Time to Rehearse Your PowerPoint Presentation

• 00:05 Once again, this is where we separate great speakers from awful ones and
• 00:09 average ones.
• 00:10 If you want to be awful, if you want to be average,
• 00:14 then just continue watching this video and then watch the next video.
• 00:19 But if you want to be great after this video, you're gonna have to stop and
• 00:24 actually give a PowerPoint presentation.
• 00:28 You're going to have to record yourself and you're gonna have to watch it.
• 00:31 And you're gonna have to make a list of everything you
• 00:36 like about your PowerPoint and then everything you don't like.
• 00:42 And then do it again.
• 00:44 Record it, review it, critique it and do it again and
• 00:49 again and again until you can look at the screen and say, wow!
• 00:54 If I can be half as good as that guy, if I can be half as good as that woman
• 00:59 I'm gonna be the star of my industry in the next conference or
• 01:03 the quarterly board meeting.
• 01:06 I need you to feel that good about it.
• 01:10 And it's not going to happen if you spend all your time rewriting the bullet points.
• 01:16 Beginning is bullet points fine, I can't talk you out of that.
• 01:20 But there are few guarantees in life, here's one.
• 01:22 If you spend all of your time writing and rewriting and rearranging bullet points,
• 01:27 and changing the font size, and make sure the logo is just right and you don't
• 01:32 actually rehearse your power point on video, you're not gonna be very good.
• 01:37 Now, you might not be any worse than anybody else.
• 01:42 And maybe everyone else is so bad that if you just have a smile on your face and
• 01:47 have a little bit of humor, people will say you're the best of the day.
• 01:51 But if you really want to communicate, and I'm assuming you do,
• 01:56 then I need you to take this rehearsal seriously.
• 02:00 Now, I work with major corporations, government institutes,
• 02:04 United Nations organizations all over the world.
• 02:09 And I can tell you, 99.9% of them,
• 02:10 of the people in those organizations don't rehearse their PowerPoints on video.
• 02:17 And yet it's not because lack of time.
• 02:20 People are spending time on PowerPoint, but
• 02:23 they're spending time on the wrong things.
• 02:27 They're spending time editing and
• 02:29 tweaking every little word, every little bullet point.
• 02:33 And now, I'm not suggesting you just rush it out there full of spelling errors
• 02:40 but at some point there has to be proportionality.
• 02:44 If you're gonna spend five hours writing, rewriting and
• 02:48 editing slides, you gotta spend at least one hour rehearsing on a video.
• 02:54 The typical time allotment is 10, 20, even 30 hours creating slides and
• 03:01 this much time rehearse it that's right zero time rehearsing.
• 03:08 So just vetting and
• 03:11 going through all of the approval process for your deck to get approved.
• 03:15 I realize that can be difficult in big organizations.
• 03:19 Your audience doesn't care.
• 03:21 They're not gonna give you any credit for that.
• 03:23 That's only part of the process.
• 03:26 Your job is to communicate.
• 03:29 It's not to get adept through an approval process.
• 03:32 So that's why it's absolutely critical that you now rehearse
• 03:37 on video multiple times so that you're comfortable with it.
• 03:42 You're not using the slide deck as your teleprompter.
• 03:45 You shouldn't even be looking at your deck.
• 03:49 Other than that moment when it's coming up for your audience to look at it and
• 03:52 you've shut your mouth.
• 03:55 So please do this now.
• 03:56 Give your PowerPoint presentation, record it, keep doing it, reviewing it,
• 04:01 critiquing it until you love it.
• 04:03 Then once you have one you love, I want you to share this video
• 04:08 with colleagues people who are in some ways gonna be close to,
• 04:13 the audience you're speaking to and then don't just ask them what they think.
• 04:18 They're gonna say oh, you did a good job.
• 04:20 You're really professional.
• 04:22 Meaningless advice.
• 04:24 Again, what you want to ask them is.
• 04:28 What messages did you take away?
• 04:30 How would you describe this to someone who was supposed to hear me speak but
• 04:35 couldn't come?
• 04:37 What slides do you remember?
• 04:39 What were the messages of those slides?
• 04:44 And really listen to what they say.
• 04:46 If they're not telling you your exact messages that you want,
• 04:49 if they're not getting your slides, if they're not remembering the slides and
• 04:54 remembering the messages you've got to redo it, but
• 04:57 if they do get it, then you have evidence that you're doing a great job.
• 05:02 That you've done you're proper due diligence.
• 05:04 That you've actually done the editing that matters.
• 05:07 The other thing that matters is not changing the font size on the slide.
• 05:10 The editing that matters is getting your presentation and I mean you
• 05:15 speaking to the point where your audience understands you and remembers you.
• 05:20 So please don't fast forward to the next lecture.
• 05:23 Do this homework now.

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