04. Slide Tour or Compelling Narrative

Are you delivering a slide tour or an engaging narrative?

The tour guide at the museum

Consider a guide taking guests on a tour of a museum.
Here, the museum exhibits are the focus. The guide’s narrative is like an audio track running in the background. And rightly so! The audience has paid to view the exhibits, not to admire the guide.

The guide’s inputs – if insightful or awe inspiring – will add to the ‘wow factor’ of the exhibit. However, the guide remains an aide. The focus is always the exhibit.

This is a good analogy for many a presentation.
 

Slide tour guide

Poorly delivered presentations accord star billing to the slide. The presenter here relegates himself to the position of the ‘aide’;
Presenters, whose presentations typify this, will first bring on a slide and then read off it. Or, at best, the presenter – who is mostly standing to the side of the screen – will bring on the slide, read it out and then elaborate on the contents displayed.

The focus is always the slide, which you can say is ‘leading’ the presentation, preceding as it does the narrative. The presenter is like the aide providing a voiceover.

This is what we at CitrusLearning call a slide tour.

It results in a terribly mediocre and unmemorable presentation. To be fair, if your presentation is well crafted and engaging, the message that you want to convey might still get through.

What you will compromise on though, is the impact that you as the presenter can have on your audience.
 

What great presenters do

Great presenters realise that the audience has come to hear them – not the slide – speak. Importantly, they recognise a crucial point: the audience must be persuaded/ moved/ uplifted/ wowed, as might be the case. And no slide can do that as well as you.

The best presenters take centre stage, both literally and figuratively, while delivering the presentation. They dialogue with the audience as though the audience were a person seated across them, seeking their advice or information. They interact with the audience; they encourage and respond to questions as they come up. It is a give and take of information.

Their narrative is always the star of the show.

Only, they use their slides to complement their delivery. They deliver their narrative, and bring on the slide – which will usually have no more than a single point on it – at that precise point when it matches their speech. When the point that they are making has concluded, they will blank the slide and continue their dialogue with the audience.

Great presenters studiously avoid bringing on the slide, reading aloud the points displayed and then elaborating upon them.
 

Presenter View

Knowing what they must say next and steering their narrative accordingly, requires:
1. Well-crafted and structured presentation content
2. Visually representative slides
3. Notes, created in the ‘Notes’ section of PowerPoint
4. Diligent preparation
5. ‘Using Presenter View’ to guide one’s presentation delivery

We discuss the ‘Presenter View’ functionality in PowerPoint in a subsequent lesson.
 

In Conclusion

Take charge and centre stage when delivering your presentation. Do not relegate yourself to the position of the tour guide in the museum.