Slide decks have become a huge part of corporate life. An essential, everyday communication tool serving multiple purposes, often all at once. From guiding and prompting the delivery of the time-poor, under-rehearsed speaker, to illustrating their words for the audience – and sometimes becoming the one document of record.
Slides, posters and props of all kinds can be helpful to everyone when the subject matter is complex and abstract. But speakers often lean too hard on them.
Many talks and presentations in modern business rely heavily on the slide deck as the principal means of communication. Often, it’s based on a stack of PowerPoint slides that took the speaker, or their team, hours or even days and weeks to put together.
We don’t need to dwell on the reasons why. Visuals are neither right nor wrong in themselves. Some talks need them. Some don’t.
But what visuals don’t do is make the new or under-confident presenter a better speaker. That’s because confidence relies on competence, and competence grows through practice.