When we talk about effective presentations, we often think of the classic presentation in which you, as a speaker, are standing in front of an audience giving your speech while the slides scroll behind you.
But let’s be honest, how often is a presentation really like that?
Presentations are more and more often documents or a virtual presentation shared in work sessions during company meetings, and even more frequently they are sent directly by email without even being presented.
Tell me, have you ever sent a presentation by email so that it could be read?
Often, presentations are used as a pre-read, meaning a document to prepare for the meeting where they will be shared.
The end of storytelling!
There is one case, however, on which I would like to focus your attention, namely remote presentations.
Yes, I mean the online presentations made in video conference.
More and more often, and especially in this dramatic period that we are going through because of the Covid-19 epidemic, we find ourselves giving remote presentations.
How do you think the rules of the game change?
We agree that, compared to a live presentation, the context is very different and it is therefore intuitive to think that in order to make a remote presentation effective you will have to do something different and, perhaps, take some more precautions.
If live presentations are already boring in themselves, they risk being really deadly in remote.
The so-called “death by PowerPoint” is always around the corner, and even more ready to act in video conferencing.
Before we embark on a list of best practices to follow, let me ask you a question: what experience do you think the audience has?
I’m sure you’ve already had occasion to attend a remote presentation, what feelings do you remember? What concepts do you remember? Is there anything that caught your attention and impressed you? If you leave me a comment below this article, we’ll talk about it.
First of all, people are not in the meeting room with you; they might be at home with their dog, cat or even children, which are powerful distractions.
Likewise, they might be in a cafe or airport.
In short, the context could easily be full of distractions.
Let’s have a few laughs to make the point with this video:
Being far from your sight and that of others, behind a screen we feel more protected and we lack that feeling of pressure resulting from the gaze of the speaker that rests upon us.
Moreover, out of respect for the speaker, we are often in “mute” – our microphone does not transmit, so as not to pollute the audio channel and not disturb the presenter.
Knowing that nobody is watching us, and nobody hears us, we are clearly more likely to be distracted, simply because we have fewer limits.
All this in a context where instruments and technology can cause delayed transmissions with disturbed audio and/or video.
There is good news though!
With the right technology, taking notes in video conferences is wonderful.
Imagine you’re following a video conference from your computer and you see a slide you’d like to save in your notes – you just need to take a screenshot on the spot (Windows + Shift + S), paste it on Microsoft OneNote (CTRL + V) and add your comments with an iPad and Apple pencil.
Where’s the magic?
Microsoft OneNote can be used simultaneously from PC and iPad, allowing you to interact in real time.
Nice, isn’t it?
I see this technique being used more and more often, and I support it a lot, but it risks introducing a further distraction to the remote audience.
If you want to optimize a presentation, you need to be sure you understand every detail of the experience the audience is experiencing on the other side of the screen, and this is just one example.
I never get tired of saying how important it is to put the audience at the center of everything.
Once you understand the context in which the audience is immersed while giving an online presentation, it will certainly be easier to identify best practices that really improve the performance of your remote presentation.
3 dimensions to make every remote presentation efficient
Lean Presentation Design teaches us that a presentation is effective if 3 fundamental dimensions coexist synergistically.
I have dedicated an entire book (see – Lean Presentation Design) to creating effective presentations by taking care of these three dimensions in case you are in front of an audience (classic presentation) or in the case of a remote presentation that aims to be read.
I have also created a diagnostic tool for each presentation that acts on these three dimensions called Presentation Assessment Canvas.
What does this way of thinking teach us when it comes to a remote presentation?
Let’s apply the model together and analyze the 3 dimensions.
Communication Flow – present in an orderly and strategic manner
The order in which we present information defines what we call the storyline of a presentation.
A well-made storyline is essential to capture and keep the audience’s attention.
If this is true live, it will be even more true remotely!
A remote presentation has all the complexities of a live presentation plus the challenges of a context where it’s really easy to be distracted.
For this reason, the flow must absolutely be optimized.
How do I optimize the information flow? There are two aspects you need to consider:
- Content: what to say and what not to say
- Communicative flow: what to say first and what to say next
When you have to present your project, it is always difficult to exclude information because everything seems too important to be left out.
However, in a video conference that may not last more than an hour at most, you will have to make a selection.
Accept the fact that you cannot communicate everything and that even if you tried, the result would certainly fail.
So, what are the key messages you need to communicate to achieve your goal?
Goal? What goal?
When giving a presentation, you should always keep in mind what the goal is – what do you want people to do, that they wouldn’t have done otherwise, after your presentation?
Once you have defined the goal and understood the reasons why the audience should resist (audience/resistance analysis) you will be able to define what information should not be missing.
So, essential content and key messages to reach the goal.
Okay, but where do you start presenting these messages?
Start with people, don’t start with yourself.
How many times does the speaker start from himself by explaining how long he has been in the industry, or tries to create credibility by explaining all the evidence to support a thesis that he has not yet expressed?
First create value and give people a reason to listen to you, then share the evidence to support it.
Never start a presentation by talking about yourself, talk about people to people.
In short, start with a good audience analysis to define content and set up effective storytelling based on what’s really important to people.
The Lean Presentation Strategy Canvas is a great strategic tool that will help you in this direction.
My team and I use it every day to build our clients’ presentations.
If you are curious to find out in detail how to use this powerful tool to build effective presentations, I suggest you take a look at my book Lean Presentation Design – how to create an effective presentation in the blink of an eye.
Visual contents – Simple and clean slides, in a word: Lean
I believe that design is not only a way to embellish, but I think it should have a concrete feedback in terms of communicative effectiveness.
The design of a presentation is not just a matter of aligning objects on a slide, adjusting the layout and making it look nice.
Design means creating a project according to a specific objective and within specific constraints. Therefore, as in any presentation, during the design process you have to consider the whole audience experience and not only the slide.
You will then have a remote audience that will watch your presentation on a PC or maybe on a tablet or even on a smartphone.
For this reason, you have to design slides that are easy to understand at a glance, just like a live presentation.
But you have to be more careful.
Participants may get distracted or lose their connection and have to reconnect.
In the time frame in which they don’t follow the video conference, they may miss important pieces, meanwhile you may have changed slides and moved on to the following concepts.
The audience, then, would find itself struggling to pick up the thread.
If they don’t succeed in time and the effort is too much, the audience could easily lose focus and get distracted.
That’s why it’s essential to design light slides that allow people to orient themselves even if they had just arrived and lost your explanation until the moment they enter the conference.
Duarte explains that in the world of presentations there are two extremes: documents and presentations.
I always recommend that you clearly choose sides and work on optimizing the experience.
For me you can easily create a PowerPoint document, as long as it’s properly designed and constructed to maximize the effectiveness of a reading experience where you have to take into account that there won’t be a speaker to explain.
So where does a video conference presentation fit in?
In my opinion, it always positions itself as a non-speaker presentation but with some additional content enrichment.
How can a presentation be non-self standing but not too much?
If you give a live presentation, you could easily use impressive slides that mean nothing if left on their own.
This way they will give importance to the speaker, who will be the only one who knows the message of each slide.
Here is a concrete example:
However, if the audience were to lose the thread of the conversation for some time and then try to get it back, slides like this would certainly not be very helpful.
Please, that doesn’t mean you have to fill the slides with text!
Remember that the purpose of a presentation is for the audience to listen to you, not to read your slides.
So how do we do it?
We find a compromise and add the minimum amount of text that would allow anyone to follow even in the total absence of audio, and at the same time to find the message slide by slide even if they had just logged in.
I’ve exaggerated a little bit, you could add a little more text but, in my opinion, you can already appreciate the difference.
Don’t exaggerate with the text though, design slides that pass the message at a glance. The audience should never get lost looking for the message while you’re talking.
Remember that during the presentation people are exposed to two channels of communication: audio, you talking, and video, the screen.
As human beings, it is natural for us to find a connection between the stimuli we are subjected to and, if we can’t, we go crazy.
So, if you don’t want people to get distracted trying to find the connection between what you’re saying and your slides, I suggest you make the connection immediate.
That’s why we always talk about very light slides.
In general, you want the audience to be able to find themselves and possibly not only on the single slide, but in the whole flow of the presentation, so you could use a navigator.
Follow me, I’ll give you an example.
See the slide that follows?
It is a simple three-step process.
You can therefore expect that the following slides will go into the merits of the three phases.
Did you notice the navigator calling up the index in each slide?
Take a good look at it, it’s in the top left corner.
A navigator allows the audience to always know the progress of the presentation and to know where they are in the presentation flow.
Public Speaking – Focus on Delivery, Especially for a Remote Presentation
Don’t think about one person on stage talking to other people, focus instead on the concept of “delivery” of a presentation.
What do I mean by “delivery”?
Everything about “giving” the presentation, the moment the presentation takes place.
In our case, I’m referring to the moment in the video conference during which you are giving the presentation.
Imagine the meeting is about to start and you have to introduce, describe yourself.
Yes, I’m talking about you.
Are you sitting down? What do you see in front of you? Are you looking at the people on the screen or the webcam?
All fundamental questions.
When we present, we’re used to standing. This way we gain confidence and, standing upright, we have a clearer, more decisive voice.
In addition, it is more natural for us to gesture (especially to us Italians ?) and this helps to make communication more natural and fluid.
Why then, during a video conference in which you are presenting, you are sitting down?
The answer is related to the fact that your webcam is at the right height to make you sit down, but I suggest you reevaluate the setup.
Often, just tilt it a bit upwards and the problem is solved.
In addition, with the fact that we often connect the laptop to an external monitor, the webcam is positioned at the top of the screen and therefore we have more flexibility and a height more suitable for standing.
I, for example, hold the webcam on top of the monitor (my position is in the following picture)
What do you see in front of you while you’re presenting?
During the academy lessons in Lean Presentation Design, I really emphasize the importance of not having to turn around and look at the slide every time you show it to the audience.
This is because otherwise you give the impression that you are not prepared and that you are following your presentation rather than the opposite, as it should be.
Remember that the presentation is a support that should support and accompany you, but it should never take your place.
During a live presentation, use PowerPoint presenter mode. This way, you will always have an eye on the next slide on your laptop and you will always be able to anticipate the message.
This will allow you to always be one step ahead of the presentation and make sure the slides follow you.
Plus, by doing so, you’ll never have to turn around and look at the screen, as many speakers do, and the audience will constantly feel the focus of your attention.
If you are presenting remotely, you have to pay the same kind of attention. You can’t wait for the slide to be shown to know what to comment, the slide must follow your comment.
This implies the need to use the speaker mode even in case of a remote presentation.
When I present, I always keep my laptop below the main screen and use it to display the slide that will come next.
This way I can see the next slide at a glance, and the presentation will flow naturally.
The audience will follow my voice and see the slides follow, never the other way around!
If you’ve seen me presenting, either in the classroom, at your company or maybe at one of my events, you know I like to use very slim and straight to the point slides.
I think a light slide with a single message is much more effective than a complex slide that requires several minutes of commentary to communicate all the messages it contains.
So, you can imagine that my presentations are full of slides that go very fast.
For this reason, I want to have a responsive pointer.
In a remote presentation you have to be careful not to exceed with speed, because if there are connection problems, you risk that the slides won’t be able to keep up fast enough.
So, although I’m in favor of more, lighter, faster scrolling slides, during a video conference you’re going to have to compromise.
Keep your slides light but be careful how fast you scroll through them.
What will people see, then?
People should see you presenting and your slides.
Why is it important that they see both?
Just to make it look natural and create as much involvement as possible by making them feel your presence.
Help them imagine you there with them, even if you’re behind a screen.
We’ve defined what we want your audience to watch, but what should you watch?
During the video conference you will see the video conference screen where the faces of the participants are framed.
Since we are used to looking people in the eye, it will be natural for you to look at people in their respective frames.
It may be natural, but have you wondered what others will see and how they will perceive you?
If you don’t look straight into the webcam’s eye, people will see that you’re not looking at them and will feel less involved.
Think about that for a second.
When you’re presenting in the classroom you have to divide your gaze among the participants trying to be dynamic and not exclude anyone, remotely you only have to look at the webcam to look them all in the eyes – isn’t it incredible?
Nonetheless, I realize that it’s very unnatural to look into a camera and talk while you have the feeling that everyone else is looking at you from their on-screen panel.
You have to make an effort, look into the camera, and you’ll make everyone feel more involved.
The same goes in the opposite direction – you too will struggle to empathically perceive your audience from behind the screen.
When you give a live presentation, your performance is influenced by people’s reaction.
Sometimes it happens that a classroom seems to be uninvolved, and you start to make more of an effort, or you see that the classroom is reacting well and then you take advantage of it to enhance the moments of interaction, you relax and your performance improves.
All this is not possible by remote.
First of all, you’ll see people looking you in the eye and then they won’t look at the webcam, so they’ll all seem distracted.
Second, it’s not easy to see people from behind a screen.
So, unless there are obvious behaviors in which people turn off the video or show themselves playing with their smartphones, I’d say don’t be afraid and focus on your performance with your eyes fixed on the webcam.
Make Your Next Remote Presentation a Big Win
To make each presentation effective, three dimensions must be analyzed: public speaking / delivery, visual content / design, communication flow / storyline.
A remote presentation is no exception.
There are, however, some precautions related to the type of context that must be taken.
Always present standing up, if possible, and keep an eye on the speaker mode. Look into the webcam and make the audience feel the center of attention.
Use simple, clean slides, but don’t hesitate to add some content as long as it clarifies the message and always allows the audience to find the point even if the connection is interrupted for a few moments.
Have a solid storyline that starts with people and allows you to filter all and only those messages that you really need to bring the audience to action.
Comments on How to make a remote presentation effective