Two quick and fairly obvious observations about controlling the focus of your audience’s attention using PowerPoint.
The first. A while back I was coaching a speaker on his presentation slides. He had, for some reason, a slide showing a large historical marker. The kind that some poor taxpayers get to pay for and place in front of a courthouse to commemorate a long-lost city founder.
This slide had at least a hundred words on it, all of which were faithfully displayed.
I asked, “Are you going to read that to your audience?”
The answer “No. I just want them to see it.”
This now famous incident led to my much-quoted rule of PowerPoint:
IF YOU SHOW IT, THEY WILL TRY TO READ IT.
Said another way: If you put words on the screen, no matter how many, how small or how hard to read, your audience will dutifully try to read them — no matter what your intention.
And the result is they will not be paying attention to you.
So, the audience mind control tip is this: Keep as many words off the screen as possible. Unless your intention is to have them read a long historical plaque (then prepare for the coming naptime).
(Exception: If you are conducting a training event or workshop where long clips of text are necessary, then these word-filled slides may be required. But remember they will still have the same mind-numbing effect. Consider having a workbook or handout to help mitigate.)
Mind control tip number two.
Those who create PowerPoint sooner or later end up creating a list of related items on a single slide. These lists often use bullets or something else to indicate items in a list.
If you project your entire list at one time your audience will read ahead. You may be discussing item number two while they are thinking about the tasty morsel of content you are going to reveal in item number four.
Once again you have lost control of their minds. They are not paying attention to you.
The solution? A build.
A build is simply a series of similar looking slides where each new item on the list is added on a new slide. This results in the first slide having just the title and maybe the first item. Then the second has the title plus item one plus item two. And so on.
You can build this build using multiple slides or, if you feel adventurous, use the animation features in PowerPoint.
In either of these two scenarios above, if you do it right, you are in control of their minds. And you have not lost yours.
Kinda creepy, huh?
Control, we all want control. Control your next presentation here: https://ready2speak.com/course
Tom
