PowerPoint Safety Speaker Tips

Last week, I watched a person seated near me working on a PowerPoint presentation while I was flying home. Very quickly, I realized they were writing the entire text of their presentation on every slide. The trap they had fallen into was thinking there was value in being thorough.  Books and computers are for reading. Presentations and safety training are opportunities for you to convey a topic or concept with human interaction. When a presenter gives a safety talk and puts the entire text into a PowerPoint slide show they take themselves out of the equation.

I study my own, as well as other safety speaker’s, presentations. The first time I saw a speaker put text on a projection screen, I noticed the audience reading ahead. They finished before the speaker because people can read faster than you can talk. The result is that you lose your audience’s attention and once you lose it, getting it back can be tough.

A possible exception is if you are studying a specific text or rule and you are going to be referring back to it. In such a case, I would put it up after you have spoken it to the audience.

For more tips on PowerPoint and presentation skills, give my Dynamic Presentations Institute director,  Sandie Gilbert a call at 209-747-2770.

Scheduled for Feb 21, 2011