How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

Often when we have to do a regular business presentation, we have to present data in the form of a chart. These charts are typically filled with either text or numbers. Because of the nature of many charts, these words or numbers are usually squeezed into small boxes in the slides and most of the audience cannot read the small text.

The question I am often asked is: how do I make these charts more audience friendly?

The thing to remember is that a presentation is never for the convenience of the presenter. A presentation is always for the convenience of the audience. Because of this you, the presenter, have a duty to make your slides more friendly for your audience and therefore you have a lot of work to do so your audience doesn’t have to.

Let us look at a couple of different examples of showing charts using Stephen Covey’s Time Matrix chart:

This first example is the way 90% of bad presenters would show this chart. Everything placed into one slide, whereupon the audience will inevitably begin reading the whole slide from left to right immediately it appears on the screen. The audience stops listening to you, and they just read. A completely useless way to explain or demostrate this chart.Alternative 1

Rather than showing all the data at once, bring in each item one by one. The downside to this method is time. It will take quite a few minutes to go through each item and explain it. If you are on a tight time schedule this method will probably take too long. However, if this chart is the main point of your presentation, it is probably worth taking the time to explain it in detail.

Alternative 2

Fade out the areas of the chart you are not talking about and only leave the area you are focussing on highlighted. This method would overcome the issue of time and allow you to go through each section step by step. The advantage of this method is that it keeps your audience’s attention on the part of the chart you are discussing.

Alternative 3

Zoom in the area you are speaking about so that it fills the slide. At the same time fade out the rest of the chart so that it is almost hidden away in the background. This is really a matter of aethetics rather substance and is essentially just a variation of alternative 2, but it does give you an idea of another way to show data in a chart.

Alternative 4

You could introduce the full chart briefly at the beginning of this part of your presentation, then as you introduce each part you move on to the next slide which only shows one of the boxes. This would then allow you to introduce each part line by line. At the end of the fourth box, you show the full chart again, but longer to allow your audience to absorb the full data. Again, the issue of time would come up, but it is another alternative of showing this data in a way your audience can follow.

The take away of this is that when you are presenting charts you need to avoid putting too much data up there on the screen at once. Charts and slides with too much text cause your audience to turn off their attention on you, and place their attention elsewhere. The best case scenario is they stop listening and start reading, the worst case, and often the most common case, they just simply stop listening to your presentation altogether. Your job as the presenter is to keep your audience’s attention on you. These alternatives can help you to do that.

One of the best things I have seen over the last twelve months is the increasing use of images and the decreasing use of text in presentation slides.

Unfortunately, this has led to considerable misuse of images and in particular images that are simply not relevant to the subject of the words. Often presenters use images of their favourite sports star to illustrate the fighting spirit needed to increase sales. Sadly, the audience have no idea who the sports star is or how being like him or her will help increase sales.

Other times I have seen images of cute animals with the words “teamwork” plastered over the top of it. To most people cute animals are just not associated with ‘teamwork’

When using images in your presentation slides they really need to be relevant to the topic you are talking about. They also need to be easily understood by your audience. Yuna Kim is a famous figure skater in Korea. But figure skating is not a famous sport on a global scale. So using an image of Yuna Kim in a presentation to a group of business people from Australia, for example, is not going to work. Your Australian audience will not know who she is. Likewise, JiSung Park may be famous in Korea and certain parts of Manchester. But as football is not a big sport in the US or Canada, images of him are not going to resonate in a presentation to a US or Canadian audience.

You also need to avoid the use of ‘cliched’ images. These are images that have been used over and over again and have become boring. An image of two businessmen shaking hands for example to show partnership, or one of a group of people from different ethnic backgrounds to show that your company is a global company. These have been used too many times and are very boring.

So, choose your images carefully. Make sure they are relevant to the subject you are trying to illustrate, try to use only one image per slide and make sure that whatever images you do use, your audience are going to know what it is about.

One of the biggest complaints from presentation ‘experts’ and audiences is that most presentation slides contain far too much text. Full sentences and sometimes even full paragraphs.

Now think about your audience for a moment. Most audience members take notes during a presentation. They have their sheets of paper, iPads or laptop computers and they are desperately trying to capture all the important stuff you give during your presentation. If your presentation slides contain long sentences and paragraphs, then there is no chance your audience can capture the important elements of your presentation. Quite often, your audience just gives up and ultimately, they stop listening.

The same goes for the charts and graphs you may put into your presentation. The more complex your chart or graph, the more difficult it is for your audience to quicky sketch out the important parts of the information you are giving. If your audience is unable to get down into their notes the important information from your presentation, your presentation is going to fail. Your audience are unlikely to remember anything you said 20 minutes after you finish. That is not success. That is a huge fail.

Look at the following example:

Now this slide shows the key information, it show the beauty of the car and the text used could be easily copied down before the presenter moves on to the next slide. Additional information can be added after your presentation, the information will be fresh in your audience’s mind.

So perhaps you should apply a simple test to your presentation slides:

Are my slides simple enough for my audience to capture the key information into their notes within twenty seconds?

That should be your goal when designing your slides. Putting the convenience of your audience first.

When you first watch this presentation, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is the future of presenting. Well animated slides, the words appearing on the slides as Gary Hamel, the speaker, is speaking (without the him looking around at his slides), seamless animation and excellent sound.

The truth is this is not the future. This is the present.

This is what your audience expect today. They do not want presenters looking around at their slides to read whatever they wrote on the slides, They want presenters up front talking to them with passion and with clear, easy to follow slides. They want their presenters to give them a well thought out argument and they want a presenter to be prepared and rehearsed.

If you are not doing this, then please spare your audience and don’t do the presentation. Your audience would rather be given the time to do something useful than to listen to a presentation that has not been properly planned and thought through and not rehearsed.

Here’s a little presentation I did recently for CBC News here in Korea about my cultural journey – coming from the United Kingdom to Korea, and some of the things I have noticed that are different.

It is a light hearted look, but I hope it can show you how to keep a presentation natural, and how to use good quality slides to help your audience to fully understand what you are saying.