I come from a world where PowerPoint slides are everything. You want to pitch something? Put it in a slide deck. You need to write a formal proposal? Put it in a slide deck. Deliverables, status updates, summaries, notes from meetings, party planning… slide deck!
I was overly-reliant on slides when planning for the podium. I used slides to help me organize my information, determine flow, set up a strong start and a nice, tidy wrap-up.
And in the end, that over-reliance made my presentations clunky.
I learned, perhaps a little on the later side, that a presentation was NOT about the slides. It was about what is SAID about the slides.
People rarely think of “giving a presentation for work” as a “speech” – but that’s what it is, and that’s how you should approach it.
The problem is that while people can feel comfortable putting together slides, people often don’t know how to prepare a speech.
Read up on some basic tips from Toastmasters on speech preparation.
Only then would you do the slides to complement your speech.
Then get ready for a great presentation!