The Paradox of PowerPoint: Why We Love to Hate It in Presentations

How many times have you sat through a presentation and had the phrase “death by PowerPoint” running through your head? Why is the use of PowerPoint simultaneously so reviled and so ubiquitous? Why does a speaker feel the need to be defensive for the slides (“I only have a few slides…”) but feel compelled to use them? Especially for the worst speaking slot ever – the post-lunch slot.

This is not a post about tips on making better presentations. This is a point of view that was conceptualized in one of those creative moments – when sitting through a post-lunch presentation. When the carbs are settling down into your bloodstream and lights are dimmed and the slide footer says, “Slide 5 of 52”, it is a good practice to open a notebook and write furiously. On any topic that can keep you awake.

The core issue that can make or break a PowerPoint presentation is in the name of the product - Power. It’s really about power. Let me explain.

When a presenter is walking through a slide deck, they control the pace and style of delivery. They hold the power to share information with you. As a passive recipient you are powerless to do anything about it. You may have speed read the deck and are the impatient type and wants to move on – tough luck. You must wait now for the speaker to finish whatever it is they are saying (you weren’t really listening to them, were you?) and go to the next slide. And while you are waiting you are watching them, judging them, and drifting off mentally. There is a momentary spurt of excitement as they switch to the next slide and then it’s a long wait again. After a few cycles of this you are exhausted and now just want the misery to end. If you are a patient and considerate person you wait for the speaker to finish whatever it is they want to say – you make polite gestures of acknowledgement and hope the misery is over soon. “Only 47 more slides to go”, you tell yourself. 

It is important to realize that not everyone in the room is going through some version of this. Not everyone absorbs information the same way or at the same pace. There will be some groups of people who are captivated by what’s on the screen because it’s the right pace and style for them. The rest, not so much. In an ideal scenario everyone in the room would be able to move to the next slide at their pace. They may want to look at the overview of deck and skip to a section of interest and then come back to the beginning. They may prefer to read in silence – “can you just be quiet for a few minutes while I read this and I will get back to you if I have questions”. Some might prefer a conversation – “forget the slides and just tell me what you think”. What gets people more receptive to a message is when they have, or at least they feel they have, control over the pace and style in which they can consume it. This is probably the single key element that is at the core of presentation styles, and it is the recognition of this that makes a presentation good and interesting.

Once we recognize that this feeling of helplessness when receiving a message is at the core of the issue, we can now figure out how to address it. The ideal situation of letting the audience drive your delivery is probably not going to work – you are up on stage delivering the message for a purpose. But now you can be sensitive to the sentiment. You can make your audience feel more in control. You can let them know that you are not going to exploit your power and that you are willing to give up control and work at their pace. You will notice that the presenters that keep the audience awake and engaged tend to do this – deliberately or subconsciously. The act of telling jokes, polling the audience, engaging in anecdotes, is all about conveying the sense that “Yes, I have the power, but I am not going to be a despot, trust me.”  If you think about it, all the presentation playbooks and tips and suggestions and advice are about being gentle with your power and not flaunting it indiscriminately.

We have heard of that one organization that flaunts as a virtue that they don’t do presentations – all their communication is written text documents from a couple of pages to a half-dozen pages or so (don’t get so carried away – I have been there and yes, they also do presentations 😊). But they have the right intent. There’s a reason why written documents in text are preferred. If you haven’t guessed it by now, it’s this – when you are reading a document you are in control of how you receive the message. Take this piece as an example. You may have sequentially read it from the top. Or you may have been attracted to this paragraph because it has some formatted text and an emoji. May be English is not your native language and you are reading a translated version. In any case, you choose to consume this text in your preferred style.

I did start by saying this is not a post on how to do good presentations. But now that we are here, it’s tempting to try and be a little preachy. Here are some key tenets for making a presentation, that I use often, and find myself tweaking and adjusting when I listen to others’ presentations (both, the ones I find interesting as well as the ones that I find tedious).

• Stay focused on the perspective of the audience. Their interests may not always align with yours. It took you several days to create this presentation, so you want to share the whole experience with your audience – they don’t care about it and they just want you to get to the point.

• Mitigate the feeling of helplessness by providing a clear sense of what’s coming. Keep a flow. Stay predictable. Putting an agenda slide with no context or not providing any further information is not very useful. Be sincere in sharing your plan for this session.

• Poll the audience sincerely. It must be a meaningful poll with context and sincerity. “Any questions?” is the laziest option – you are now making it the audience’s responsibility rather than targeting the topic.

• Don’t overdo the humor. Being funny and getting a chuckle out of the audience is great and is immensely satisfying to the presenter, but it still needs to align to the message you are trying to share. Don’t lose sight of what you want the audience to remember your presentation for – you need to be funny like a good joke, not like bad milk.

• Frame your message as answers to questions, presumably from the audience. I find this a very useful technique to stay anchored in the audience’s perspective. “At this point you may be asking yourselves how we can implement this growth strategy and I want to share our 4-step approach…” helps you to remind yourself that you are RESPONDING to the audience, and it helps the audience feel that they are the ones asking a question to you – ergo, they are in control.

And since you have made it this far, I am going to let you in on a secret. The surest way to avoid making dull boring post-lunch presentations is to cozy up to the organizer and make sure you don’t get assigned to that slot.