Reading from the slides is presentation suicide.
Reading from the slides is presentation suicide. So, why do so many people do it?
Let’s be honest, there are times when perhaps we all need to read a little from a slide. The content might be incredibly technical 📊, or you might be paraphrasing 📃. But, in general, we should keep it to a minimum. People can read the slide for themselves 🤓, so you’re not adding any value by reading it out.
Plus! The big one is that there shouldn’t be much content to read in the first place. Each slide should be short, sharp and shiny ✨. One point per slide 😱😱😱 Yep! One point.
There’s a bunch of common reasons why people read from the slide:
Don’t know the subject
Don’t know the content
Haven’t prepared
Nervous
Afraid to make eye contact
Don’t want to make a mistake
Given the slides at the last minute.
So, what’s the solution? 🧪
Well, for the most part, the solutions are in the reasons:
If you don’t know the subject well, then learn about it
Learn the content
Prepare
Process out your nervousness (I have a process for that🪄)
Learn how to make eye contact
Understand what makes you believe you’ll make a mistake and handle that.
Getting the slides at the last minute is tricky. You need to be able to ‘facilitate’ the session and engage your audience/team/customer/prospect so that they have no reason to suspect that you were given the slides at the last minute.
Most importantly, people will remember how you made them feel more than what you said. 🥰
Learn how to handle all this!
Learn how to handle all this in my workshop The Art of Facilitation: How to Master Your Presentations & Workshops.
June 12, Adelaide.
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