B is for Black

• 00:04 You just heard me in the previous lecture sound,
• 00:08 let's face itm kind of negative on special effects and
• 00:12 the technology of PowerPoint even though I'm a big fan of PowerPoint.
• 00:17 But there are some technological tricks that I think will help you give
• 00:22 your PowerPoint presentation more effectively.
• 00:27 For starters, if you want people to actually listen to you
• 00:31 when you're talking, you shouldn't distract them with anything on the screen.
• 00:35 And I mean with anything,
• 00:36 don't have your big logo up or today's topic is presented by.
• 00:40 If you want people to focus on what you're saying, spotlight should be just on you.
• 00:48 Now, how do you do that if you have a PowerPoint presentation you're giving and
• 00:53 it's up and it's on, especially if somebody else created the slide and
• 00:57 you're giving it for your boss or someone else?
• 01:01 Well, let me tell you the technological fix-it for this.
• 01:07 You go up to the laptop, or the keyboard that's being used to run the PowerPoint,
• 01:13 and you just hit the letter B.
• 01:16 B for black, it blacks out the screen.
• 01:21 Now the projector's still on, you haven't turned off the projector.
• 01:25 The computer is still on, you haven't turned it off.
• 01:28 You just hit B, it blacks it out.
• 01:32 Works on any keyboard.
• 01:35 If you hit any key whatsoever on your keyboard,
• 01:39 it comes back right where it was.
• 01:43 So, if you want people to listen to you, don't have them look at the screen.
• 01:48 You want them to look at the screen, what I recommend doing, and
• 01:51 what I do myself, shut your mouth.
• 01:55 That's right, when I put something up on a screen,
• 01:58 when I'm giving PowerPoint, I close my mouth.
• 02:03 Stop, maybe turn, look at it, only for a couple of seconds because
• 02:07 you follow my principles, you just have one image up there, it should only require
• 02:13 being looked at for a couple of seconds, and then you've got it.
• 02:18 So that's one trick.
• 02:19 Hit letter B, blacks it out, any key brings it back.
• 02:23 You can also hit the letter W.
• 02:27 W whites it out.
• 02:28 Now that's a bit harsh on the eye.
• 02:30 Between the two,
• 02:31 I much prefer black, because the white screen can be just so bright.
• 02:37 But you heard me mention this in previous lectures.
• 02:42 All of us think we're great multi-taskers, and yet
• 02:44 all the research shows human beings are actually horrible multi-taskers.
• 02:48 Look at all the deaths on the highways with people texting.
• 02:52 But what do we, as public speakers, as presenters, do?
• 02:57 We tell an audience, listen to me speak.
• 02:59 No, read this stuff over here.
• 03:02 No, look at this handouts here.
• 03:04 We're constantly asking the audience to multi-task,
• 03:09 boom boom boom, doing three things at once.
• 03:12 Why do we do that?
• 03:15 You don't really have any evidence to suggest that your audience is
• 03:19 good at that.
• 03:22 All the research shows if you give one person three things to do ask them to do
• 03:26 all three at once, and you take another person and
• 03:29 you say here's one task finish it, give them another task,
• 03:32 let them finish it, give them the third test, let them finish it.
• 03:36 This person here will finish sooner with
• 03:39 fewer errors than the one person trying to do all three things at once.
• 03:45 So what I recommend when you're giving a speech,
• 03:47 ask people to do one thing at a time.
• 03:50 If you're talking, don't have any slides up, don't have anything for them to read.
• 03:57 If you want to give them something to read, a one page handout for example,
• 04:03 shut your mouth, don't have any slides up, give them time to read it.
• 04:10 If you want them to look at the slide, don't have any handouts and
• 04:15 shut your mouth.
• 04:16 Let them read it.
• 04:20 I know it sounds radical, but when you really think about it, it's just common
• 04:25 sense based on what you know already works on human beings.
• 04:31 Those of you who have children, do you really think your children are better off
• 04:34 listening to music, having the TV on, talking to their friends on the phone and
• 04:40 doing their homework all at the same time, versus just doing their homework?
• 04:45 Which is really more effective, regardless of what your kids tell you?
• 04:50 Your audience is exactly the same.
• 04:52 Now, you could say, well, our corporate culture,
• 04:55 we do it, I don't care about your corporate culture.
• 04:59 I care about the culture of your audience that they've been in their whole lives.
• 05:04 People are in a culture where they're used to, if it's important,
• 05:08 doing one thing at a time, because that's really how brains work most effectively.
• 05:14 So, try not to distract people.
• 05:19 The B is one way of doing that, that's also, I'm not a fan of the builds.
• 05:24 When I say a build, that's when you have a slide, one sentence goes on, you hit
• 05:29 a button, another sentence comes on, you advance, something else pops up.
• 05:35 And it's kinda like one of the birds at the gas station checkout that's like this,
• 05:39 you're sort of bopping up and down.
• 05:41 It's very distracting, it's manipulative.
• 05:44 It's kind of the poor man's, the poor woman's teleprompter.
• 05:49 Awful way of using PowerPoint.
• 05:53 Don't do it.
• 05:53 There are technological things that can help.
• 05:57 Stick with the simple ones.
• 05:58 B for black, W for white.

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