Don’t you have a “Déjà vu” feeling every time you see slides like these?

Standard, crowded, boring…

Here are some tips to improve the look of your next presentation:

• Keep it as simple as possible. Over-engineering the presentation will make it hard to understand and follow.

TIP! Don’t be afraid to leave blank space. It gives an impression of cleanliness and allows the audience to process the information included in a slide very quickly and efficiently. It also emphasizes the importance of the object on the slide.

• Avoid including large amounts of text in one slide. Prepare handouts with extensive information, so you can use your presentation only as an illustration of your speech. You don’t want to occupy your audience with reading while you are talking to them, do you?

TIP! If you still need to explain a complicated graph / diagram / scheme, split it up into small pieces. Introduce audience to the graph / diagram / scheme gradually. Explain each step and only then show the final picture as an overview.

• Choose one color scheme and stick to it through the presentation.

TIP! If you have a hard time choosing an appropriate color scheme, you can either choose a color scheme that complements your topic or go for your corporate colors and use them instead of sticking a company logo on each slide.

• Be consistent with your visuals! Use one type of charts and diagrams. If you chose to use 3D effect diagrams, use only 3D effect visuals to keep the same style. Consider carefully the type of visuals you choose: what effects you need/don’t need for expressing your idea.

TIP! Don’t use anything because it’s fancy. Always think of the context and of how the element serves to explain your content.

• Use few contrasting elements. Contrast allows you to emphasize or highlight key elements within your presentation.

TIP! Remember that contrast works only if you don’t use it too much. Include one or two contrasting elements, depending on the length of your presentation. Too many contrasting elements, colors or fonts will make your presentation look messy.

•  If you still think bullet-points and clip-arts is the way to go, this entertaining video might help to change your mind!

TIP! Have fun, play with new elements and techniques, research, think of excellent presentations you’ve seen, consult your colleagues, use some Wide Thinking for a Change… and you will realize how easy it is to enhance the power of your presentation.

Becoming a great presenter takes time and practice. It’s a combination of art and science. So, I hesitate a little bit in attempting to cover this topic in a single blog post. However, the tips below will provide you with a useful benchmark for where you are now as a presenter and some insights into how to become even better. They will also enable you to choose a presenting coach or training program should you wish to take your existing skills to an even higher level.

1. Prepare, prepare, prepare

Remember, you’re there to tell a story and to achieve something for both you and your audience. So, first you need to know who might be in your audience. Then you need to start with defining your outcome and these questions will help you do this:

• Where do you want your audience to be at the end of your presentation?
• Where are they now or might they be at the beginning?
• What’s in it for them to have them arrive where you want them to be?

Once you’ve answered these the next questions to ask are:

• How would I know that I’ve achieved my outcome?
• What would I be seeing, hearing, doing, feeling at the end of my presentation to know that I’d achieved what I set out to achieve?

The final question to ask yourself is:

• What difference will this make for me/for my audience?

Going Analogue

Now you’re ready to sketch out your story. We recommend you do this in analogue i.e. using a pencil a large sheet of paper and some post it notes. Many people find it useful to write down their stream of consciousness on the topic before doing this. Remember, it’s all about the story you want to tell.

2. Model the Theater

One of the best metaphors that I have found for structuring a presentation is to view your presentation as a theatrical play or movie. After all, great movie makers really know how to present a great story. All great stories have a beginning, middle and an end. But not just any old beginning, middle and end. The beginning needs to grab people’s attention and captivate them from the minute you walk out on your stage. The ending needs to leave them gasping for more. The middle bit must be compelling enough to keep them engaged in your story. So, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.

You can have several plots and remember a villain and a hero(ine) create contrast and arouse emotions. The late Steve Jobs was a Master of applying this metaphor to Apple’s product launches and I highly recommend that you both read Carmine Gallo’s book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and watch some of Steve’s product launches.

3. Be in the right state

Like me, you’ve probably been to more presentations than you care to remember. I’ve been on many presentation trainings and have delivered Presentation training based on pre-scripted material that as a trainer I was required to follow. In all but one of these training courses emotional states were not explicitly addressed as a way to become a masterful presenter. Your state will be conditioned by many factors in your environment and how you are thinking and processing consciously and unconsciously in that environment. States manifest themselves through our physiology and that in turn is marked out over time through our behavior, which effectively is our states over time.

4. Psychogeography

Spaces have memories! We respond daily to anchors in our environment. Red lights remind us to stop, green lights to go (in most countries!). When called into our boss’ office there is a difference in whether we close the door or leave it open, whether we sit or stand. What does a higher chair mean? Who sits beside who at meetings?

It’s no coincidence that Lead Singers tend to stand in the center of the stage and yet most presentation screens occupy that space, a sign off ill-thought out design. This often means that presenters are ‘forced’ to stand to one side and this has a profound impact on their presence in the room. Learning to master the psychogeography of your presenting stage can produce exceptional results and once again we can learn a lot from the theater in this regard.

5. The Power of Threes

You will have noticed that throughout this post I’ve used the most useful, tried and tested technique for presenting information: The Power of Threes. Here’s how you can apply it in a simple way to your presentations.

1. Beginning, Middle, End.
2. Take the Middle and have 3 Themes. Introduce these Themes at the beginning, sum them up at the end.
3. Each Theme can have 3 main points.

6. Think Differently for a change

To present with impact you may need to break some old habits and all this can be achieved with some Wide Thinking for a change…

Have you ever seen a boring presentation? Yes? Really? Me too. Unfortunately too many of those… But why is the presentation boring?

A very common mistake we make when creating a presentation is thinking of the content and design from our own perspective instead of the perspective of the people we are talking to.

By adapting both the content and the design to the target audience, you can significantly increase the impact of your presentation. Sometimes, you even don’t have to change the initial content; you only need to choose the right means to deliver it.

There are 3 main questions you can ask before presenting.

          1. How big is my audience?

Define the size of the audience. This step is important to you as you can choose whether to use a personal or more official tone for your presentation. You can adapt the level of interactivity and technology used according to the audience size and be well-prepared for feedback.

EXAMPLE! If you are presenting to a very small audience, you can use a whiteboard or a flipchart instead of a slide show, you can move around in the room and make the presentation a truly interactive process. This would not always be possible if you were presenting in front of hundreds of conference attendees.

TIP! Do not underestimate your audience! No matter big or small, it has a huge power, especially in our digital age, when most of the presentations go viral as you talk. A public presentation is most often retweeted throughout your speech and every word you say or visual you share can reach thousands of people as you talk even if your audience is only 10 or 20.

SOCIAL TIP! Share your Twitter handle with your audience and create a specific hashtag for your presentation. Provide the audience with the hashtag before the presentation. This will allow you to monitor the online conversation.

          2. Who are they?

Define whom you are talking to. Is it an internal or external presentation? Are you talking to your colleagues, employees, shareholders, partners, clients…?

Knowing your audience helps you to talk in a way they understand, grab their attention and connect to them in a very personal way.

EXAMPLE: You are introducing potential client (a large food production company) to a new CRM software you want to sell. Whom exactly are you talking to? Are those IT managers who are going to implement the software or the board members? Maybe a combination of both? In this case the audience will directly effect the language and level of details you include in your presentation. IT managers will be more interested in technical parameters and software integration into the corporate IT system. Board members might even have no idea what you are talking about if you start describing the technical details. They would on the contrary be interested in how this software can improve the overall performance of the organization.

TIP! If you are invited to speak or present, ask the organizer who the target audience is. Try to find out as many details as possible. If you are speaking at a conference or a corporate event, you might get a quite precise idea of who is your audience.

SOCIAL TIP! If necessary, use social media to research whom you are dealing with. Many of your audience might be active users of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Xing or any other social network.

          3. What do they want to hear?

What is the audience expecting from you? What is important to them? Why are they listening to you?

Showing your audience a certain level of understanding of what they do and what they feel helps you to connect with the people who are listening to you on a higher level.

EXAMPLE! Find out what most often concerns people you are presenting to. Let’s imagine that you are a management consultant presenting an HR training program to the management of a huge corporation. You’ve found out that company is struggling with several issues, but management’s main concern is the high costs of the employee turnover. When introducing the benefits of the training program put special emphasis on the results related to increased employee retention rate. This will help to increase your credibility and authority.

TIP! Show the audience that you understand what keeps them up at night and why. Use the language they would use. Appeal to the needs, emotions and habits of the audience.

SOCIAL TIP! Feel free to investigate online. Your audience might be talking about what concerns them and you can easily use the information available to customize your presentation to fit the interests and qualifications of the audience.

With a little research and some Wide Thinking for a Change…, you can improve your presentation, connect to the target audience and make the desired impact.

Have you ever been sitting in front of your computer and a pile of papers trying to make a good presentation that works for your target audience and includes all the facts and figures you want to share?

Often we can spend hours and hours in front of our computers trying to design a good presentation. However, this process will never lead to the perfect result.

What if we go analog and start by turning off the computer and turning on the ideas?

No tools are magic. You have to start off by creating a story first and only then you can use the tools to help you to tell the story. And there is a story behind every speech or presentation. You wouldn’t talk to an audience if you had nothing to say, would you?

You can pose several questions to find out what the story should be:

• “What am I trying to tell?”
• “Why I’m trying to tell this?”
• “What’s the purpose of this presentation?”
• “Why would be people interested in what I’m saying?”
• “How do I know that the presentation has been a success?”

1. Generate ideas

To start off a good presentation, you have to generate many ideas and only then pick few of them as the first idea you get might not be the best one. Take a blank piece of paper, a whiteboard or a flipchart and put down everything that comes into your mind. Get your colleagues involved if necessary.

There are few main questions to ask when brainstorming:

• What am I trying to tell?
• What is the core message?
• How much time do I have?
• Who is my audience?

(Do a research and try to imagine how the audience sees the topic. Different people might have a different way to perceive information and they might look for very different key points. Some will be attracted by emotions, some by statistics, some by visuals and some by the story.)

-What do they expect to hear?

-What action should this presentation invite? Why should my audience care about what I am saying?

2. Shape the presentation content

Once you’ve come up with many different ideas, you can start picking the ones which work best for reaching the desired goal. Now you can use something you are familiar with to organize your ideas into the frame of presentation.

You can print off an empty handout and use it as your presentation content draft, putting the core message into the slide and writing down the additional information and ideas on the right hand side. Now the presentation becomes visual and you can see how your ideas work in the slide frame.

Several experts, including Garr Reynolds, suggest using post-it notes as they allow you to move your content around any time and limit the amount of information you can put on one slide.

No matter what tools you use for structuring your content, you can again discuss the outcome with your colleagues, observe how they react and listen to what they suggest. This is a good chance to test how your message works with the audience.

TIP! Limit the text! Do not try to include all the information you want to communicate into the slides. Provide the audience with hand-outs and use the presentation to illustrate your speech and to draw the attention to the main facts and figures.

3. Visualize the content

Once you’ve got the idea of what the content should be, you should think of good visuals which would be best for communicating your content. And we are not talking about a small clip-art in the corner of every second slide. We are talking about choosing the right high-quality pictures, designing good diagrams and charts.

TIP! Do not look for the visuals first, look at your content sheet and think of how to best express your content with visual tools. Think of a metaphor which conveys your idea.  Once again, feel free to get your colleagues, if necessary, a designer involved in the process. If you are looking for professional high quality images at a reasonable price, you can search on iStockphoto media library. 

Go for simplicity. Do not over-engineer the design. The main purpose of the image or any other visual is to enhance the power of the message and to help you to tell your story. Remember that not only the message but also each visual can be perceived differently by your audience. Think both of the general purpose of the visual and the possible perception of it.

4. Get back to the screen

Now you can return to your computer and use the technical tools to build your presentation. The good preparation process should ease the technical process and help your presentation to become the best one you’ve ever made.

TIP! Choose consistent transitions and animations. Avoid too many fancy effects. They might distract the audience and make your presentation feel and look chaotic.

Once again, involve your colleagues and/or an expert if necessary.

With some Wide Thinking for a Change… you will be able to create appealing presentations which talk to your audience and enhance the power of your speech.

Some of the calculations may seem incredible and surprising. Often we don’t think about the costs of our time. We keep doing the same thing over and over without considering any change that actually could make a huge difference and improve the way we work and communicate.

Will you use some Wide Thinking for a Change… to reduce your costs and to improve the quality of your communication?

*Watch the complete speech of John Bohannon here.