Media Training Worldwide’s TJ Walker Gives Insights On Public speaking & Media Training

TJ’s Insights

May 10, 2005

New Books, TJ Walker’s “Media Training A-Z”
http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com/mediatrainingaz.html
“Presentation Training A-Z” http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com/presentaz.html

Making The Best Of A Bad Situation

If you work for a big corporation, sooner or later, someone is going to ask you to deliver their PowerPoint Presentation. And he or she will demand that you don’t change a single element of the presentation (and they can get away with it because they are your boss).

Here’s the problem: the slide show you are given is horrible! Each slide is dense with row after row of numbers, bullet points are strewn about generously on each page and complex graphs are squeezed in four to a slide. In short, you are asked to deliver a PowerPoint slide from hell.

What do you do?

This may be a situation where your goal of communicating a message well has to take a back seat to saving your own job. That’s OK, as long as you make this decision at a conscious level. Still, there are things you can do to salvage the presentation. You might not win a silver orator award, but you can still take an awful presentation and spin it into an above average personal performance.

Here is a quick checklist of things to do, even if you can’t change the slides

1. Find the most important number or fact on each slide and figure out a way of bringing that idea to life by giving examples and illustrations.
2. Do NOT attempt to read or regurgitate every single number and fact crammed onto the slide.
3. Don’t apologize for your slides. They might be awful, but you gain nothing by calling attention to this fact (and no one cares that the quality was out of your control).
4. Face your audience and engage them directly when speaking—don’t speak to your awful slides.
5. Focus twice as hard as normal on your performance skills—be engaging, speak in a conversational manner, move your hands, show expressions on your face.
6. Have your own notes with any important numbers printed in big font—you don’t want to have to stare at the PowerPoint slides either on the wall or on your laptop to figure out what to say.
7. If you think you can get away with it, break up the complex slides with four different graphs on them into four separate PowerPoint pages. It will be easier for your audience to focus on one graph per slide and your boss can’t complain that you altered the presentation in any meaningful way.

Do you need a keynote speaker? http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com/keynote.html

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Author of Media Training A-Z
& Presentation Training A-Z

TJ Walker
Media Training Worldwide
212-764-4955

Media Training Worldwide provides more media and presentation training workshops and seminars (54 separate courses) than any other company in the world. Media Training Worldwide also publishes more than 100 presentation training books, DVDs, CDs, and other information products and is the largest presentation/media training publisher in the world. For a product catalog or more information on training services call 800-755-7220 or visit http://mediatrainingworldwide.com/mediatrainingcatalogapril2004.pdf.

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