You should always avoid showing someone else's slides when you are interested in the success and impact of your presentation. Clearly the best idea is to design your own material. However, in the real cruel word of business presentations we are often asked to show slides that were prepared by other people. It often happens when your superior suddenly decides he or she cannot deliver the presentation, so it's up to you. Good luck ...
Many people still believe that a slide must contain all the information about everything the speaker needs to say. Now what do you do when the presentation you should use consists of text-dense slides? Here are some tips by the presentationmagazine.com website.
- Distribute the slides as handouts among your audience and use them as a starting point for a workshop. Make it a workshop or conversation, not a presentation.
- Go for it: go and deliver the presentation without slides… or just put up a picture of the boss and make it obvious to everyone that you are only there to read the slides on his behalf. He is the one to blame.
- Distribute the printed slides and abort the presentation after just ten minutes. Tell your audience they are free to go get some coffee or tea. Instruct them to read the materials and then get back to you. In 20 minutes you will be there to facilitate a session where questions can be asked after everyone has gone over the stuff you handed out.
- When there are slides filled with bullet points, find five minutes to copy the contents of those slides into your notes. Then just show your audience empty slides with titles. When you do that, you have the material at hand, and your audience will not hate you as much.
- Run away and save yourself if there really is no time for you to make the presentation more bearable. Postpone the presentation or cancel it.
-jk-