19 Offensive Presentation Techniques

We’ve all sat through some hideous presentations.    I sat through one today – run by a partner of a top-tier Melbourne law firm.  It almost put me in a coma.  The amazing thing is, the presenter appeared to have been trained to provide the presentation in that way.   It inspired me to publish a list of terrible presentation techniques which has been growing in my notebook.  If you want to give an offensively boring presentation, just do the following:

1. Use your company’s branding and style guide on every slide of your powerpoint and make them look really neat and clean.
2. Put as much information as possible in your slides.  Have a minimum of two sentences in each slide.  Never less.
3. Don’t use real-life examples that the audience can relate to.  Stick to the subject matter.
4. Don’t vary your tone or pace.   Speed up if you’re nervous.  Speak quietly so people have to strain to hear you on the edge of their seat. 
5. Use TLAs (three lettered acronyms) and don’t explain them – the more TLAs or letters the better.  
6. Use big words.  It helps you impress and connect with your audience.  (The opening speaker at a recent conference I attended used the words exogenous and endogenous in the first 60 seconds.)  
7. Go over time.  Talk until you get through all your material or until you feel in your gut like you’ve made your point.  Anything over 20 minutes is great.  People always complain about things being too short.  No-one has ever complained about presentations being too long.  After all, you’ve got the stage – take advantage of that.
8. Ramble on side-issues.  People want to hear your opinion on points not relevant to the topic.
9. Use your best presentation voice.  People don’t want you to talk to them on a personal level.
10. Hide behind your lectern.  Don’t move.
11. Read your presentation from the powerpoint slides.
12. Don’t use illustrations.
13. Don’t involve the audience.
14. Don’t use colours.
15. Don’t be funny.
16. Stick to your slides.  Even if the audience asks you a question – don’t be flexible.   You’ve put hours into preparation, after all.
17. Don’t find out about the audience before your presentation by individually asking participants about what they want to get out of it.  Tell them what they need to know!
18. Don’t listen to this podcast (which is a brilliant few minute summary by communications genius Lisa B Marshall).
19. Don’t watch the following video (which is presented at Google by web-marketing guru Garr Reynolds to show participants how to do awesome presentations).

 

Follow these 19 tips, and don’t expect to be asked to do a presentation ever again.

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