DEV Community: Tamara

4 things that ruin your presentation

Tamara — Mon, 13 May 2024 11:16:50 +0000

Lots of Small Text

🚫 “Small as possible and on 2 columns”

A presentation is a tool that helps navigate the attention of the audience and enhance the effect of the speech. The effectiveness of the tool depends on the purpose. Slides can contain a lot of text if we are going to send them to the audience to read. In that case, everyone can quietly and attentively read the slides whenever it is convenient.

In public speaking presentations, unnecessary text overloads a slide and creates extra stress for the viewers. It also distracts from the speaker's speech because it's hard to read and listen at the same time. So feel free to get rid of it, or split up large portions of text into different slides.

Tip 1: Separate paragraphs with a blank line

Tip 2: The headline must be clear

Ask yourself the question, "What is the main idea of this slide?" The answer is in the headline.

You don't need to entice a person to read the text. Clickbait headlines like "Just one product will help you lose 8 pounds in a week, and this product..." are unnecessary — your audience is already here and already listening to you.

Tip 3: Make a newspaper block layout

Divide the canvas of text into blocks, give them subheadings. This will make the text easier to read and navigate.

Expand choices for the audience: read the whole text on the slide, just the title, or the blocks of interest.

Tip 4: Use icons

They also will make it easier to see, and slides with them are easy to edit. And you can also use brand colors or one common background color.

Tip 5: Give information gradually

If a slide has a long list, its items can appear one after another. You don't need to be proficient in motion design to do this. You can create several slides that differ from each other by one element.

This way you will create a convenient scenario for the audience: the viewers' attention will be focused on the new element.

Typeface Overload

🚫 “Choose three or even four fonts”

Typography, font combinations, colors are the whole science. Understanding them on your own and finding the perfect match is difficult. If you are not sure about the design decision or effect you want to achieve with an unusual combination of elements on the slide - it's safer to stick to the minimalistic solutions.

One typeface per presentation. For accents, it's better to use font styles (bold, italic). If you want to take two or three typefaces, we advise you to focus on existing font pairs (there are a lot of them!).

Font pairing is visually matching fonts (usually two) that help structure the information on the slide and solve its task.

💡 To select cool font pair, see here: https://www.fontpair.co/all

💡 To find unique combinations of your own pairs, use this website: https://fontjoy.com/

It offers variations based on machine learning techniques and allows you to adjust the contrast of fonts using the slider at the top.

Color Overload

🚫 “Each slide with a new background. The brighter the better”

For one presentation it is better to take no more than 3-4 colors. It is important to make it visually easy and enjoyable for viewers to study the presentation. A unified style will help us a lot!

💡 Matching shades can be found on special resources:

https://mybrandnewlogo.com/ru/generator-cvetovoi-palitry – to select ready-made palettes.
https://coolors.co/ – palette generator with the possibility of creating your own.

Stock Images

🚫 “Add pictures just to be there, it doesn't matter what quality they are or how you scale them. The main thing is to occupy the space”

Pictures clearly demonstrate parts of a speech, create atmosphere and grab the audience's attention. We are used to them being mandatory in presentations. But this is actually not the case: choice of pictures should be deliberate! For example, stock photos with office staff are often used to fill space and illustrate the 'seriousness' of the company.

But they don't really do the job: such photos are unnatural, don't evoke sympathy, don't make you more serious in the eyes of your viewers and certainly don't show the real process. It's better to use one real photo than five stock photos.

Important principles when choosing pictures for your slides

1. If the picture is in poor quality —

think about whether it is so unique and necessary to use here and now! The audience won't lose anything by not seeing it. But a pixelated screen will definitely have a negative impact on the impression of the slide.

2. Only proportional scaling!

Unless the goal is to create a comical effect, horizontally or vertically stretching out the photo with your boss is unlikely to help your presentation! Your visual will lose in level.

Check out other helpful tips and materials on public speaking in our open Soft Skills database

Storytelling in speeches

Tamara — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:12:19 +0000

Storytelling is a powerful tool for emotionally engaging your speech at almost any level and for any purpose. Telling a story as a pitch kickoff for investors? Great. Storytelling as a team building tool during team meetings? Builds credibility. Storytelling elements in a project report? Makes it and you more memorable.

It is great for IT conferences and any technical topic from simple to complex. Especially if your audience isn't as knowledgeable about the topic you're talking about.

Sometimes it's not so easy to figure out how to take a story and make it coherent, interesting and deep. It might seem like an intricate art, a sea of talent and practice. And to some extent, that's true.

But in reality, a story follows clear rules: the rules of plot, empathy, contrast, and character. Understanding these rules empowers anyone to tell fantastic stories! That's why we've created this template to help you prepare and refine your own story.

So we created a page in our Handbook and a template to guide you through 4 simple steps in developing your narrative:

Discover the essence of your story by sketching out major events, barriers, and thrilling plot twists. Get to the heart of the main conflict right away!
Bring your protagonist to life by exploring their goals, motivations, and vibrant surroundings. Dive into the depths of their character and unveil the challenges they'll face.
Formulate the core idea of your story and consider its impact on the audience.
Bring it all together visually: note events, emotions, and follow the story's arc and contrast.

If you're interested, check out our open and free Handbook, where you can find the page dedicated to storytelling, the template and also the examples of cool speeches we gathered for you. Hope you like it!

I am struggling to moderate the team meeting

Tamara — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 13:56:32 +0000

You are not alone! Facilitation skills are acquired over time, and with them a sense of confidence. Some problems come up more often than others. So today I'd like to cover Common Difficulties of Facilitation and How to Handle Them.

Problem 1. Do we really need this meeting?

It's important to start by figuring out whether a meeting is needed at all or not.

When meetings are most likely not necessary

❌ Someone alone reads the report in front of everyone else — have them videotape the report or write the text.

❌ Need to decide on a minor thing on which nothing fundamentally depends. We discuss it in the chat room and get on with it.

❌ Everyone takes turns telling their part — have them write a slide each in the overall presentation and put it all together.

❌ Someone alone has to make one big difficult decision. Then they should load all the information into it in writing, and let them make the decision themselves.

❌ No one understands anything, the situation is uncertain. Then first gather all the information and decide, and then decide if a meeting is necessary.

The solution is to transfer the meeting into an asynchronous state.

When a meeting is exactly necessary

to develop a joint plan of action,
to make a decision that can be influenced by different people,
sessions (usually creative) that benefit from the diversity and number of views

Problem 2: combining two roles

A barrier that most teamleaders who act as facilitators at the same time may encounter is the need to somehow combine these roles during the meeting

Tip 1: Speak up last

This way, your opinion as the leader has less influence on the others. The team feels more relaxed in the discussion, it is easier to express thoughts and agree, because the discussion is more horizontal and therefore safer.

Tip 2: Try to keep your opinion to yourself

Your opinion during the discussion can narrow the flow of thoughts and become an emotional barrier. Have faith in your team — they can handle it, especially if you help them.

Tip 3: Change your hats! (Use the Belbin/De Bono role mechanic)

The six hats are six different ways of thinking or just six different roles that can be set depending on the goals of the meeting. Change hats, try on different roles to learn how to think in different ways depending on the situation. Hats can be changed not only by the participants, but also by the leader!

In De Bono's system: the red hat is emotion, black is criticism, yellow is optimism, green is creativity, blue is thought management, and white is facts and figures.

Tip 4: Use the silent brainstorming method

It helps you think without being guided by the opinions of opinion leaders. You can use it in two formats.

The simple version: the brainstorming process takes place individually, everyone writes down ideas on a piece of paper, and then voices them after a given period of time.

A more complicated version: participants independently write down as many ideas as possible to the question asked by the leader, and then, passing their ideas to the neighbor to their right and receiving a list of ideas from the neighbor to their left, get acquainted with them and develop their ideas. After a few steps, all the post-its with ideas are collected, and they are discussed and sorted.

Tip 5: Delegate difficult facilitation

Sometimes this is a necessary measure to make the process run comfortably and as efficiently as possible, don't be afraid of it.

Tip 6: If the decision is yours, discuss the risks with the team

If a situation arises in which there are not many ideas and yours is in the spotlight, ask others to get its minuses, risks, and difficulties. So that later, when you are committing to it, it will be clear for everyone. That way the decision will be more informed by the team.

About how to handle the next common problems:

Different Participants of the Meeting
Timing
"Useless meetings"

read in our open free database Teamlead Handbook

"Thank you for your attention" slide is in the past

Tamara — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 12:11:39 +0000

The fall of the "Thank you for your attention" slide era didn't happen overnight! Let us tell you how to replace this cliché, why it is outdated and will only harm even the most thoughtful speech.

Normally, speakers use the "Thank you for your attention!" slide for two reasons:

to thank the audience,
to end the presentation smoothly.

These reasons are certainly important, but the problem is in the way speakers decide to solve it: a slide with such a cliché contains no crucial sense and, sadly, irritates the audience.

And if to translate this cliché from rhetorical to human language, it means: "I didn't have enough time to button up with something fancy, so just get by with this senseless formality".

How to Thank Your Audience or to Finish Your Presentation in a Correct Way?

Firstly, it's not necessary to prepare a separate slide just to say “thank you”; instead, a few sincere thanking words would be more than enough.

Secondly, at the preparation stage, it's essential to anticipate the reaction of the audience after your speech is done. For example, eventually, you expect people to subscribe to your social media, or to click the relevant link, or just to save some useful checklist. Any of such goals would greatly and naturally fit the idea of your last slide, as well as accomplish your speech. Let’s look closer at 5 better ways to finish the speech.

Summing-Up

Every speech has its key messages — the thoughts a speaker wants to convey to their audience. The challenge here is that too much content or too many follow-up questions often blur the focus and make it difficult to identify the main points of the speech.

To bring the audience back to the main message at the end of the “show”, just sum it all up briefly and transparently.

You can achieve the necessary effect through a clear conclusion.

"The main appeal of my presentation is: start courageously, proceed with discipline, and finish vigorously. This is your key to success!"

Or you can also use storytelling to link the beginning with the end of your performance by telling a story of some character.

"Remember, at the beginning of my presentation, I told you about the student who wasn't doing well in her speeches? Within a couple of months, she passed an argumentation bot, took part in various debates, and completed a communications course. She also recently made a speech at TED talks! Let's check out the video and afterwards I'll answer all of your questions"

A tip: If you decide to use storytelling, we advise you to do the final slide in darker colors — it will help focus people on the narrative. Otherwise, there is a risk that the light background, various pictures, and text will distract the audience from the speaker's speech ending.

Make an Outline of the Speech

At the beginning, speakers often make a summary, telling you point by point what their following speech will be about. The same technique can be used at the end of the performance in order to highlight the answers to questions that were revealed along the performance.

A tip: Place a camera icon on the last slide and invite the audience to take a pic or a screenshot. In this way, your speech outline, condensed to the main points, will be saved and thus — more helpful.

The beginning:
What shall we talk about today?
1) How to begin a performance?
2) How to continue?
3) How to finish?
4) What's next?

The end:

What was today’s speech about?
1) To begin — make audience familiar with the context.
2) To continue, state the main point along with some arguments.
3) To conclude — sum it all up.
4) To give a hint of "what comes next," just explain what the goal and the benefits are.

Call To Action

The closure of the speech is the perfect place for a CTA.

What can you call for?

For interaction:

Place a QR-code or some links which will bring people directly to those communication channels where it’s really convenient for you to respond quickly and stay in touch.

For further study of the issue:

Present links to exact and verified sources (articles, videos, relevant projects)

For changes:

Tell your audience what steps they need to take in order to achieve the desired result. The format can be different: a timeline with major milestones or a piece of advice from personal experience.

Use Metaphor

in quotes;
in images;
in visuals.

Metaphor is a great guide. By using it, one can easily incorporate stories and images into a speech, so that it sounds perfectly clear and natural. At the same time, metaphors also is used to put an impressive end to a speech.

The main thing is not to overdo with it, just as not to introduce any new topics when finalizing your narrative. This can dilute the focus, distract or even confuse.

It is also helpful to use a verbal or visual metaphor that has already been mentioned in the presentation, so that the last slide will summarize the speech and give you an opportunity to "quit" through a revealing image.

Let's say the main part of your presentation was dedicated to the virtual assistant called Keanu, then it would be nice to insert a picture of him with a motivational phrase at the end.

Recall the Centerpiece

Here we suggest two ways.

First: recall the problematic that you started your presentation with. You can link it to the main idea of the presentation and conclude in one phrase:

"If you want always to stay in a good shape and not feel thirsty, just drink healthy stuff!"

Second: If the main idea can be illustrated in a diagram or through some algorithm, it wouldn't go amiss to visualize it on the last slide and emphasize its importance.

"Before the speech, I thought to myself: if you had an opportunity to memorize just one thing today, what should it be? So, I decided that, in such case, what I definitely would like you to keep in mind is this diagram. If you really understand it and learn how to implement it, then all the rest will start working just automatically. So, may your implementations be successful!"

Soft Skills for developers and team leaders

Tamara — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 10:18:35 +0000

Hello there! My team and I are working with IT-specialists for a lot of years, and we've heard from time to time about the struggles with soft skills, team managing and communication, especially from those who recently became a teamlead.

So we decided to prepare an open and free Handbook with theory, templates, practical advice and lifehacks which can be useful to:

find helpful links and hacks to improve team communication,
pick a retro template,
help yourself prepare a public speech or storytelling,
prepare yourself for the role of facilitator and much more!

The handbook is constantly updated with new templates, so let me know what materials would you like to see, or what cases or topics to cover! Glad to hear your feedback! And stay tuned <3