How to Reduce Your Rate of Speech - Speaking Tips

In the early days of PowerPoint presentations, audiences were tortured by typewriter text, pointless, clunky animated clip art, and obnoxious sound effects. Gratefully, much of this noise is gone or has been upgraded by higher quality, more entertaining audio and video. Even with the evolution of some presentations, we are still subjected, however, to one of the most painful parts of PowerPoint-slides packed with bulleted paragraphs that the presenter will "helpfully" read to everyone-yawn! What can you do today to increase your presentation success by crafting slides that banish bloated bullets? Some experts pronounce that there should not be any bullets in PowerPoint presentations-just use visuals with limited text. I agree with this goal in many instances-in fact, most of my presentations are heavy on photos and other images and light on bulleted text even though my subjects are highly technical. The reality in the workplace, however, is that a majority of subject matter experts (SMEs) are not professional speakers and are often also using the slide content as their presentation notes. What changes, then, can we make to PowerPoint slides (or suggest to our colleagues and co-workers) to improve readability, add more interest to the presentations, and head towards the goal of banishing bloated bullets and improving the text bullets you create?

Apply the 5 by 5 Rule. Remember this idea: "5 by 5 keeps a presentation alive!" This means that most bulleted slides should have no more than 5 bullets with only about 5-6 words per bullet. I've heard contradictory advice that we should not have any rules like these because it creates too rigid a structure for presentations that should instead be more interactive and flexible. Based on my experience with thousands of PowerPoint users, many technical experts are more comfortable improving their slides (and the audience experience) if they have "rules" to work with.

Speakers tend to speak faster in the very beginning of the speech. You want to give a great verbal image, so practice starting slowly for the best first impression. Try your favorite stage fright coping strategy before you begin, to relax yourself. One that works for many people is deep breathing (but not in front of a microphone).

Break Up Text Slides. Run through your slide show or switch to the Slide Sorter View. How many text slides do you have in a row? Give your audience a break-please! Avoid having more than 3 to 4 text slides in a row. Add a photo, graph, chart, timelines, tables, and other visuals to add interest and to grab more attention from your audience.

Keep Bullets Simple. As tempting as it can be to pick a decorative bullet, solid bullet characters are easier to read especially from a distance. Your default choices for bullets can be established from the Slide Masters in your presentation so that you only have to setup the formatting in one place.

Mark your speech. If you are finishing early, what additional details should you add? If you are almost to the maximum time, what details towards the end can you delete?

While you are speaking, scan the faces of the audience. Is your message making sense to them? If they seem puzzled, go slower and use simpler words. If they are falling asleep, use more enthusiasm and stories about how your message can be implemented.

Practice answers to common questions you might be asked after your speech. Make sure you know basic statistics or facts of the matter. When answering a question, repeat it first so all know the exact question. Again, keep your rate slow. If you don't know the answer to the question, invite the audience to help you answer, or take the questioner's contact information afterwards, promise to locate the answer and respond at a later time. Take time to make sure your listener can understand your valuable message. Make that rate right!

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