What do you do when your job requires you to create PowerPoint slides and it takes you hours to create the slides for a presentation? This is the situation a coaching client found themselves in. They resorted to asking their son to create some of the slides!
The online courses that HR and IT provide were too basic and the YouTube videos she found didn’t address her specific needs. This is the situation many professionals find themselves in.
Here’s the process I used to help my client take her PowerPoint slide creation skills to the next level and the steps you can follow if you find yourself in a similar spot.
Step 1: Recognize that you don’t need to be an expert in every feature of the software. This is so critical because it sets realistic expectations on what you need to improve.
Step 2: Identify the types of slides you commonly create. In my client’s case it was diagrams and text arranged with icons. For others it might be graphs of data or images with callouts.
Step 3: Get help creating the slides you identified in step 2. Focus on learning the skills you can use immediately and will get you quick wins. This builds your confidence and shows results fast.
Step 4: Practice the new skills so they become second nature. Deliberately practice using the skills you learned. Even if it is to redo a slide from a previous presentation if you don’t have a new slide to create. Build that muscle memory.
Step 5: Identify the next type of slide you want to learn and repeat steps 3 and 4. Start small and build as you learn, practice, and become confident with your new skills.
Where do you get the help in step 3? I think expert coaching is the best solution. Searching for YouTube videos takes a lot of time and is frustrating when it doesn’t address your specific need. An expert can identify the best way to create the visual and teach you the shortcuts and insider techniques to quickly improve your skills.
If you find yourself spending too much time creating PowerPoint slides or you have a key staff member who needs to improve their PowerPoint skills, email me and we will discuss if my 1-on-1 coaching services might be a good fit.
Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don’t overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.