The art of making impactful presentations

Disclaimer: This is a long format article and not your typical 2 minute scroll-through. You may like to read at a convenient time.

Let me also tell you that the text you are about to go through elaborates what has worked for me. Of course, there may be multiple ways of getting the same results or ways which can deliver better results.

That being said, I must answer the question - “Why you should listen to me?”.

Having worked in my current organization for over half a decade, I have got the opportunity to write speeches and make presentations for people in the top management. Be it a product launch with a room full of journalists or an internal town hall with employees, I have seen what works and what doesn’t.

I am proud to share that most of my work has helped the company to fetch the right headlines in newspapers, some have even got us awards.

One common factor among the presentations I made was that it was delivered by a C-suite employee or an organizational leader. This was certainly an advantage.

Well, leaders are leaders because of the impact they create on the people around them. Their thought process is very clear, and their entire presentation revolves around a singular idea. I am not saying that everyone is born with leadership skills, but yes, we all can hone the art of having clarity of thoughts.

Coming back to the subject of making impactful presentations, I have segregated my thoughts into the following sections:

How to begin?

Work on these 3 aspects:

·       Be very clear about what you want to say

·       Be very clear about what you don’t want to say

·       Have some sense on what results you intend to drive

Remember, you are telling a story, and you want the audience to align with your thoughts.

Telling a story is different from jogging through a PowerPoint presentation.

For you to make an impact on the audience it is important to internalize the idea you are presenting. Either it should be close to your heart, or you should have enough knowledge of it.

Your expertise on the subject will ultimately be reflected in your presentation.

1. How to prepare slides?

Now, this is a subject close to my heart.

In my initial days in the organization, I was under the impression that I was very clear on the basics of creating a good presentation, after all I was an engineer and a management graduate.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I had to work on 30 versions of the same presentation because of the core idea not being reflected in the content. With experience, I learnt that just putting tables and charts would not take me anywhere. Neither will jam-packing the slide with more content.

Remember, you are to create an impact on the audience, sort of a lasting impression. Nobody wants to go through every minute detail of your work.

It is not an audit. It is a presentation. People tend to focus on the “macro” and not the “micro”.

The facts you use should keep the audience engaged. Your slides should complement the speech and not the other way around.

To drive interest in the audience you must use the right terminologies. Saying “5 years” will register differently than using the term, “half a decade” (Something that I utilized in the 3rd paragraph after disclaimer). The data used in the presentation should grab eyeballs. That must be come by design from the very inception of planning the content.

Avoid sending your presentation to multiple people for editing and fact-checking. Trust me, the final product looks like patchwork and not a singular well thought out story.

Visual storytelling, something that I have utilized, is another way to make messaging more effective.

 The use of pictures, striking facts and impactful sentences on the screen have helped us get many photo stories done in media.

I would encourage you all to read more on this subject.

2. Know your audience.

The holy grail of making impactful presentations is to know whom you are addressing.

Let me digress a bit and share a personal experience about how I learnt the importance of knowing your audience or customer.

In my engineering days, for straight 4 semesters, despite reasonable efforts, I was not doing well in my written exams.

One day out of curiosity, I went through the exam answer-sheet of one of my batchmates to see what different was she doing to secure good marks. Upon flipping a few pages, it was evident.

The use of black ball pen for heading and a blue ball pen for body content gave the same content a well-structured look.

She segregated sections with boxes drawn with pencil and kept margin on both sides by folding the paper.

That supported by good handwriting added to a reader’s delight.

I placed my answer sheet next to Her’s.

It was an embarrassing realization for me that even I would not give myself the same grades, once I went through an answer sheet that looked like a “piece of art”.

The lesson learnt was to place yourself in the shoes of an examiner who is checking 100 answer sheets in a day and see how you would rate your own work.

It opened my eyes to always look at a deliverable from the perspective of a customer and understand where he/she is coming from.

Today, when I create content, I am well aware that facts that may please a youtuber may be very different from a fact that registers with a journalist.

The patience of an investor will be very different from an employee’s.

A techie may be pleased with automation, but a policymaker may be unhappy with the job cuts it will lead to.

Knowing your audience will help you to device what to say and how to put things in structure.

Be aware that your presentation should serve the audience some value.

It may sound tedious at first, but one must customize presentations based on the audience, even if it is the same content.

3. Communication skills

An important part of keeping the audience engaged is the use of communication – both verbal and non-verbal.

The choice of words, the rise and fall of the voice along with your gestures will bring a lot of difference in how the audience perceives you.

Unless you are undergoing a language assessment, do not be overly conscious about using sophisticated language.

Get back to the basics – you are communicating and not testing your proficiency in a foreign tongue.

Use words that are easy to understand.

For example, at the start of this section I could have used “diction” instead of “choice of words” and “intonation” in place of “rise and fall of the voice”. But I know if I did that, at least some of the people reading this article would have to do a google search.

Many people are also conscious about accents and imperfections in their speeches.

Had this been an issue, no French or Japanese speaking individuals would have made it to the world stage where most of the people speak English.

Accents and imperfections are more reasons for the audience to remember you, provided you are strong on your content and delivery.

Remember that your audience is not perfect either. They are people like us.

Finally, I must add that I have seen many speakers who are not perfect, and presentations that could have been better, but they had these speakers had one quality that got them a standing ovation from the crowd.

It was their conviction to succeed.

We all must strive to have it within us.

From the author

In this age of AI, people may create visually appealing presentations, but we have to remember that ultimately it is us who will drive an idea and shape the perception of people around us.

This article is my attempt to contribute towards the collective knowledge of preparing impactful presentations.

As I learn more and grow, I will keep adding to this thread.