Everything I Know About Giving Presentations I Learned from the Government
I love presenting, and I love critiquing other people’s presentations. I’m not Kawasaki or Conway, but I think I’m decent at it. Most of what I know is thanks to a two-week training course early in my government career, about four years ago. For 13 straight days, I watched a series of presenters stand up and make God-awful briefings. I kept myself awake by taking notes on their presentation styles. (Eventually, I ran out of criticisms, so I wrote down lyrics to Springsteen, The Who, Cream…) Therefore, most of the notes are on how NOT to give presentations. I’ve kept the notes in my desk since then. Here they are:
- Only use PowerPoint if absolutely necessary. Never use slides as cue cards. People don’t want to see your own notes. It distracts the audience and draws attention from what you’re saying. If you talk and show me word-filled slides at the same time, I try to read the slides and listen to you simultaneously. I end up doing neither.
- A slide deck full of bullet points is the hallmark of poor preparation and ignorance of the subject. If you really had a command of your subject, you wouldn’t need to read directly from your notes/slides.