This morning, Seth Godin, one of my heroes in marketing thought-leadership, blasted out a e-newsletter with a simple and powerful idea: contain yourself to only putting ONE WORD or one image per PowerPoint slide.

Imagine the impact that would have on your audience? They might just pay more attention to you, the presenter, rather than focusing their attention on all those words you crowded onto your busy PowerPoint slides – all 200 of them!

It’s a revolutionary idea and one whose time has come.

When giving presentations, Less is the new more!

Below is a copy of the email that Seth Godin sent out today on this important matter.

The 200 slide solution

From Seth Godin, author of The Purple Cow

The next time you find yourself on the hook for a 40 minute presentation (with slides!) consider, at least for a moment, a radical idea:

A slide every 12 seconds. 200 slides in all.

You’re used to putting three or four bullet points on a slide. That’s at least four distinct ideas, but more often, each of those ideas has three or four sub ideas to it. In other words, you’re cramming 32 ideas on a slide, and you’re sitting on that slide as you drone on and on. Perhaps you spice it up with some reveals or animated bullets, but it’s still 32 ideas going stale before our eyes.

What if you blew it up? Just one word on a slide. Or, perhaps just one image (no cheesy stock please). Maybe you write, “Cheaper” on one slide and, “More durable” on the next…

Slides create action. When did you decide that the appropriate amount of action was six or twelve times every half hour?

How would your pace change if you had 200 slides? How much better would the integration of slides and talk be?

I don’t honestly expect you to do your presentation with 200 slides. I’m hoping this exercise will help you realize that you might not need any slides. Or that 50 or 100 slides will pick up your energy and make your argument more coherent.

But please, don’t do that presentation you did last time.

**********

To follow Seth Godin, do what I do and subscribe to Seth’s blog (it’s very very good!)

**********

Recommended Books:  another great resource on getting your PowerPoint under control – buy the book Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. It’s like the “safe sex guide for PowerPoint”. Again – very very good.

**********

Training Workshops. Lastly, if you are motivated to improve your presentation skills and confidence and want to learn how to reduce your dependency on PowerPoint and other technical crutches, CALL ME at (860) 408-0033.  I teach a high engagement presentation training program called The Motivated Presenter™.

You will learn the tips and tricks of going “PowerPoint-FREE!” and how to strengthen your communication and persuasion when giving presentations.

The presentation training program is available as a corporate on-site group workshop in an accelerated 1-day or intensive 2-day format. It is also available to individuals using a 1:1 executive coaching format.

Here’s what one client just sent me last week following his participation in the Level 1: Essential Fundamentals of High Engagement Presentations:

“I just wanted to thank you for the 2 days that you spent with us.  I can honestly say that I gained much more from your seminar than you can even imagine.  Not only did I gain some invaluable insight on how to gather my thoughts and create a powerful and strongly communicated message, but I also was able to rethink how I look to present material based on the audience that I am presenting to.  I came out of those two days with some vigor, ready to take on a whole slew of new challenges.”-Scott Decoteau, Lead Art Director / New Media, LEGO Systems Inc

Yesterday, the Drudgereport proclaimed that PowerPoint was public enemy #1. Check out the PowerPoint slide below that they used to explain the military game plan to establish stability in Afghanistan. It could quite possibly be the worst PowerPoint slide ever created!

“When we understand that slide,we’ll have won the war,” said General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander

This slide was generated by a consulting company (PA Consulting Group)  But they are not totally to blame for this horrific piece of visual communication. The client – some military official- approved this piece to show in the presentation.

The article goes on to suggest that:

“PowerPoint has become public enemy number one for many US officers who find themselves battling slide presentations rather than insurgents. Some have gone as far as to declare all-out war on the software after the military command was over-run with mind-numbing 30-slide presentations. General James N. Mattis, the Joint Forces Commander, isn’t taking any prisoners in his approach. PowerPoint makes us stupid”

Brigadier General H.R. McMaster went one step further and banned the presentation package when he led an offensive in Tal Afar, Iraq, in 2005.

‘[PowerPoint is] dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,’ Brigadier General H.R. McMaster told the New York Times. ‘Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.’

For the safety  and comfort of your next audience, please be careful how you use PowerPoint. It can kill rapport, create confusion and bore your audience to death. For new ideas and alternatives to PowerPoint, please check out the web page Stop Global Boring: reduce your PowerPoint emissions now! If immediate triage is required, download the audio training program Stand & Deliver to your computer.

Last week I facilitated a half-day workshop on presentation skills to forty non-profit professionals who have been trained in the area of trauma informed care for children, adults and families.

The workshop was sponsored by my clients, The Traumatic Stress Institute, a division of Klingberg Family Centers.

All forty of these amazing individuals had been trained in Risking Connection, a philosophy that supports the transformation to trauma-informed care and advocates for relationships and connections as the best treatment for healing traumatized children and adults.

In this workshop, we elected to focus on a specific skill with the field of presentation and public speaking – story telling. This blog post is designed to motivate and equip you to:

“Never make a point without telling a story. Never tell a story without making a point.”

Why tell stories?

Stories remain one of the most powerful forms of communication. They not only are effective in capturing and holding the attention of children, but can mesmerize adults as well.

The purpose of telling stories during your presentations is to engage, to entertain and to teach. All of these attributes make story telling a dynamic technique for professionals who desire to be high engagement presenters.

Mastering the art of story telling can increase your presentation persuasion power and make you a more engaging speaker. Stories are also a sure fire way of opening your presentation.

Brain researcher John Medina, author of Brain Rules, suggests that story telling in presentations is a very effective way to “wake up” your audience and re-engage them. His brain scan studies show that the human brain fatigues every ten minutes or so. We must do something at minute 9 and 59 seconds, or we lose them. Medina recommends story telling and use of metaphors. (p.s. buying Medina’s book is a no-brainer. I highly recommend it!)

What’s makes an effective story?

Your story must be clear, it must be compelling and it must be concise. Your stories should also be relevant to the context and audience in which you are telling the stories. Lastly, your story telling effectiveness will be influenced by your story content and your delivery of the story. Effective stories can be told in the shortest amount of time possible. Don’t drone on with your story or your audience will be wondering “where is she going with this?”

How to shape your stories
Here is a simple formula that you can practice to tell effective stories as part of your high engagement presentations. It’s called the Incident-Point-Benefit story telling technique.

The great part about this story-telling template is that you can create many different points and benefits from the same story, depending upon your audience and what you are trying to achieve.

Each time you tell your story, you can draw a different point and different benefit, depending upon what you are trying to achieve in your presentation.

Caution: never tell a story that you are still hurting from. If you find yourself feeling angry, bitter, sad to the point of tears, then you are not ready to share this story in a public presentation. Save it for later.  Being overly emotional during story telling can negatively affect your audience and alter your outcome.

Resources to help improve your presentation and public speaking skill set

• Download the free workbook Power of Personal Narrative
• Download the 3-part story telling template. Use this template to write out your signature stories.
• Click here to access more free resources to help you improve your presentation

Need more?

This story-telling training module is now available as part of our half-day training workshops series - ideal for working professionals who are time-starved but want to advance themselves professionals. Here are the other modules now available to you in this series:

• Workshop #1:  Success by Design: How to Effectively Plan and Organize Your Presentation Content
• Workshop #2:  The Power of Personal Narrative: Story Telling for Greater Presentation Impact
• Workshop #3:  Improve Your Presentation Visuals: PowerPoint Do’s and Don’ts
• Workshop #4:  Masterful Delivery: vocal power and body language intelligence for presenters

If you can spare a full day or two days to advance your presentation skill set, check out our Level 1 and Level 2 training workshops to mastering the art of high engagement presentations.

We also offer 1:1 executive presentation delivery coaching to help you prepare for a “high stakes” presentation. When your upcoming presentation really matters to your career or business, your best investment is to engage an expert to help you prepare, practice and polish.

Contact Kathy McAfee at (860) 408-0033 or leave a comment below and we’ll be in touch with you shortly to discuss your specific needs and challenges.