Many speakers today reference the “comfort blanket” of their slides so much, that they tend to have these important conversations with their screens rather than their intended audience. That's why so many presentations are presented poorly: lack of effort, attention, and knowledge.

There are numerous forces in play here, but three are initially worth discussing.

1. Procrastination

I'm sure nobody has is a stranger to seeing something like this: you're on a plane doing your own thing and you look to your left or to your right and there someone is, grinding away on a PowerPoint presentation. Now, who are we to say that they're in a rush to get it done? We're not, but are situations as such prevalent in society today? You betcha. This kind of procrastination, or dare I say laziness, is deadly; not just for your audience, but for you!

You see, the quality of your argument and its fine points need time to develop. They go through different design, tone, action, speech and copy iterations. The structure is unbalanced, the framework is spotty and duplicate points are laid in. When left to the last minute, these ideas have no time to develop.

Lastly, don't you want to look good and make sure that your audience feels good? Of course! Who doesn't love a good pat on the back, compliments and thank you's? I can tell you I certainly do. It's not so much the idea of "hey, look at me and what I did!", but its the fact that your audience feels appreciated and that their time was worth the investment on you. One of the biggest errors you can make here is not being prepared. Anytime people are giving up their time to listen to you, that time needs to be respected, honored, and taken seriously. You owe them more than "Sorry I just finished putting this together this morning".

The greatest give you can give someone is the gift of your time. Nobody gets those moments back. Every hour, every minute, and every second counts. Wasted time is never found again.

2. The Power of the Crowd

Next on the lineup is the power of the crowd. What is something people really dislike but generally tolerate for the sake of the presentation and the presenter? Agonizingly long slide decks, full of bullet points and no design.

Decks are simply the way of the corporate world, but they don't have to be just a deck. PowerPoint presentations are designed to inspire, to grab attention, and to be the paralleled companion to a fine tuned speaker on stage! 

3. Rules Aren't Meant to be Broken.

When you put a presentation together, you're making hundreds of implicit and explicit decisions. What content do I include? How much detail? What stories? What sequence? How many slides do I use? The questions go on and on.

If there's no path for us to follow, what are we left to do? Well, we do what makes sense to us. We follow our own ideas of how we think things should go, our own framework, throwing in some bullets and few ideas of "Yes, this makes sense!"

Some of these ideas may certainly make sense to you, but you need to ask the question of does it make sense to your audience? The real reason we present badly is because we don't know what the rules are that govern great communication. We believe that we're required to have something on every screen for everything we say or else we feel naked without it; we feel naked without our comfort blanket of slides.

This is a key point of this post here today: Communication is a very human and personal thing. It's not something that happens between people and screens. Communication is what happens between people and other people.

There's no question that surrendering to time pressures results in poor presenting; but the larger reason is we dont know what the rules are for great communication. If we want to be articulate and effective communicators, we must run by a framework of psychological and structured ideas that will make our action idea powerful and memorable.

This is one of many posts that will begin to discuss this framework. Give us a follow and let us know your thoughts, comments and suggestions below!

Blessings and blue skies,

Alexander