Death by PowerPoint – Does anyone still care?

It seems like everywhere I go, people are being bored by an unbearable presentation. The presenter has placed way too much information on the slide, used bad clip art in an attempt to add visuals, presented graphs and tables with font size so small that they almost always say, ‘don’t worry you don’t really need to see this’, and they’re more often than not reading from the slides instead of having a conversation, sharing ideas and asking thought provoking questions. And chances are, those who are delivering that boring and unbearable presentation has likely sat on the receiving end of a boring and unbearable presentation, so why have they chosen to subject the audience to the same grueling torture?

You can talk all you want, but if no one remembers what you said a week or even a day later, all your efforts, time and money were wasted.  Ever wonder why so many people want a copy of your presentation? I mean honestly. It’s not because they really want to treasure that information and read it while sipping on their wine later that evening. It’s because it alters a person’s inclination to listen, engage and synthesize the information. If you give them the option to think about it later, why would they bother to listen to you now? 

And yet, the same assumption and expectation that learning has occurred, that retention and understanding of the presentation has been absorbed and that everyone was engaged and attentions were kept is believed and so the cycle of death by PowerPoint continues on.

What really gets me worked up is when those who are in roles where they are responsible for learning and developing others, create and deliver the same boring and unbearable presentation. To quote David Ogilvy, ‘most people use PowerPoint like a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than for illumination.

Question is do we even care? Why aren’t we changing? There is so much research in neuroscience that’s providing amazing insights into how we learn and retain information. Technology such as the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can detect and measure brain activity associated to blood flow and so we can see which parts of the brain are being used, when and how!  As learning professionals, understanding how each brain region works and how the limbic system helps to mediate learning can help in creating a captivating presentation – one that gets into the minds (and hearts) of your audience.

I’m no expert in neuroscience nor can I claim to have amazing PowerPoint capabilities, however when given the opportunity to create or give a presentation, I keep this in the forefront of my mind.

Have a conversation, not a presentation

Our brains want to make connections. A study by Uri Hassen of Princetown University discovered that when listening to another speaker tell a story, the same areas of both the speaker and the listeners’ brain would light up in an fMRI. They also suggested that these changes can last weeks, months and even years when reinforced through repetitions. So I share stories and talk to the audience as if I were having a conversation with them. I try not to rely on my notes and definitely never my own PowerPoint slides to convey the message. 

For memories to be stored into our brains, we first need to grab their attention. When you do you cause neurons to be fired more frequently, making that experience more intense and you increase the likelihood that the event/information is going to be stored as a memory. So I make sure to peak their interest by telling a joke, making a bold statement, teasing them with something to come later, posing a conflicting question, you get the idea.

Neurologists have found that the part of the brain responsible for reading and listening are found in the same region known as the Wernicke’s area. The average person can read faster than you can speak and so by the time they’ve read the whole slide you haven’t even covered bullet point number 2. And now, as an audience member I’ve unconsciously given myself permission to half listen as you ramble on. People have no choice when it comes to this, so I don’t ask them to make one because I know that I’ll always lose. Instead I use visuals to emphasize and bring meaning and value to what I have to say. 

This is why I also try to limit bullet points.   The prefrontal cortex (PFC) found at the front of our brain is responsible for cognitive functions such as rational thought, problem-solving, and decision making. It’s where we do our best thinking. It’s a wonderful part of the brain. The only problem is, it doesn’t like being scared, anxious or being stressed out. When this happens it either shuts down or stops working at its full capacity. So my job when creating PowerPoint presentations is to declutter, simplify and remove anything that could be perceived as threatening or overwhelming for the PFC. This means getting rid of all those long, wordy bulleted lists, messy diagrams and confusing flow charts that only make the brain want to shut down just at the sight of it. It also means I’ll likely have more slides as I try to stick to one message per slide.

There are many do’s and don’ts, tips and tricks out there on the world wide web! One of my favourites is a Ted Talk by David JP Phillips. So if you still care, like I do, about creating presentations that are memorable, spark curiosity and elicit some sort of change, then please stop being that boring and unbearable presenter!

Anita Gouveia