5 Practices for Creating Presentations That Matter

Everyone, regardless of job title, sells their ideas. Designers, sales folks, teachers, board members, and mangers must present and convince people just as effectively as professional public speakers.

While it may not feel like such a big deal to present an idea or innovation to a small group, millions of dollars may be on the line in even the most intimate of settings. Improving your ability to communicate your message by way of a formal presentation may be one of the most important personal development projects you can undertake.

As an author and speaker I’ve delivered hundreds of talks and created an equal number of slide decks. Below are my five best practices for creating presentations that make your message matter.

1) Start Analog

Like most people I used to fire up PowerPoint and start creating slide after slide. The problem with this approach is that you don’t see and feel the entire picture; you only get small chunks.

Now when I approach a presentation I start in analog mode with a giant white board that I’ve painted on a stretch of wall and several pack of post it notes. This allows me to see the entire map and add, subtract and rearrange ideas before I ever commit anything to presentation software. (While desktop presentation software like PowerPoint and Keynote are the norm, growing numbers are moving to online collaborative tools like SlideRocket.)

2) Think About The Journey

Many people come to hear a presentation because they know they need to learn something or they’ve been asked to consider a new idea. They may also come with some resistance internally.

A great presentation addresses where people are, transports them to a world of new knowledge, points out the roadblocks and challenges, and helps them alter their perceptions internally so they can change their world externally and use the information presented. People need to believe that they can use the information you present or it won’t matter how good it is.

Most great presentations end with a logical call to action.

3) Tell Your Story

Great presentations have a lot in common with great cinema. Stories are often told to entertain, but the use of stories in presentations, even when simply reporting information, can help dynamically illustrate even the most complex of ideas.

Mixing in stories with information is how you create desire and drama and this is how you move people to want to adopt your point of view – not to mention that it makes information more digestible.

Great presenters draw upon personal stories and borrow heavily from the stories lines contained in movies, literature and mythology.

4) Less Is More

Many slide presentations are little more than read along notes for the presenter and would be just as effective delivered via email. I could write pages on this crime alone, but suffice it to say that your slides should be used as visual clues to amplify your message, not tell it.

Set up your slides so they serve to help viewers remember a key point. Try to reduce the content on your slides to one word or one image that reinforces. Strip a concept down to one quotable (tweetable) phrase and use that for dramatic impact.

You should come to use your slides as a partner, not as a crutch. Practice with your slides until your very sparse presentation glides along with your words. In many cases, you can create notes for yourself and view them, rather than your slides, on the computer screen view, like a teleprompter if need be.

5) The Presenters Mindset

Much of the fear that surrounds public speaking is rooted in the fear of being judged. People won’t think I’m smart, good, funny, whatever. The cause of this is because many presenters believe their job is to get up and provide information as the all-knowing expert.

While you may have been asked to make a presentation because you did some unique research or you do hold subject matter expertise, the real reason you are there is help people come to their own understanding of the information much more like a mentor than a guru.

Adopt the mentor’s mindset, get comfortable with that role, and you’ll never worry about the outcome of your presentations again.

There are two books that every presenter or anyone charged with creating presentations should read. Resonate and slide:ology, both by Nancy Duarte are the one two punch that will teach you everything you need to know about crafting and then presenting your ideas in ways that will make your message matter.

Another great place to find example presentations, good, bad and in a class of their own is Slideshare, an online presentation hosting service that makes it very easy for you to post and embed your presentations on web sites.

Presentation Palettes & Patterns