Ode to Presentation Skills

Let’s talk Presentation Skills. You should probably get some if you will present something to a group of people. Or at least if you ever intend to do so. Even if you won’t give any formal presentations, there still may be some value in knowing how to present something – a topic, a philosophy, an argument, even your career or life story. You never know when the moment will arise where it’s necessary to convey a message in a coherent, organized manner.

I attended a voiceover conference this past weekend and sat in on several presentations. It was pretty much all “sit-and-get” with opportunities for questions. As you might expect, it was a mixed bag. But then, these were primarily voiceover artists whose profession regularly calls for them to interpret and deliver the words given to them, not necessarily write their own stuff, so I took a forgiving mindset into the presentations. One presenter eschewed any slides on-screen altogether (quiet hallelujah) and just talked through his points and ideas. That was admittedly a risky approach, but he was knowledgeable enough that he could proceed in this way and help everyone in the room gain useful information. Others committed some proverbial cardinal sins of presentations. Clearly they were not quite polished enough, but that was fine for this particular conference.

The experience reminded me that I have given hundreds of presentations. I’m good at it, maybe even great. Last year, one of my colleagues, after a presentation I made to our faculty, suggested I should become a professional presenter (not sure there is such a thing besides emcee work; there’s usually an area of expertise as a foundation). It’s definitely a skill I’ve cultivated, but I had to get good at it: I taught government and economics for 19 years, classes that were required for graduation but were not exactly at the top of any student’s  wish list. Then when I moved toward administration, I specialized in testing for another 12 years. Testing, where the topics really got mind-numbing…I mean, “challenging” – mostly compliance-oriented training on such wildly popular topics as test security & confidentiality, testing irregularities, testing procedures, student accommodations, and so forth. No one was ever busting down my door begging for a presentation. Sometimes I did get requests from specific groups needing specific training on specific topics that I understood and they didn’t. But even then, the topics were Sahara-desert dry. The point is, I developed strong presentation skills because I knew that if I Ben-Stein-ed my way through it (you know Ben Stein, don’t you? “Anyone…anyone…Bueller?”), my audience is gone almost immediately. I had to be engaging, energetic, and focused on what the takeaway of this nonsense I’m talking about is. Otherwise it’s just boring political and bureaucratic talk, or “the dismal science,” or that awful testing stuff we have to do every year.

I have also attended hundreds of presentations, many of which were excellent, but most of which, honestly, were somewhere between mediocre and brutally bad. Some even seemed impressive but were actually terrible, like the time a curriculum supervisor was supposed to be talking about her district’s correlation between its curriculum development and assessment, but she A) talked so fast and B) spent so much time lavishing praise on her own district and its leadership, I wonder how anyone was supposed to decipher any kind of point from it, let alone glean ways that their own district could use this information. I found myself just wanting the PowerPoint in PDF format so I could try to figure out anything I could actually use. Just stop talking already and please let me read instead.

Did you see that dreaded word in the previous paragraph? PowerPoint. Insert your own shuddering reaction here. Don’t get me wrong – PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, Canva, Prezi – they’re all wonderful, powerful tools capable of enhancing your presentation. But they are tools. At the end of the day, no one cares how impressive the builder’s hammer was; they care about what the builder actually built. And set of PowerPoint slides is only as effective as the message the presenter delivers with them. Transitions, animations, little GIFs embedded in Canva, etc. – they’re all nerdy and sometimes cool things in the programming, but they don’t make the presentation itself any more interesting. Sometimes they actually distract.

By now, you’re probably asking, “Okay, since you’re such a pro at presentations, what should everyone be doing to be like you, smart guy? HUH?!?” The answers are simpler than you might think. From my experience, a good presentation comes down to 5 core ideas:

1. The old adage, “Begin with the End in Mind.” Don’t just start making slides or writing down notes to read from. Ask yourself, “what ideas or skills should people attending my presentation gain?” Someone who spends their time listening to you ought to get value out of that time. What value will you provide? Plan the takeaways for the audience before you plan the bullets and graphics and speaking points for yourself. Educators should easily recognize these as “learning objectives,” and you need them before you start deciding what to show and say.
2. If you’re using slides, keep them limited, relevant, and visually engaging. No one, and I mean NO ONE, enjoys experiencing “Death by PowerPoint,” where the presenter hammers everyone with slide after slide, some of which they don’t even bother to feature. Better to have too few slides than too many. For slides that are primarily text, follow the 6×6 Rule (Maximum 6 lines of text, maximum 6 words per line), but be willing to break it if you need to. Use graphics when possible, but make sure the audience can decipher them and that they actually add to your message.

• Side Note: I used to know a central administrator who insisted that PowerPoint presentations by administrators, particularly campus principals, should be graphics-only with zero text, because “the audience should be listening to words, not reading them.” This was one of the WORST takes I ever heard in my education career. (I believe the technical term is “horsesh**.”) Obviously, don’t beat people down with overloaded text on a slide, but graphics-only slides are useful for effect. They are NOT the norm.

3. PREPARE what you’re going to SAY. Do Not Read your Slides to your Audience (unless they’re a bunch of toddlers who cannot read yet). Your job is to SPEAK TO the points that appear on-screen. Offer details, tell stories, embellish – these things engage the audience. Reading what everyone can already see is BORING, and it’s brutal for the audience. But I know why you’re reading the slides; I’ve been there. You’re not really prepared to speak. You drew up a slide deck, you don’t really know what to say with it, so you’re just turning your eyes to the screen and reading what’s there. Yes, that is better than fail-smiling to the audience because you’ve got no words, but only by about 0.03%. This is why PowerPoint literally has a Notes field for the Presenter view. If you have to, use it. Better to read prepared notes from your laptop at the podium than reading the words on the screen that they see. But YOU have to PREPARE those notes. If you’re not using slides, then you’d really better be prepared to speak, unless you happen to have the natural ability or the experience to start talking and find your way to a coherent message.
4. Be Energetic, but Slow Down. There’s a thing in education known as “wait-time,” usually reserved for moments when you pose a question to students and need to pause and allow them to answer. Even in a sit-and-get presentation, wait-time is still essential. People can only process so much auditory and visual stimulation in a given timeframe. If that means you have to cut slides and speech for time, so be it. Edit yourself. Your content isn’t so important that 100% of it is absolutely critical and necessary. Figure it out. Speeding through things just to get through all your slides is poor presenting.
5. Know your Technology. Use your Technology. If you’re personally managing the slides, know how to advance and reverse them ahead of time. It’s frustrating for your audience when you keep saying “Whoops” and struggling to find the correct frame. And USE THE MICROPHONE. You know that person who says, “I’m loud and ya’ll can probably hear me, so I’m not going to use this.” While it may be true that you’re loud, I’ve already stopped listening now, because you’re an idiot. They gave you a microphone so we can hear you better. Please use it. And if it’s a lavalier (the little clip-on with a transmitter box), please clip it to your shirt and belt like it’s designed. Holding a tiny lavalier microphone at your chin is NOT how it was designed, and you’re causing distortion. We cannot understand you. Ask for help before the presentation, lest you look like an amateur or worse. Figure it out.

When it’s all said and done, your presentation comes down to credibility. You as a presenter at least need to look like you know what you’re doing. Even if you enter the room as an expert in your field, if the audience cannot hear or understand you, if you talk too fast, if you’re just reading the slides, if you have too many slides, or if there seems to be no point to what you’re showing and/or saying, it all falls flat. The ability to maintain coherence and competence with the presentation itself builds credibility for you and ultimately strengthens your message so that people remember the information and are perhaps inspired to use it for their own benefit. And that’s the whole purpose of taking the time to make, and attend, a presentation.