TALK ABOUT A TOUGH CROWD! If you think it's hard keeping adults engaged, try standing in front of a class of 12 year-olds. And to discuss effective presentations? The only thing many of them were interested in (at least regarding PowerPoint) was how to do fancy transitions and flaming bullet points. I had my work cut out for me.
I'd been invited to talk to five classes of 6th graders who were starting to work on presentations about the Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs. In the past, these student presentations had been bullet-fests, with the occasional picture or goofy clip art thrown in — along with swirling transitions and sparkly text. Their teacher decided it was time for something better.
My usual approaches to talking about effective presentations wouldn't work, however, as these kids had little interest in business matters. And all those exercises I might use with adults? Worthless in this setting.
So what would work with this group, where peer pressure and being cool are ever-present? Here's what I came up with (and it worked really well):
Don't bore your audience.
Don't drone on or read all your bullets — in fact, you don't have to have bullets at all! That was startling to a lot of them, even after I'd shown them the Notes pane in PowerPoint and the Presenter view (where they could see their notes, but the audience would see only the image on the slide).
To help them understand the possibilities, I showed them four versions of the same presentation, based on one my older son had done for this same teacher two years ago. The first version was a typical text-heavy dirge. I managed to bore the kids by the middle of the second slide. The second version added a few bits of goofy clip art. The clip art images were actually appropriate to the topic, but they really did look lame.
The third version added photos and illustrations I'd found on the web, but still retained all the bullets that my older son had used two years ago. (That was the requirement then.) This version was dramatically better than the first two — my audience was definitely engaged now — but it was still thick with text. So on to version four.
This final version used pictures almost exclusively, with section titles as the only text. All those bullets were consigned to the Notes pane. And it told a much richer tale of the life of the Mayans. The teacher was nodding vigorously as the class and I discussed the differences, and most of the kids seemed to get it.
And they've got great material to work with. All those killings and ritual sacrifices and weird clothes and bizarre foods and using leeches in lieu of Band-Aids? They've got a feast of discoveries and stories they can express, and it all is MUCH more engaging when presented visually — either in pictures or through the story-telling efforts of the presenter. There is no way text has any of the same properties, even when describing the same material.
The relevance for you?
1) Don't bore your audience. Think about what will inspire them, or at least engage them, and then build from that. Stressing the features of your product or how excited you are about what you have to offer is not likely to be a winning path.
2) Eliminate as much text from your slides as you can. People are NOT going to remember all those words; in fact, the more words you use, the less likely it is that your audience will remember ANY of those words.
3) Use stories or images to help get your key idea across. If you're talking about something that doesn't lend itself to captivating images, then definitely find client stories or horror stories turned to successes that can frame why your offering or idea is so compelling.
