Government Presenters Can Effectively Deliver Their Message Using PowerPoint By Following the Five Steps in This New Book

Government PowerPoint presentations can be effective vehicles for communicating important information if the presentation is structured properly and uses effective visuals. This book can help you to create effective presentations.

Presenters at all levels in government organizations are increasingly called on to communicate important messages through PowerPoint presentations. Whether it is getting approval for a new initiative, reporting progress on a project, or providing training on an upcoming policy change, the presentation needs to be effective so that the audience takes action. This new book gives you a five step process to follow, examples to refer to, and best practices for many types of visuals.

The first major section of the book deals with planning the structure of your presentation. Without  a good structure, the audience will be left confused and won’t take action. Here are some of the topics covered in this section:

• One question that acts as a filter to ensure the content of your presentation is focused properly
• The importance of analyzing each audience you present to, and a checklist to make sure you have considered the important aspects in preparing your presentation
• How to handle multi-presenter introductions so they are smooth and keep the flow of the presentation going
• Why your presentation isn’t over at the end of the meeting and how you can follow up to ensure the message sticks
• A form that you can copy over and over that helps you structure every presentation so it will be effective
• Examples of structuring a presentation for the three most common types of presentations in a government setting: 1) Training/Education, 2) Status Update/Program Review/Briefing, and 3) Recommending a course of action based on analysis. Use the best practices from these examples as guidelines to create your next presentation

The second major section of the book deals with planning each individual slide that you will use to support your message. This section covers both overall slide design and the design of each slide you are planning to use. Some of the topics covered in this section include:

• How to select colors that are easy for the audience to see without having to know a lot about design
• How to make sure that the font you select will be large enough to be read by the audience, no matter what size of room or screen you are using
• Why the top of your slide is so critically important and how to write an effective headline instead of a meaningless title
• How you can determine a great visuals for your slide without having any graphics background (including web sites that give you plenty of ideas to use)
• A form that you can copy over and over and use to plan each slide, making it easier to review slides before spending time creating them, or even hand the form to someone else to create exactly the slides you need
• The answer to the common question, “How many slides should I have for my presentation?” (and this is not the answer you were expecting)

Once you have planned each slide, you will need to create the visuals that you are using. In the third section of the book, you will see numerous examples of visuals and the best practices that you should follow to ensure each visual is effective. The sample slides are from the government context, so the examples you see will be relevant to your world. This section covers text slides, graphs, different types of diagrams, multimedia (like photos and video), and how to pull in information from other sources, like web pages or spreadsheets. The section ends with some tips on creating consistency when multiple contributors are providing slides for a presentation. At the end of this section, you will know exactly how to create the visuals you want to use in your presentation.

Section four is all about preparing to deliver your presentation. It is not enough to just create the slides, you must prepare them so that they have the maximum impact when presented. In this section you will learn about using callouts to make the information crystal clear, how building your points keeps your audience focused on your message, and how using a non-linear approach can increase audience interaction and actually make meeting shorter.

The last section is titled Best Practices for Delivering the Slides and the title really says it all. This section will give you the insider tips and tricks that the professional speakers use when delivering a PowerPoint presentation. Some of the areas covered in this section include:

• How to avoid the behaviours that audiences say annoy them
• The difference between practice and rehearsal and why both are necessary for effective delivery of presentations
• An extensive checklist so you make sure you test everything in advance and remember to pack all you will need for the presentation
• Tips on adjusting the length of your presentation if they tell you at the last minute that they are running behind and need you to shorten your presentation
• Specific techniques in PowerPoint that allow you to blank out the screen at any time, jump to any slide no matter where you are in the presentation, and even draw on the slide if you need to
• Tips for delivering presentations over the web, since some of what works for in-person presentations doesn’t work over the web
• The advantages and disadvantages of three options for posting your presentation to the web, something presenters are increasingly asked to do

Despite what you may read in the media, PowerPoint is the not the cause of poor or boring presentations. The misuse of this tool is the true cause of “Death by PowerPoint” presentations. Even if you have been following some poor practices when creating and delivering PowerPoint presentations, do not despair. You can use the ideas in this book to start developing more effective presentations. 

Click here to order the book from Amazon, or, for bulk orders and government discounts, click here to order the book directly from the publisher, Government Training Inc.