How to get and keep your
audiences’ attention with PowerPoint
At first glance PowerPoint
appears to be a simple way to add color and size to your outline. It performs
these tasks easily and extremely well. We use outlines because that is how we
were taught to organize our thinking from elementary school on. But presenting
is a visual medium. It’s you, how you look, how you move, and your facial
expressions. It’s visual and YOU ARE THE SHOW!
The PowerPoint presentation is
not the show. YOU are the show. Your PowerPoint presentation is the sidekick.
Remember, the old TV western The Lone Ranger? Well, the Lone Ranger was the
centerpiece, but it was Tonto and other sidekicks that gave the show its flavor
and color. The interaction between the Lone Ranger and his sidekicks is what
made him bigger than life and carried us from one scene to the next.
Put PowerPoint to work doing
these four jobs: First, to set a mood or image for the presentation. Second,
its job is to make you look good. By that I mean to look like you know your
stuff, that you are organized, and you care enough about your audience that you
took the time to help them understand your message. The third job of your
PowerPoint presentation is to keep your audience focused on the idea you are
presenting at any given moment in your presentation. The fourth and final job
of your PowerPoint presentation is to visually clarify, demonstrate, and
emphasize a particular idea or concept. This includes showing relationships and
processes.
Let’s take a quick look at each
of these. By carefully selecting the right color and background you go a long
way in setting the mood or image of your audience. The effect of color on mood,
emotion, and state of mind is one of the most studied aspects of psychology.
Quickly list all of the fast food chains you can think of. Now, name the two
most predominate colors in their logos and decor (excluding white). You listed
red and yellow, right? Here’s what we know about those two colors: red
increases appetite and yellow influences toward happiness. I bet Ronald
McDonald, Wendy, and all their cohorts know it too! Color matters. The color of
your background must be considered when you select the color of your titles and
text as well.
One of the four traits of
leadership that people respond to is competence. Competent people look and act
like they know where they are going and can show others the way. Your
PowerPoint presentation can make you appear organized, thoughtful and focused
by signposting. This means to tell people what you are going to tell them, then
tell them what you are telling them. At the end, show them that you told them
what you said you would. It makes you look organized and it gives your audience
comfort because they are traveling with a leader. You can use your PowerPoint
presentation to signpost by using a combination of bullet points and visual
cues. Picture a slide titled: “Three keys to powerful presenting”, then the
presenter reveals each bullet item which read in order, “Where you stand”, “How
you move”, “When you smile”. The presenter says each item as they appear on the
screen. Then, clicking to the next slide, he says, “Let’s look at...Where you
stand,” That’s signposting using bullet lists. You can also signpost with
visuals such as numbers or text inside of boxes or shapes. This one may take
some guidance and a lot of practice.
The best way to use PowerPoint
to keep your audience focused on the point you are making is to have only the
point you are making on the screen. You can do this by using what I call a
reveal slide. A reveal slide shows a hint of the previous bullet items by
dimming them and the bullet item you are discussing is showing, and none of the
following bullet items are showing. A little experimentation in Custom
Animations... dialog box will yield this effect. Go to Show>Custom
Animations.
In the “Check to animate slide
objects” you can highlight each item on a slide. When you find the bullet list
object you want to reveal click in the ballot box to the left of that item.
Directly below that, click on the Order and Timing tab. Make sure the bullet
list item is in the right position. Now, click on the Effects tab. I almost
always use the dissolve effect. Next, move down to “After Animation”, click on
the dropdown arrow. Select a color that will blend in well to your background.
I do this because I want my audience to see the bullet items that we have
already discussed, but I want to dim them into the background in a ghost
effect. In the “Introduce text” box at the lower right click on the first drop
down list and select “All at once”, this will cause the words of a bullet item
to show up together. Now, put a check in the “Grouped by... (pick 1st)
level paragraph”. These steps will cause each bullet item to appear one at a
time as you click the mouse, ghost the previous bullet item to blend into the
background and feature only the item you are talking about until you advance to
the next bullet item. Finally, click the preview button to see the order
animated items enter the slide.
Charts, diagrams,
illustrations, photos, boxes and shapes with words in them animating in an
organized sequence to show relationships in time, proximity, order and so on
are each powerful ways to focus the audience on a single idea at a time within
the framework of a larger concept.
So, you are the show, but your
sidekick can be the difference between appearing competent...or not.
