more engaging. Number two, you’re more connected to your audience. And number three, your ability to move the listener forward is exponentially much greater.
[00:04:09] As you think about using your visuals, there are three major areas where you interact. If you’re taking notes with me today, I want you to note these three major areas where you interact, number one, the way you interact with the audience. Number two is how you interact with the visual itself, what’s up on the screen or the whiteboard, or the flip chart itself.
[00:04:33] And then how you interact with equipment and a PowerPoint perspective. That’s your laptop. Now, if you’ve been following me through the series of episodes, you have heard me discuss what we called your delivery skills, your eye, contact, your paws, your gestures, your facial expressions. Movement and your posture, when you think about those delivery skills, which three interact in the areas that I just mentioned to you of the audience, of the visual and of the equipment.
[00:05:13] Take a moment and think through those just a little bit. If you came back and said, Bart, the number one skill I practice with the audience is eye contact. You are correct. And here’s the paradigm shift you’re going to take. When the average person presenter brings up a slide, as soon as the slide comes up, what do they do?
[00:05:38] You’re correct. They begin to talk right off the top of the bat. Now let me ask you this question. What is the listener? What is the audience doing? the audience is trying to consume your slot. Now, you and I are both intelligent. Your audience is intelligent, but guys, they can’t read the slide and listen to you simultaneously, they can only do one thing at a time.
[00:06:03] They’re either reading or listening. They’re either reading or listening. A great example of this. If you will think back to when you were in grammar school on the days when you were little, and you came in after recess at lunch, and the teacher read to you when the teacher read the book to you, and she or he wanted to show you a picture in the book, can you remember what happened?
[00:06:29] Remember, the teacher would turn the book and slowly show it to the class. Now, let me ask you, did the teacher speak? Nope. The teacher was silent because they knew you were absorbing the picture and connecting it to what they just read. The majority of you will lock yourself in your home office on a Sunday and make sure your PowerPoint slides are perfect.
[00:07:01] But when you bring it up, you don’t give the listener an opportunity to absorb it. Why bother we do this because you have spent so much time around that side, it like the back of your hand, and when it comes up, you’re immediately going to try to discuss it. But you have to give the list or an opportunity to absorb it.
[00:07:20] This is the first paradigm shift you’re going to take around this idea of using visuals. Now, the second skill set, when that visual comes up, is the power of the pause. You’ve got to pause and let them absorb it. Now, here’s your kind of guiding principle around that. Guys. You do not have to wait for every single person.
[00:07:45] To absorb the slide. Cause somebody’s going to look at your side and they’re going to go back down memory lane and think, wow, that’s pretty cool. They’re going to be thinking about their job. They’re going to be thinking about whatever’s up there. The majority of your audience, when they have consumed it, they will look at you now.
[00:08:02] Here’s where it connects to your eye contact. As soon as most people are looking at, you begin to speak again, the person who is so absorbed in the slide, as soon as they hear you speak. They will come right back into your content. But from an eye contact perspective, the slide comes up. Watch your audience; see what they’re doing.
[00:08:25] If they’re reading your side, don’t speak. Now I have to chuckle here because for some of you, the amount of information that you all put on a slide, I could take you all out to a three-course meal, come back. We could watch a movie, and somebody would still be reading your slides for the volume that people put on a slide.
[00:08:45] Now, that’s where I want you to reference back to last week’s episode because I gave you some very strong guidelines to make readability high. So let me recap what I’ve shared with you. You bring up a slide; the slide comes up, your audience is reading it. You have to pause. Now, remember they’re working, you get a chance to relax.
[00:09:08] So if you’ll think about it, this is an opportunity to look at your notes. If you need notes, this is an opportunity to take a sip of water. This is an opportunity to glance at your audience and see what they’re doing, and then be able to reconnect with them. So here’s the thought from an engagement perspective, when you transitioned from slide to slide, this is an opportunity to reengage your audience.
[00:09:34] This is an opportunity to reengage your audience, but you have to give them a chance to absorb it. Now you can decide the percentage of 50%, 75, 85 90. You decide you have to be able to read the situation. But remember, give them time to read it. A good rule of thumb is you read it. And once you’ve read it, go again, nine times out of 10, they’ll be with you.
[00:10:01] So here are the first two skills—your eye contact. Wait for them to absorb it. Pause, don’t say anything to the majority of your audiences with you. The third one is in this idea of, with your equipment. You have to be able to move. Now. Here’s what I see—a lot. Someone is using PowerPoint. They are stuck on their laptop.
[00:10:25] Guys. You have seen this. They’re afraid to take two steps away from it. It’s like somebody put a chain to their ankle and their computer and they can’t step away from it. It looks like the laptop is in control of you. I want you to look like you’re in control of the laptop. It makes a huge difference.
[00:10:47] So here’s what I want you to do. If you say doing a presentation in front of 30 people in a room and you bring up the slide, I want you to step away from your laptop and move to some other place in the room. Now here’s, what’s going to happen when you do that. When they finish reading the slide, they’re going to look to you.
[00:11:11] If you’ve stepped away from the slide or away from the screen, you can see heads turn, they’re done. Suppose you’re standing right next to the screen, where most people will continue to stand because they’re going to stand up there and read the slide and point to it and touch it. You’re not going to know when they’re done.
[00:11:31] You don’t have to walk across the room. Take two steps, take three steps. Just reposition yourself. So when the audience finds you, and you’ve moved to a different place, let me ask this question. Does engagement go up, or does engagement go down? It goes up because they’re saying, okay, Bart, why did you move over there?
[00:11:52]I moved over there to reengage you, anytime you transition a side to another point of engagement, and now I have your full attention, cause you’re not looking at the slide. If you’re in a board room and seated at the table, I guess that you feel like you’re going to send it the end of the table, closest to the slide.
[00:12:14] I do want you to realize that is not the power position now, Mo somebody may say, I’m going to go to the other end of the table. That is not the power position. Either. The best place you can be is in the center of the table. So that they’re going to look at the slide, then they have to come to you.
[00:12:32] They’re going to look at the slide, and then they have to come to you. Remember that you want to keep the audience with you, not at your slide, but because you took all this time to craft a slide, you got to give him a chance to absorb it. Otherwise, you don’t, why bother even showing that slide? Your slide is to enhance your content.
[00:12:54] It is not your message. You’re the message. The visual is an enhancement of what you’re talking about. It should reinforce what you’re doing,
[00:13:02] so you’ve moved away, and now the audience is back to you. So the three skills I’ve shared with you so far is so when you bring it to the slide, you have to pause, give him a chance of, so orbit moves away. If you can, two or three steps, four steps, move across the room, whatever you feel like is appropriate.
[00:13:56] Find a set of eyes and then begin to speak again. Those are the first three, but there’s one more skill set. I want you to add to this. This is the one that will give you a competitive advantage. This is the skill set that will set you apart from 99.9% of people who were presenting. I don’t care whether it’s at a boardroom table.
[00:14:22] I don’t care if it’s in a training room. I don’t care if you’re in 50 people, 500 people, or speaking at a conference in front of 2,500. This is not optional. If you want to stand out, if you want to be the person that gets perceived as the thought leader, if you want to be perceived as knowledgeable as a subject matter expert, then you have to be able to do this scale.
[00:14:50] I want you to write this down. You have to be able to preview the slide. You have to preview the slide. You have to let the listener know what’s coming. Most people don’t do that. Most people bring up a slide. They see the slide; they look at it, and then they begin to speak to it because they don’t even know what’s coming next.
[00:15:15] You have to be able to lead the listener, not push the listener through content. So if I bring up the slide and talk about it, here’s what’s happening. Your listener is trying to absorb that slide, and they’re trying to listen to you, and they’re going, I don’t know where you’re taking me. It’s like I get behind the person, and I’m pushing them.
[00:15:37] I’m pushing them through your content. They’re trying to make a connection to what you said and what’s up there. You want to make the connection before you bring it up. That’s that preview? It’s a word. It’s a sentence. It’s a thought. It’s something that when you bring up the slide, they make a connection.
[00:16:00] So let me paint a picture for you. And hopefully, this will illustrate the idea. Let’s say the next slide, if you were in my classroom, for example, and the next slide I’m going to bring up is a chess board because I want to be sharing with you how important it is to be strategic. So I might share something like this.
[00:16:23] We have just spent the last few minutes talking about the tools that we can bring to the table for your organization. But now, most organizations will bring you tools that force you to be tactical. What we bring to the table are tools that allow you to be strategic because when you are strategic, you know what the next right move is.
[00:16:46] And when you know what the next right move is, you know what the next right result. Yes. Let’s say that was my preview. Now I go to my laptop, and I bring up a slide. That’s a chess board. You just connected what I said about being strategic and the next right move. You looked at that chess board.
[00:17:03] You go, I got where Bart’s at. I’m right with him. And now I am often running. That’s the power of that preview. Most people don’t do this guy. It is critical that you practice this skill set. Now, here are the four skills you may want to make—note of these skills. Number one, you have to preview the slide.
[00:17:27] Let the listener know what’s coming. Not optional. It is critical. It is necessary. You must review the slide. Number two, you pause for them to absorb it. Wait for most people to read your side, consume what you put up on the whiteboard, what you brought up on a flip chart. Number three. If it’s appropriate, take a couple of steps from it.
[00:17:50] Move across the room, move to a new location. Remember that changing slides is an opportunity to reengage the audience. Changing slides is an opportunity to reengage your audience. Now, once they’ve absorbed the slide, you’re looking for a set of eyes. You find people that are looking at you. The majority of your audience is with you.
[00:18:10] Then, begin to speak. Those four skills will separate you from everybody else. So the next time you’re at an internal meeting. The next time you’re at a client site, the next time you’re watching someone else present share slides, right? Those four go down and do a checklist. Did they preview, did they give me a chance to absorb it?
[00:18:33] Did they move in any way, shape, or form? Did they find eyes and then began to speak? See how many on that list they hit. And if they hit all four, you’re going to see that as they use their visuals, they are seamless. It is effortless. And it seems more like a conversation, not a presentation. Now I would not share those four skills with you without giving you the tips and tricks to do that.
[00:19:05]Is it not true that when you create a slide deck at numbers, them, now, some people may put slide numbers on them. Some people may not, but typically it numbers them. Slide one through 10, one through 25. Here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to give you two choices here. If you use presenter mode, you know what the next slide is coming up because you can see it in the corner.
[00:19:29] Beautiful. Then, to be able to preview to that. If you don’t use that option, I want you to present. I want you to print out your slides six to a page. The maximum you can present is six to a page above each slide. I want you to write a trigger word, a word that brings the thought to mind that will allow you to preview lead the listener to the next slide.
[00:20:00] Now here’s where it gets. Interesting guys, you’re standing at your laptop. Your preview, you bring up the slide. All your listeners are looking at your side. They’re reading what’s up there. Would they even notice that you glance down at this printout and found that trigger word that will preview the next slide?
[00:20:23] They won’t even notice. They will have no clue. When I do my virtual communication on one side, I have my communication roadmap, where I’ve outlined what I’m going to say. On the other side, I just have slide number one through 20 or whatever I’ve got with the title on that slide. I can glance at that title and lead right through my content effortlessly and seamlessly.
[00:20:49] They have no idea. That I am leading them through the content, they experience it, but they don’t know the mechanics behind it. It’s much like when you see someone up on a stage, and you go, wow, I would love to be able to speak the way they do. What you’re seeing is the result of all their hard work of their practice to you.
[00:21:10] It seems seamless and effortless. If they’re doing a nice job, what you don’t know in their head is practicing mechanics and skills. They allow you to perceive it as effortless. It is the same thing with our visuals. So I’m going to share with you two PowerPoint tips. You probably already know these, but I’m always surprised in all my classes how few people know this.
[00:21:37] So PowerPoint tip number one, this relates to you being able to interact with your slides and preview. So let’s say, for example, you get to slide number 25. It’s your ending slide. And the executive in the audience says, Bart, I’m interested in what you showed us fairly early in your presentation.
[00:22:00] I don’t know. It was a diagram. It looked like a tool set of some sort. Could you go back to that? I’d like to ask you some questions you go to. Sure. Now tell me guys, how does the average person get back there? Mother, the majority of people are going to arrow back through, think in their arrows going back, or someone may click out, click on the thumbnail, bring it up, and bring it back in.
[00:22:26] Doesn’t look very polished and not very seamless. Here’s your PowerPoint tip slide number, enter slide number, enter. If you looked out on your printout and the executive had asked you about slide number five, guys, all you’re going to do is go to your laptop, do five, enter whether you’re in keynote or PowerPoint will take you right to that slide.
[00:22:55] Now, if you did that seamless, what is that executive going to think of? You. They’re going to think. He knows his content. She knows her content there. They have a handle on what they want to share, and they know how to be listener focused and address my issues. Slide number, enter whether it’s keynote or PowerPoint.
[00:23:16] Now, you have to be in the slide mode team for that to happen. Suppose you are showing 250 slides. All you have to do is slide number two, five-zero, enter, and it will go right there. You want to go back to slide number one, one, enter. This is the most useful thing to make it seem like you are polishing what you’re doing by understanding that one PowerPoint tip.
[00:23:44] Don’t forget that one. It is power at your fingertips. The second PowerPoint tip I want to share with you is there’ll be key. This is how you use that team. You’re sharing a slide. You’re done with it. You’re done talking about it, but you’re not quite ready to go to your next slide. When that slide stays up there, what does it become?
[00:24:10] It becomes a distraction. Your listeners are so going to want to go to it. It’s just what Alyssa wants to do. It’s natural. But if you will go to your laptop and you will hit the B key, just the letter B that will black out the slide. Now, if that slide gets blacked out, tell me where does the audience’s attention goes?
[00:24:33] It goes right back to you where it should be now. You don’t want to overuse this key. And I can’t encourage you enough. If you’re doing some type of a pre-team presentation, there are two or three of you speaking; make sure you tell your teammates that you’re going to do this. If you’re doing something virtually, like you’re doing a WebEx or doing a demo, make sure.
[00:24:58] And that logistical square that I’ve shared with you many times before, tell your audience, I’m going to hit the B key. The screen’s going to go black. You haven’t lost me. You can still hear me. You’re just not seeing me. Because you want their full attention, now, when you want to bring it back, any key, we’ll bring it back.
[00:25:16] You don’t have to hit the beachy. Now I’m going to give you one more caveat. A lot of people go barn. That’s not so great. Okay. I’ll give you another choice. Hit the w key. If you hit the w key, you get a white screen. My only challenge with the white key is this in those small situations where you are in a conference room, and the white board is the screen.
[00:25:42] We’ve all had to get stuck in that situation somewhere. If you use the white, the w key, not so effective, but if I use the B key and use the whiteboard, now you have an opportunity. To use two mediums of visual. Get up from the boardroom table, go to the whiteboard, put something on the whiteboard engagement.
[00:26:07] The only thing you have to remember is I have to erase the whiteboard before I bring my PowerPoint back up, but you will have no light on you. If you do that, if you do the WK, you will get light on you. Now, one more guiding thought. I want you to have, if you’re in B mode and you want to do slide number, enter you’re in B mode, and you want to go to slide number 15, if you walk up and go one five, enter, please remember this guy.
[00:26:37] One, we’ll bring it out of B. And you’re only going to go to slide number five; you will not go to side number 15. So if you’re in B key, you have to remember to bring it out of B first and then slide number, enter those two PowerPoint tips and those two alone in combination with preview, pause, move, look, speak the four skills I shared with you.
[00:27:02] We’ll give you a competitive advantage far above every other presenter that you are going to find. Most people don’t even get close to that. Most people, it’s death by PowerPoint. I don’t want that for you. I want them to buy you. I want to slides to be an enhancement of what you bring to the table. The gift you bring is yourself, not to slides.
[00:27:30] The gift you bring is your experience. The gift you bring is your expertise in the area that you’re sharing with them. The gift you bring to the table is an attitude I’m here to empower you and not impress you. You’re speaking from your heart, you’re having a conversation, and you’re coming across as confident.
[00:27:53] It is critical that as you use any type of visual, that your primary thought in your head is how do I keep myself the center of attention as I use these tools and products. I want you to take the paradigm shift, number one, the way you craft them. That was the first episode paradigm shift.
[00:28:14] Number two, the way you use your visual, this episode, how you interact with it. I want to make sure that you’re seen as the thought leader, the expert, the one that’s knowledgeable. I want to make sure that when you use any type of visuals, it is an experience for them. It is not something where someone says, how much longer is it over?
[00:28:41] What you bring to the table is too critical to be locked into a PowerPoint slide.
