Microsoft PowerPoint presentations have become a stable of “The office meeting”. It used to be strictly reserved for more formal meetings, however with its increasing popularity there are really no restrictions on what types of meetings it is used for today. However, while it is a fantastic tool and very versatile, there are situations where it is overkill to use a PowerPoint presentation. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. Sometimes the benefits of creating a PowerPoint presentation just don’t outweigh the costs.

The following are the situations I’m talking about:

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Yesterday I had the singular displeasure of sitting through a particularly bad presentation, so bad that I had to write this article as a form of catharsis (see: Aristotle). Without further ado, here are my Top 3 Presenting Don’ts:

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“Big Words”: Those multi-syllable and confusing monsters that can ruin any good presentation. This is one of the most frequent pitfalls that professionals at any level fall into. I came across an article by TJ Walker that discusses this problem, and I think he makes a good case for keeping your presentations simple.

Here is the article, I’ll share more of my thoughts in the My Comments at the end:

The Big Word Trap

Many speakers can’t resist the temptation to use big words while giving a speech. Sometimes it is a conscious effort to appear to be smart, sometimes it is an unconscious impulse because that’s what a speaker thinks he or she is supposed to do in a so-called “formal” speech.

Either way, it’s a bad idea.

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This is a question that plagues executives and those just starting out alike: How much do you put on a slide in your presentation? Three bullet points? Two paragraphs? When does it become too much, or when does it look like too little?

Although there is no one single definitive answer for this, there are a number of factors that should be taken into account when determining it.

I have laid out three important factors below:

• Font Size and Style - Obviously, depending on the size and style of your font, you are going to be limited as to how much will actually fit onto your slides. However, you need to make sure that by using your current font, you are able to get the information you need on each slide. If you think that your slide is lacking in information simply because all of it won’t fit, then maybe you need to re-evaluate your current font selection. The same thinking can be applied to the case where you have too much on one slide. If you are using a small font style and size, and this causes the slide to be cluttered because you put too much information on it, then you would want to take a look at changing your font style and/or size.

• Using Continue Slides - A Continue slide is basically when you can’t fit all of the information for a topic on one slide, so you create a second slide with the same title but with a (cont.) added on to the end of it to fit the rest of your information. There are times when you need to use these, however you want to make sure it’s necessary. If you find yourself using a lot of these kinds of slides, make sure you are summarizing your information enough. On the flip side, if you find that you are squeezing a ton of information on one slide just to make it fit, maybe you need to use one instead to make the presentation more readable.

• Getting your Message across - The main goal of each of your slides should be to get your message across in a clear and succinct fashion. Therefore, after you create each slide, you should review it to make sure that’s what you’re doing. If you have a lot of information, but it confuses the audience, then that doesn’t do you any good. If you have only a few sentences that don’t readily give the reader the purpose of that slide, then that doesn’t do you any good either. As long as you are getting your message across in an easily understandable manner, then the amount of information on your slide is probably just right.

As I stated above, there is no one single solution to figuring out if your slides have just the right amount of information on them. However, by using a combination of the points stated above, you should be able to successfully accomplish this goal.

Being able to delegate responsibility is universally seen as a necessary quality in a good supervisor. It is often seen as one of the major gateways to getting into the “management” level in a person’s career. However, is it actually possible to delegate too much responsibility? Can this actually hurt you in the long run? I think so.

It is my belief that while being able to delegate responsibility is important, you still want to make sure that you have at least an inkling of what your team member is doing. Too often, you’ll see a supervisor who has little knowledge of even the high level details of what their team members are working on. This is the trap that I think many new and experienced supervisors alike fall into, and here are three common reasons why this happens:

• Trust and Competence - Once you start trusting in someone’s ability, it becomes easier and easier to just let them do more and more of the work. This is fine, however eventually it becomes easy to end up assigning them a task you receive and never check up on the details of their work. If the end result is good quality, why do you care? You care because what if you have to present the results (which is most likely the case) and you get questions? What if your client questions you? You need at least a high level understanding of what’s going on to be able to handle these kinds of things.

• Busy Schedule - This is another common problem: When your schedule fills up and you have to delegate many tasks without having the time to really learn anything about them. You end up falling into the same trap as the point above. Even worse, you are not always assured of the end product because maybe you had to give someone a task that you would not have had you more time to think about it. The end result is that not only do you not know what’s going on, but neither do they.

• Lack of Knowledge - If you don’t have a clue as to what a task entails, you shouldn’t be delegating it. I know this sounds backwards, but think of it this way: If you don’t have a clue, where can the person you’re supervising go for questions? Also, how do you expect to present this information or answer client questions? You don’t have to be an expert, but you should be able to at least understand the high level details of what’s going on and have a list of people you can refer more detailed questions to.

The point is not to say that you need to be deep into the details of what’s going on with each of your team members, far from it. However, a good check to see if you know enough about what’s going on is to see if you could present a high level overview of the task you are delegating. If you can, then you’re good to go. If not, you should re-evaluate how that task should be accomplished.

New article on Creating a Professional Presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint, take a look for some good tips.

Check back later today for some more article updates.

There are a number of differences between a college Microsoft PowerPoint presentation and a presentation created for your work. A lot of these tips might seem like common sense, but it is the finer points of a presentation that your audience will pick up on, and which will define how much they take from it and if they take it seriously.

The following is a checklist containing the more common points to look for when creating a presentation for your work. It is a good idea to print something like this out and go over it before you turn your presentation in for any kind of review.

• Use a Template - If you can, you should use the standard template that your company, project, etc. uses for PowerPoint presentations when creating your own presentation. This is what your audience will most likely be expecting, and if not (for instance in the case of a new client) this is what you want them to expect from here on out.

• Consistent Font Style - You should use a consistent font style throughout your presentation. Places where exceptions to this rule could occur are:

  • Cover Slide - The first slide in your presentation will usually have fonts, etc. that are not found in the rest of your presentation. This is fine, as it can be standard slide for your company’s presentations, or just the standard for your project. It also can be the attention grabber for the presentation, so you will actually want it to stand out.

  • Headers/Footers - The header and/or footer for each slide is usually part of the template that you and your company use for PowerPoint presentations, so it is most likely not going to be in the same font as the body of your slides.

  Other than the above two examples, you should use a consistent font style across sections of your slides. For example, your body text on each slide should share the same font, as well as any headers or footers that exist outside of your template.

• Refrain from using Clip Art - While it may seem ingenious at the time to make a slide with a big “Idea” light bulb on it, it won’t win you any points with your audience. Clip Art is very generic and really adds nothing to the presentation, it just clutters it up. On the other hand, if you want to use actual pictures of your subject matter, that’s fine.

• Use Bulleted Thoughts - One of the biggest mistakes that you can make when putting a presentation together is putting too much information on the slide. This usually occurs when paragraphs are used instead of concise and bulleted thoughts. The point of each slide is not to be a Word document; it is just supposed to have points that you can talk to while doing your presentation. Too much information per slide will quickly cause your audience to lose interest and you can pretty much give up hope of them walking away having learned anything. Be concise, and strive to only bring across your main points to each slide.

• Get Peer Reviewed - This is probably the most important piece of advice to remember. Before you turn your work in, you should always get it peer reviewed as well as reading it through yourself. It’s easy to get lost in your project when you’ve been “in the weeds” for a long time, so it’s always a good idea to take a step back and have somebody else take a look at it. It’s also a good idea to put it away for a little bit and then go through the presentation again yourself to get a fresh perspective on it.

The above tips are a good start to a checklist that you can use before you turn in any of your presentations. You should add to it with information specific to your job. This will save everybody review and revision time and make your first draft that much better.