What is the single most dangerous thing the riskiest thing you could ever do when delivering a PowerPoint presentation? It's not what you think there's some irony in this too. The single riskiest thing you can do in my view, is read your PowerPoint presentation in front of people. We've all seen people doing, they're ignoring you in the audience. Sometimes they're literally turning their back, reading the screen, as you can say, bullet point one, bla bla bla, bla, bla and bullet point two blah, blah, blah, blah. They're reading.
Why is this so risky? It's because people hate it. You hate it. I hate it. Nobody enjoys being read to unless you're four years old, and it's reading time in preschool. It is extraordinarily annoying to most adults to have another adult read to them when the text is right.
In front of them, it's condescending, it's kind of suggesting the Hey, folks, you're too stupid to know how to read. Let me read for you. Reading in front of people sets off this negative chain reaction where number one you destroy eye contact with the audience. Number two, you destroy the conversational quality of your voice. Number three, you make your speaking speed too consistent. Number four, you become monotone.
Number five, you can no longer read the audience to see Do they have questions? Are they confused? And on. There's so many negative things that happen when you read. Now, the great irony of this is that people do it because they think I'm gonna play it safe. I don't want to mess up.
I don't want to make any mistakes. I don't want anyone to accuse me of leaving anything out. So I'll play it safe and read the bullet points from a saw. Now you're virtually guaranteed to make every Want to now check out? I know what I do and probably what you do when someone starts reading a PowerPoint. That's the perfect opportunity for me to check email.
Oh, there's a sale on Groupon today that don't give people that excuse. So whatever you do, I beg you, I plead with you. Play it safe. Don't ever read from your PowerPoint slide.