PowerPoint or Flip Chart – Visual presentation has high impact and high understanding and only gets better when you tell a story
Having a high visual content in your presentations has a huge and positive impact on how well your audiance receive and understand your message.
If you can combine this visual content with a story then your points will be remembered long after you have given your presentation.
All this was reinforced for me when once upon a time ………..
Well, this morning actually ………. I was invited to a breakfast seminar by a colleague and friend from the construction industry and the first thing I’d like to say is that the bacon buttie that I had there was a fine example of this culinary mainstay of the British digestive system.
The seminar was focused on a very technical subject, that being the contractual ability of builders to ask their clients for extra time to carry out their works. For those with no connection to the construction industry, please don’t fall asleep, and for those that do have a connection please don’t fall asleep either for this seminar, which was packed full of useful information, had something to teach all of us who are interested in how to best communicate when speaking to an audience.
My friend used both a PowerPoint presentation and a Flip Chart to get his points across.
The difference in how the two methods were used provided a great pointer in how to very powerfully get your message across in presentations.
The PowerPoint presentation was ‘wordy’ with lots of points being made.
If there’s a lot of text on the screen, people will try to read and listen at the same time – and don’t succeed in doing either very well. Equally if the print is too small to read, your audience can find it difficult to follow.
The contrast between my friend’s the use of PowerPoint and the use of the Flip Chart was enormous.
On the Flip Chart my friend had put a simple drawing of a house that he used to illustrate some very detailed points. He then presented two simple bar charts that were visually clear and very easy to follow.
Adding to the high impact of these visual presentations my friend told a story that brilliantly made his message clear to us all.
I and everyone else at the seminar were glued to our seats and to his every word.
And so, what are the communication lessons for us all?
Your audience are much more likely to understand and accept your message when you introduce as much of a visual element as possible when using power-point, or any form of presentation method for that matter.
Your presentation or speech may be work related and very technical, but the thing to bear in mind is that people love stories and will remain interested in what you have to say if you tell one.
Perhaps most importantly, your message will be much more likely to be clear and remembered long after your presentation when you use stories to make your point.
If you can combine visual impact with a story then so much the better and your message will be remembered.
Some of you may be thinking that you can’t tell stories when presentations are for technical matters. Maybe that is true for some aspects of your presentation, but is it really true for all of it?
I will never forget the picture and the story of the house and of course I will not forget that great bacon buttie.
And so the seminar ended and everyone lived happily ever after ………….
