The Number One Mistake Miners Make with PowerPoint – Mining Man

PowerPoint is not used very effectively by leaders in the mining industry (as a general observation).  There is no doubt that miners have learned very well how to use transition sound effects and text fade-ins to demonstrate their knowledge of the programs more annoying functions, but why do we find so many presentations so boring, and so hard to stay interested in? 
The reason is – Because you can read faster than the speaker can talk. 
If the speaker is reading the slide word-for-word, you will always finish reading before they finish speaking.  And this means that you already know whatever it is they are talking about.

How interested would you be if I asked you to read this article right though, and then sat you down and read it out to you verbatim?  How long do you think you could keep paying attention?
The answers are – “not very” and “not long”.
So the Number One Mistake Miners Make with PowerPoint is:
READING THE TEXT ON THE SLIDES WORD FOR WORD
When you are presenting, you have two forms of communication to work with – visual and verbal.  Don’t send the same message with both. 
The visual communication on your PowerPoint slides should support your verbal message or vice versa.  Either put all your key information onto the slides and then use your voice to explain them, or make the script of your presentation the main focus and use the slides to support what you are saying.
Writing the PowerPoint slide show is not the same as writing the presentation.  You must do both, and then make sure they work together.
You can write your notes directly into the notes section of PowerPoint, and then either print them out for your eyes only, or use the neat feature in PowerPoint which allows you to see the slides and your notes on your laptop, while the viewers only see the slides on the screen.
Remember – PowerPoint is there to support what you have to say, not to act as giant cards with your speech written on it.  Plus, the people in the meeting don’t want to see the back of your head – you need to make eye contact.
So for your next presentation of meeting, try to separate what you want to say from what is on the slides.  There are two communication methods at work, if you can get them to send different messages but work together, you will double your presentation power!!

 Stay safe, stay productive, and keep improving your own performance every day!
– Mining Man
If your presentation is part of a meeting, check our advice on Making Meeting Minutes Easy AND Effective.

Mining Man

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