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Being Iconic

With Simon Raybould of Curved Vision Theatre

Being an icon is such a great idea, isn’t it – unless, of course, you’ve had to develop your iconic status in the style of Ché Gueverra and die… But actually I’m not interested in iconism in that way, but more in terms of what you put on your slides when you make a presentation (if you use slides at all!).

I’ve sat through a number of presentations in the last couple of weeks where the presenter has put full words – even short paragraphs – up on the screen. Usually they also committed the second sin of reading them word-for-word as well, but even when they didn’t, they lost their audience’s attention.

Why? Because people can read faster than you can talk – a lot faster. What’s more, we’re visual animals (a huge percentage of our brains is given over to processing what comes in via our eyes) and so we have a hard-wired instinct to look before we listen.

The unfortunate (from the point of view of the poor presenter) is that the audience stops listening to you for a moment or two while they read the slide and then spend the next minute or two waiting for you to catch up with them… getting bored.

The tip? Instead of lists of sentences, use iconic words instead: that way the audience can’t get much from them and so has to listen to you, the presenter, as you explain. I recently – slightly tongue in cheek – reduced a list of instructions to something like

• Decide
• Chart
• Strip
• Index
• Headline
• Iconise

Now, if I could just find a decent way of creating an acronym out of those, I’d be away… As always there are more hints and tips on the presentation skills blog. And you can contact us via sme@curved-vision.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .