How to create engaging presentations: 4 key principles every professional should know

Avoid these 5 common mistakes to craft more impactful and memorable presentations.

Anyone in a professional role has encountered the dreaded prospect of a blank slide – you know the one that you are tasked with whipping out the best presentation in the universe – and the stakes are always sky high, with consequences that can be career limiting, or worse if not done just right.

Unless you are one of the few gifted prodigies who can launch a thousand products with a single swipe of their metaphorical pen, each one of us has wrestled with what exactly makes for an engaging presentation.

To be clear, there is no universal definition of what good looks like on this topic and presentations that work well in one organization would make associates in another organization cringe. Yet, there are a few universal themes that do make for a better visual experience for the reader, whether it is on screen or on paper.

Avoid these common presentation mistakes

Let’s look at a few common types of slide presentations that are all but guaranteed to send your audience scurrying. Everyone has likely encountered all or at least some of these, or know someone who has.

1. The wall of words – page after page of long sentences in 24-point or 32-point font without any natural arrangement of the material to draw attention to the crux of the presentation
   
2. The hyper-animated game arcade – slides full of objects flying in and out, complemented with dings and whoosh sounds. The presenter is usually busy timing their clicks and the audience is looking for the first sign when the presentation and the narration go their separate ways
   
3. The colorful carnival – every sentence or section in a different color, so as not to leave any shade off from the color palette, making it hard for a reader to focus on the message as they are processing the tsunami of colors
   
4. The process manual – folks who are in a technical field have surely encountered this – presentation contains excruciating level of technical details crowded onto every page, requiring half an hour to digest the contents of each page
   
5. The runaway train – the presentation that never comes in under 50 slides. Add in one or more of the above and you have the best formula to make your audience run for the stands

Full transparency, I have been guilty of each of these at one or another point in my career. I was fortunate to have well-meaning mentors who coached me in the art of the subtle and gave me the learning opportunity to improve my tradecraft.

4 anchor principles to let your presentations shine

Now let us turn our attention to what good looks like. A few anchoring principles will go a long way in making the act of putting together a presentation worthwhile.

Structure: Building the “What”

The basic premise of a slide presentation in a professional setting is to convey a message – an idea, a conclusion, a factual explanation. Good communication coaches will tell us that the art of a successful message is to “say what you are going to say, then say it, and say what you just said”. This holds true for slide presentations too – every presentation must follow a structure that roughly adheres to that principle.

Arranging slides with an opening Executive summary that states what the deck is discussing (and perhaps, what it is not discussing), followed by a middle section that gradually builds up the narrative and a conclusion section that wraps up the key messages and the follow-up needed, makes the point of the deck self-apparent. Simply put, this is the “what” part of the deck.

So that’s the first anchor – Structure.

Message: Crafting the “Why”

Earlier we referred to the wall of words. This is usually because the presenter either did not put a whole lot of thought into the delivery mechanics, or they were simply rushed for time.

Full sentences on a slide work well when used sparingly – for example to reproduce a contractual wording or a legal opinion. For most other cases, breaking up a sentence into its components is always helpful. This usually requires more thought – what is the sentence intended to convey? Is it a problem statement, a solution approach or a conclusion? Each of these can be presented differently to catch the eye of the reader.

A clever and judicious use of impactful phrases, combined with a bulleted list and a short summary paragraph usually work well in place of wordy sentences. This has the dual effect of forcing the presenter to think about the exact message they are trying to convey, and it breaks the monotony of a page full of words.

So that’s the second anchor – Message. This is the “Why” part of the deck.

Impact: Using appropriate visual aides

Next, consider busy presentations – excessive use of animations or saturated with color. Animations and color are great visual aids, when used judiciously. Being liberal with these aids usually creates distraction. Used in moderation, they can be very impactful.

To be clear, I am not ruling out the use of colors to liven up the slides. Most large organizations usually have branding standards that prescribe the template for slides and it is an invaluable resource if one exists. The templates cover color, fonts, shades and a lot more.

In the absence of a predefined template, it is best to adopt one template for the entire deck and use a thematic approach. For example, use blue for all headings, black for all regular text and red for callouts. Consistency is key as it acts as a reinforcing mechanism on every page.

Softer shades like pastels work better than bold colors in most cases, as it is easier to create a homogenous visual impact with softer colors. The occasional splash of a bright red or neon green will be useful to draw attention to something really important.

Animation is a great aide too, but what is the purpose for the animation? Simply letting text boxes fly in and out or do crazy gymnastics makes the presentation look very amateurish and don’t add value to the actual message. Animations work well where it is used to build up a concept in 3-4 stages. Anything more will diminish returns.

Another point of animations is that they only work well if the original presenter is driving the presentation. If it gets forwarded to another presenter who might not know the original intent, it is likely to not create the same impact. Likewise, if the reader is looking at a PDF or a printed version – then the animations will not carry over to those formats.

Being mindful of the intended impact of the presentation should guide the use of visual aids.

That’s anchor three – Impact.

Flow: Formulating the “How”

Bulky and dense presentations have their place in a few rarefied circles. Most mere mortals should ideally avoid transcribing heavy materials on a slide presentation unless it can be broken down into smaller and less complex parts.

A great way to depict complex topics is to box them on half of the page and use simpler verbiage next to it to explain the content. This ensures that the presentation can maintain a natural flow – the majority of readers will consume the simpler text; the handful that care about the complexity would automatically gravitate towards the hieroglyphics.

Clever use of color and font schemes can go a long way to make dense material less intimidating. Often, the presenter will have to use artistic license to simplify the complexity, and include the “real stuff” in an appendix slide.

Where a deck is likely to run beyond 8 – 10 slides, it is a good idea to break it into sections, each section no more than a few pages each. This creates a natural sense of transition and helps refocus attention when we are on, say, slide 47 out of a 90-page deck.

That brings up anchor four – Flow. Impact and Flow both address the “How” part of the deck.

Conclusion

So, there we have it – a few simple anchoring concepts to build slide decks that will have the desired effect.

Being intentional about a few basic questions – who are you presenting to? How are you presenting – for example, in a room full of people, over a screen share, as a printed medium? When are you presenting – is it an opening act, a keynote, a town hall? Is it right after somebody with really good oratory skills, is it early in the morning or late afternoon? Contextualizing these intangibles will greatly help honing your delivery.

From my personal experience, I view each slide presentation as a storytelling opportunity. Not any story, but think of the stories that second or third grade kids are used to – these, in my opinion, combine the right mix of text and visuals to create a vivid narrative in a simple language and visuals that subtly support the narrative.

With these guiding principles, approaching slide work has become a far more fulfilling endeavor than the grand adventures that I would undertake in my early days. I hope these ideas resonate with you and that you can use these ideas to improve your next presentation.

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