Why most presentations miss the mark ...
leaving audiences in the dark
Ryan Standil is a former lawyer and the owner of Write To Excite. He leads workshops for businesses and governments about effective writing.
How many times have you had the following experience as an attendee at a presentation?
You are listening to the presenter while also trying to read a PowerPoint slide, and you realize that you cannot absorb the oral and visual information at the same time.
When presenters force audience members to perform this juggling act, audience members will ignore one type of information, because humans cannot multitask. As evidence, see this interview of Bernie Sanders and note what happens to your ability to focus when the Tweet is shown at 42:55.
It is astounding how commonly presenters force their audiences to multitask between listening and reading. The frequency of this phenomenon begs the question: How do presenters not realize the strain they are placing on audience members? Surely presenters have been audience members themselves and felt the multitasking burden. The answer dives deep into cognitive science, but I will provide a high-level analogy.
Every time you approach a stop sign, do you take a moment to read the word STOP? Of course not. The big red octagon, which always displays the same word, sends a familiar signal to your brain, and you automatically process STOP. In contrast, imagine if every red octagonal sign displayed a different word (PROCEED, CONSTRUCTION, PHONE OFF, CHILDREN, DRIVE SOBER). In this case, you would take a moment to read every sign that your vehicle approached.
Stop signs can be analogized to presentations. The presenter has seen their slides so many times that absorbing the information has become akin to processing the word STOP. It’s instantaneous. And because the information on the slides has been ingrained in the presenter’s brain, the presenter loses sight of how long it will take for audience members to digest the slides for their first time. Therefore, the presenter begins speaking while the audience is still reading bullets or dissecting graphs, leading to multitasking. This holds true even when slides are light on words.
The best encapsulation of this problem comes from Patrick Winston, who was a professor of artificial intelligence and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For four decades, he gave an annual talk called How to Speak. The 2018 version has been viewed 20 million times on YouTube. Dr. Winston said, “We have only one language processor, and we can either use it to read stuff or to listen to the speaker.” He then explained that an MIT researcher did an experiment in which he led presentations for undergraduates. As Dr. Winston put it, “Half the information was on slides; [the researcher] said the other half; and then, for a control group, he reversed it. And the question was, what did the … subjects remember best: what he said, or what they read on the slide? The answer is, what they read on the slide.”
Given the revelation of this study, it would seem as though many presenters could save folks the hassle of attending a meeting by just e-mailing a copy of their slides.
For your next presentation, two tools will ensure that you successfully stagger oral and visual information.
Tool 1: Bring information onto the screen one piece at a time.
Starting with an example of poor delivery, imagine if a presenter pulls up a slide that contains three bullet points. Everyone knows from experience that when the presenter is speaking about point 1, the audience is consumed with reading points 2 and 3.
To avoid this distraction, presenters should wait until they have finished discussing point 1 to bring point 2 onto the slide.
In the legal industry, my favourite writing instructor is Patrick Barry, who skillfully employs this technique at the University of Michigan. In this one-minute video, Dr. Barry advances his slides eight times, whereas most presenters would bring everything onto the screen in one or two motions.
To present like Dr. Barry, you do not need to learn about animations. All you need to do is duplicate the slide you are designing and then type your next point on your next slide. Your audience will never know that you used two slides as opposed to one.
Tool 2: Give the audience time to read your slides.
Trevor Currie is a presentation coach and the author of Move the Room. The front cover of the book boasts a review from best-selling author Dan Pink, which reads: “Move the Room will transform the way you deliver a speech, close a deal or motivate your team.” Mr. Currie advises presenters to “separate the activities of speaking to your audience with eye contact and referencing your slides in silence.”
I would add that when you allow your audience to read silently, it is important for you, yourself, to read, at a very slow pace. Otherwise, the “stop sign fallacy” will rear its ugly head, meaning you will underestimate how long the audience needs to finish the slide.
The irony of silent reading is that it highlights whether the oral part of your presentation is a useful supplement to the text. “You are what’s persuasive, not your slides,” Mr. Currie told me.
He urges presenters to “resist the temptation to endlessly edit your slides. We’ve all seen presenters with polished slides and subpar delivery, and it’s a bad experience for all. On the flip side, we’ve been captivated by powerful speakers with unremarkable slides, and it’s a memorable experience for all. To stand out, invest your time crafting compelling content and rehearsing.”
I echo Mr. Currie’s thoughts. The reason for gathering is to hear the presenter; a PowerPoint can be disseminated through e-mail. Make sure you justify the need to gather, and then use your slides to accentuate your spoken points.
It’s no wonder PowerPoint is strictly prohibited at Amazon.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.