Page 108 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

THE POWERPOINT PARADOX 99

So now you may wind up with a PowerPoint show on the screen
that looks a lot different from the presentation full of word slides
and excess data you started with. Most people rely heavily on word
slides, so a sudden absence of word slides is likely to meet with loud
objections. But word slides can be devastating. They are silent para-
sites that sap the life’s blood out of your presentation—and you may
never know it.
Think about word slides. A lot of people believe word slides
double effectiveness and create reinforcement. They believe words
on the screen make for a better show. But nothing could be further
from the truth. In fact, word slides slash effectiveness and create
redundancy.
But that’s not the worst of it. Because the eye is so much more
powerful than the ear, just give people an excuse to read words and
sentences on a screen—and they will. This puts you in the awkward
situation of having to compete with your own slides because people
can’t read and listen at the same time. Suddenly you are out of sync
with your audience. At that point, you become a droning sound.
Under no circumstances should you allow your own show to
reduce you to a background noise. You might as well not even be
there. You could have saved yourself the time and effort and sent
them a memo instead.
-

If it’s a competition between words you are saying and
the written words they are reading on the wall, the words
on the wall win hands down.
-

Even bullets can be a problem. I can read your bullets a lot faster
than you can talk about each one individually. So while you are just

finishing up with the first bullet, I have run down the list and now

I want to move on. If I see that seven more bullets remain, like most