Kickin' Presentation: How to Engage, Influence, and WOW Your Audience!

23 May 2011, Monday

Speaker: Karen Hough

When I stepped into the classroom, I was quite sure I made the right choice.  It was the last session of the day and everyone was tired and probably ready to head home BUT surprise, surprise – Karen’s class was so full that many had to be turned away.

To appreciate the session, I think you need to know a little more about Karen Hough.  Founder & CEO of ImprovEdge, she has been using improvisation as an engaging learning tool for over 12 years.  She is also the author for the American #1 Category Bestseller, "The Improvisation Edge: Secrets to Building Trust and Radical Collaboration at Work".  Trained with Chicago's legendary Second City, she also had a career in stage, film and TV and was in over 100 live and filmed productions.

Lesson 1

Don't Let the Slides Upstage YOU.

Karen went to great length to convince the audience that the most important person in a presentation is the presenter and not his or her powerpoint slides.  According to her, too many presenters hide behind their presentation by offering lots of information on the powerpoint slides, thereby drawing away attention from the presenter.  To Karen, this is doing the presenter a great disservice – the presenter must be the person in control of the presentation, he or she must get the full attention of the audience in order to convince, persuade and do what is necessary to meet the objectives of the presentation. 

Lesson 2             

No More than 6 lines in a powerpoint slide!

That is right.  Don't clutter your slides.  Not more than 6 lines on the powerpoint slide.  Again, Karen shared with the audience that anything more than 6 lines will draw away attention from the presenter.  She is dead against filling up every powerpoint slide with words, diagrams and pictures.  When I saw that slide, I went through all the presentations I have done in my mind and I realized if this was a test, I failed miserably.  Thankfully, I am not alone.  Many in the audience raised their hands and shared that 6 lines were simply too little!  Amongst the audience was an engineer and he shared that there were many technical details in his presentations and if he can only put 6 lines in each powerpoint slide, there would be hundreds of pages to be presented.  But Karen was not convinced.  She argued that she has coached many people in the banking and healthcare industry and they too had much information to share with the audience.  To her, if there was so much data for the audience to digest, the information should have been presented earlier as reading materials prior to the presentation.  To Karen, showing the audience huge amount of data during the presentation is going to draw attention away from the presenter and there would be a danger of losing the audience as they tried to digest and analyze the technical details during the presentation.   By limiting 6 lines to a powerpoint slide, it also forced the presenter to think through his presentation carefully and only present those information that was critical to the audience.

For the remaining of the talk, Karen demonstrated the dos and don’ts of a presenter.  For example, a presenter should never be late.   Coming into a room full of people usually add more stress to the presenter and he or she will miss the chance to size up his audience.  For Karen, a presenter should always be composed, confident and assuring. 

And finally, the secret to a great presentation is Practice, Practice and more Practice.

Looks like there is no short-cut to being a great presenter afterall.

Karen Hough

Wai Cheng