Have you observed trainers doing things like this?

Before beginning her presentation, a trainer tells the audience, “I had planned to show you this wonderful video with actors from The Office singing this song “Let’s Get Ethical,” to the tune of “Let’s Get Physical.”  Unfortunately, I can’t get the DVD to work, so I can’t show it, but let me tell you, it would be really funny if you could see it.”

The example brings to mind the “Never complain, never explain” rule.  I’ve seen this pithy saying variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, Henry Ford and Katherine Hepburn.  Regardless of the originator, it always struck me as a little dubious.  “Never?”  Isn’t that a recipe for being a jerk?

However, with a little adjustment for rhetorical excess, this saying does describe a sound principle for instructors.  It’s nearly always a mistake to apologize to the audience.  In the example described, the trainer was smart to try to use an audiovisual training aid but when that did not pan out, she unwisely demonstrated to the audience not just her incompetence with technology, but her poor judgment. If she had never apologized for failing to get the DVD to work, the audience would never have known of her failure.  Experienced presenters understand that in many cases the audience will never know if the speaker made a mistake unless he or she draws attention to the error by apologizing.

The same principle applies to other mistakes made during your presentation, explains speech expert Richard Zeoli:

When you make a mistake, no one cares but you:  Even the most accomplished public speaker will make mistakes. Yet it is important to remember that the only one who cares about any given mistake is the one doing the speaking.

People’s attention spans constantly wander.  In fact, most people only absorb about 20 percent of a speaker’s message.  The other 80 percent is internalized visually.  This ratio is true in nearly everything: a football game, a favorite television show, and even a heart-to-heart conversation.  The point is that when you make a mistake, the audience rarely even notices.  The most important thing a speaker can do after making a mistake is to keep going.  Don’t stop and – unless the mistake was truly earth shattering – never apologize to the audience for a minor slip.  Unless they are reading the speech during your delivery, the audience won’t know if you left out a word, said the wrong name, or skipped a page.

“Never” apologize?  Probably a mistake.  “Almost never” apologize?  Sounds about right.

Would Fred Astaire’s scintillating dance moves have looked as good if he had abandoned his usual suave wardrobe in favor of clothes that made him look like one of the irredeemable low-life characters represented in A Hillbilly Elegy?

We’ll never know, but there is one thing we do know: The best substantive presentation material looks even better if packaged well. Formatting slide shows is an art. Compliance with some basic slide show formatting principles won’t make you Monet, but will put you on the road to being a passable PowerPoint artist.

Glad to see my article Slide Show Formatting Basics is available at LLRX.

Would Fred Astaire’s scintillating dance moves have looked as good if he had abandoned his usual suave wardrobe in favor of clothes that made him look like one of the irredeemable low-life characters represented in A Hillbilly Elegy? 

We’ll never know, but there is one thing we do know: The best substantive presentation material looks even better if packaged well. Formatting slide shows is an art. Compliance with some basic slide show formatting principles won’t make you Monet, but will put you on the road to being a passable PowerPoint artist:

Bullet Points

Bullet points have the salutary effect of improving quick comprehension. However, deploy them wisely. Squeezing too many bullet points on a slide creates a cluttered impression. No more than five bullet points per page is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Avoid having more than two levels of bullets on slides. In other words, you can have a bullet point, and one sub-level below them. If you need more sub-levels to convey complex ideas, it’s better to break them into more slides.

Templates

Good slide show software provides templates (called “slide masters” in MS PowerPoint) to provide a consistent layout. I occasionally see presenters who do not use templates. It’s nearly always a mistake. The templates are designed by pros. The defaults in a decent template will facilitate a professional appearance. A Google search on the phrase using powerpoint templates will find plenty of tutorials to get you started. 

You can:

• Override the template for a particular slide or
• Modify the template (surprisingly easy)

You can even create your own templates. It’s not something I’d recommend to most lawyers. In any event, using templates is an easy way help make a good impression on your audiences.

Logos

Some presenters who have just learned how to edit templates or create their own succumb to the temptation to include their organization’s logo on every slide. This is popular in businesses as a form of branding, but there is a drawback. Including a logo on every slide limits flexibility. 

The best approach is probably to include the logo on the first slide, and maybe the last. If demands of unsophisticated supervisors or an overly doctrinaire marketing department make you feel you absolutely must include the logo on every slide, make it small, except on the first slide and the last, where you can usually get away with more. 

Whatever you do, don’t follow the example of one government conference presentation I saw that included no less than four different agency seals on every single slide, one for each of the four presenters!