“And could we have your slides by Friday next week? That would be lovely!”
“Oh, sorry, perhaps I forgot to tell you. I won’t be using any slides.”
(Hesitant voice): “No slides …?”
“No.”
(Voice even more hesitant): “Are you sure?”
“Yes, positive, thank you.”
“Oh, well, should you change your mind, just let us know. We can try to be flexible about the deadline.”
I did not change my mind.
Presenting your views or ideas to an audience has become synonymous with showing a digital slide presentation. In fact, I often hear people say that their presentation is ready when they can forward their slideshow file to the organisers. Sorry, that’s when the real work starts.
I have nothing against slides; they may help visualise a presenter’s ideas. Nevertheless, I use slides as little as possible when I deliver a presentation. I have one major, and a host of minor, reasons for this. Here is the main reason: the slides distract the audience from me and my delivery. Participants must constantly change focus, shifting from the screen to me and back. I don’t want that. I want them to be with me and the message I am delivering all the way. I want to be able to steer them into a story, plant a provocative idea in their hearts, and get them to think hard about some hidden assumption lurking in their minds. They must focus entirely on my interaction with them, and not on a screen.
As I said earlier, slides may serve a good purpose. However, I have a major objection to presenters’ and meeting organisers’ knee-jerk reactions when conceiving the programmes for any meeting or event:
If you stand up to present, you need a laptop, a beamer, and a screen.
Here are ten further reasons why I think that expectation requires rethinking.
- Off the bat, showing slides creates a general expectation in audiences, which I find unwanted. Broadly speaking, that expectation involves predictability and trotting the beaten track. If I want to surprise my audience into engagement, then the use of slides puts me at a disadvantage from the get-go. Subconsciously, slides convey: Expect the same.
- Slideshows keeps your participants in the dark. Literally. Doing that is bad for the energy in the meeting, and the connection between the stage and the audience. It’s as if people are just watching a screen with a show put on for them; which is not about them. I want my thoughts to float in broad daylight, and participants to bathe in that same light.
- A slideshow is linear, which is true enough, but while it can provide structure, it’s hard not to become a slave of its agenda. What you want with an audience is to gauge their response to your message, and then adjust along the way; for instance, by adding a story on the spur of the moment.
- I am not a graphic designer, so I am not great at making slides. And since I have no desire to become a graphic designer, I prefer using my precious time making my message for my audience razor-sharp instead.
- The slides, and the screen, limit movement. It’s often helpful to relinquish the central position on stage during slideshows, to stay out of the light beam. But centre stage is precisely where you should be as a presenter.
- Slides carry the inherent risk of forking over too much content. From behind your desk, you almost always get the balance wrong, resulting in clutter and information overload.
- Slides risk creating cognitive dissonance when written and spoken information clash. And forcing your participants to choose between reading slides, or concentrating on what you are saying, risks causing frustration and disengagement.
- Slides make time management more difficult. Once you start your slideshow, you will want to finish it. Even a little excess content squeezes the time for a productive discussion afterwards.
- The linear flow of slideshows inhibit interaction. They make it harder to respond to immediate participant feedback, and to engage in conversation with your audience, or to move back and forth based on their reactions.
- Finally, there are often technical hitches: faulty equipment, unprofessional technical crews, or incompatibility issues between application versions or IT systems (Microsoft vs Apple, for example). You name it; sooner or later, it will happen.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not against using visual aids, per se. And in fact, I often do produce digital slides and make them available as a handout after presentations. But I am against the default thinking that slide presentations are mandatory or even necessary. They are just one of many options for communicating with an audience. You should decide whether slideshows are a good option for you, based on what your presentation sets out to achieve, and how you wish to converse with your audience.
