How to Deliver a Slide Presentation
If you do these 10 things when you deliver your next slide presentation, you’ll knock it out of the park.
Talk to your audience, not your slides. Practice silence when you need to reference your slides.
If your laptop is connected to a projector screen, tip the screen down so you won’t be tempted to look at it. Ideally, you’d take your information from the same place your audience is — i.e., the projector screen. This creates a shared experience.
If it’s on your slide, you should talk about it. If you decide to skip over something, explain why.
If you can, stand to the left of your slides (from your audience’s perspective). Because we read left to right, you’ll put yourself in the same visual plane as your slides.
Always stand near your slides unless you’re walking around to facilitate an activity or discussion. If you move to present from the side or back of the room, you make your audience choose between looking at you or your slides. They want to see both, so don’t make them choose.
If possible, avoid standing behind a lectern (unless the mic is attached to it). They cover up most of your body (language) and tend to promote poor presentation delivery behaviors.
Guide your audience through your slides verbally and/or physically — “As you can see on the right-hand side…” (o)r gesture in the direction you want your audience to look.
If you’re presenting data, tell your audience what they’re looking at before explaining what it means — “Let’s take a look at incidents of hamstring injuries over our past three seasons. The horizontal axis shows the season timeline ranging from pre-season to post-season. The vertical axis shows the number of hamstring injuries, and each season is represented by X colors. Now, let’s talk about what the data is telling us…”
Drop verbal breadcrumbs as you present — “We were here… now we’re here… we’re going here next…” This helps your audience hold the thread of logic as they listen to your presentation.
Aim to sound interested, not professional. If you sound interested in what you’re talking about, your audience will be motivated to discover what makes it so. Most people who try to sound “professional” sound monotone and uninterested.
Have questions about this list?
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Thanks for reading!
Jenny