Page 113 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

104 DELIVERY

so that people in the back rows a couple of hundred feet away, who
may not feel as connected as the people up front or hear quite as well,
can have a better idea of what’s going on.
It also might make sense to show lists. For example, if you are
talking about people, products, or services and can’t—or won’t—use

photographs, then it is more efficient to show all the items together.
For instance, suppose you highlight certain services or products but
want to make the point that they are only part of a bigger picture.
You mention a couple of key products and ask your audience to
check out a list of all the others (just make sure the letters are big
enough to be read in the back row). Then hit the clicker.
If you have some relevant excerpts from newspaper articles or apt
quotes, you might want to enlarge them and put them on slides, as
well. For example, you might want people to see a verbatim quote
of a key player in your industry that may have a direct bearing on
the point you are trying to make. To introduce the quote, you might
say, “Few people saw any of this coming or understood what it
meant. One who did was Jack Black, who had this warning for
everybody in our industry. . . .” Then click to the quote.
Caution: The rule for using any “legitimate” word slide such as
a quote is important. If you are going to ask people to read some-
thing, then you’ve got to shut up and give them a chance to read.
There is no point in putting up a quote, for example, if you don’t set
it up with a proper roll-in and then pause for a few seconds to let the
people absorb what you’ve said. This allows the meaning and impli-
cations of the written quote on the wall to fully sink in. Don’t try to
voice the quote aloud while they are trying to read it. Don’t even try
to paraphrase it. Just let it sink in. Then you can continue talking.
Observing this critical moment of silence is the only way you can
dodge the curse of redundancy and properly employ a word slide to
create reinforcement.
When you drop the slide, you could “roll out” of the Jack Black
quote with something like, “Black warned just last week that cur-