I was lucky to come across Sue Hershkowitz-Coore’s post, 4 Ways to Destroy Your Next Presentation just as I was planning for my session at CUE. Sue asks,
“Would you juice up your PowerPoint, and say, “I know you can’t see this but…”?
I just don’t get it. If you knew they wouldn’t be able to see it, why in the world would you plan to show it?
I’d like to take this a step further and say that presenters shouldn’t point out flaws in their own presentations.
It goes without saying that planning is extremely important when preparing lessons or professional development. However, inevitably something will go wrong. Presenters undermine their own credibility and make themselves seem unprepared by pointing out flaws in their own presentation.
This is basic piano recital rules. If you make a mistake, keep going. As a presenter the way you frame your mistake makes a big difference.
For example, let’s say you haven’t made enough copies. Don’t tell your audience, “I didn’t make enough copies because I didn’t know how many people would be here.” Your audience doesn’t care and they don’t believe you. You’ve pointed out to them that you messed up. You’re creating disappointment where there doesn’t need to be any.
Instead, you might say please write down your e-mail and I will send you copies or you can find copies on my web site. If you say this before people start to complain about there not being enough copies, it makes you seem organized and responsive instead of unprepared and sloppy.
I’ve heard teachers tell students we were going to (insert fun activity here) today but I forgot the candy bars at home today. Don’t tell them that. You’re creating disappointment in your students. Just present them with another engaging activity and present the candy bar lesson on the day you remember to bring the candy.
Keep your mistakes to yourself and tell your excuses to your close friends, spare your audience.
Back to Speaker Sue’s example of a presenter showing text on a powerpoint that can’t be read. First I’d make Don McMillan’s “Death by Powerpoint“, Scott Elias’s Taking Your Slidedeck to the Next Level, and Dan Meyer’s recent “Powerpoint: Do No Harm” required viewing to avoid such problems. However, let’s say you end up in a situation where the lighting is such that a particular font is unreadable (it’s happened to me). Rather than saying I know you can’t read this which makes an audience think as Sue did, “this guy’s an idiot” how about saying, “Let me read this to you..” or “As you can see in your hand-outs…”
Your goal every time should be to provide a positive interaction with your customer (your students, the audience, etc). Don’t point out your flaws or they’re not going to want your product.
Do you have any tips for presenters?
Garr was talking about this same thing the other day on Presentation Zen. Apparently, Al Gore spent several portions of his presentation complaining to the audience that it was the first time he had made that presentation pared down and was having issues doing so. It did not allow the preso to flow as smoothly as it really could have. And Gore has made a few presentations before, mind you. We can all learn from these resources and keep them in mind when we are in front of a group.
Great points, Mathew. I love how you enhanced the concept. To tag on, if your audience isn’t laughing, and you just made a joke, don’t point the joke out to them. Just keep going as if they were wise to not laugh! One of the worst things to do is “turn” on the audience as in “I can’t believe you didn’t laugh at that.” Not only do you point out how unfunny you are, but you begin to alienate them. Thanks again.
Also, if you don’t feel good, or had a bad night, or had trouble finding the hotel, don’t tell people. No one wants to hear that. Especially don’t keep repeating it. We heard you the first time, and didn’t like it then.
Another option is to post your presentation on your website having used Screenflow in the foreground. It allows for people to hover over parts of the presentation that they may have missed, allows you to have recorded things a little more precisely back home, and also allows for you to tell an audience that it is available should they have issues with the audio or visual portion of your session. Having a Plan B is always impressive. It adds to a positive experience for an audience to know that they can follow-up later by watching it at their leisure. After my presentation at CUE, I went home and started fooling with Screenflow. I did a loose take on my presentation while it was fresh in my mind, and now that I understand more now how to better use the program and how to present better myself, I will re-do it again to freshen-up what’s online. But I got some great feedback having just had it be available to those who wanted to revisit some of my information. Hope this helps. I really enjoyed reading your entry.
Thank you everyone for your great suggestions and your own presentation no no’s.
Also, Craig Nansen (via Twitter) shared a tip that you can zoom in on a Macintosh to make the screen bigger in the event that you can’t see something on the screen.
Other tips: Be prepared to present without the slideshow. Technical difficulties will happen and the slideshow should be the gravy, not the whole thing. Bullet points are dead, dead, dead. Use as few slides as possible. Keep it short. More pictures, less words. Use the biggest font and fewest words possible per slide. And for the love of humanity, please don’t read your slides!