The Delivery
One major reason that presentations can be ineffective is their delivery. The way school leaders communicate information can make the presentation ineffective because the audience may not be able to pay attention or understand. There are several presentation delivery missteps school leaders can make. First, sometimes school leaders, in an effort to appear as intelligent and knowledgeable as possible, will use vocabulary that consists of jargon that the audience may not understand. Another problem is the use of distractors, such as too many ums, uhs, and likes. These distractors draw audience attention away from the message. Sometimes, the presenter is simply boring, often when the school leader’s voice and tone are monotonous and lack energy and enthusiasm. A boring presentation is an ineffective one because the audience has to work too hard to stay engaged.
Use of PowerPoint
When looking at the elements of ineffective presentations, we need to discuss the use of PowerPoint and other presentation software. Presentation programs that rely on digital slides, especially PowerPoint, have become a common tool that school leaders use to help deliver presentations, but they can sometimes become the most ineffective element. Here’s how.
Too Much Text
One common mistake is to put too much text on each slide, making it difficult for the audience to read. When school leaders try to cram too much text onto each slide, that means the font is probably too small for audience members to read comfortably. Whatever you do, never read word for word from the slides.
Too Many Animations and Sounds
In an attempt to be fun and engaging, school leaders may go overboard with sound effects and animation. Too many of these kinds of effects can be distracting and therefore ineffective. Remember—the audience will be reading from left to right, so using animations that are counter to that increases the likelihood of distraction.
Distracting Backgrounds and Color
When using PowerPoint for a presentation, school leaders need to choose a background and color for their slides. That choice can sometimes lead to an ineffective presentation because the background might distract the audience or make the content hard to read. This is where you need to carefully select your backgrounds and colors for your slides so they are not too bright or busy. It helps to create a schoolwide template with your school colors and logo that everyone can use consistently when delivering presentations.
No Clicker
Using a PowerPoint without a clicker can be distracting. When someone else has to advance your slides when you either say “Next” or nod to indicate it’s time for the next slide, it takes away from your actual presentation. Controlling this yourself gives audience members a far more seamless experience.
Handouts
When the audience receives PowerPoint as a handout, the presentation can become ineffective. Participants end up reading the slides and become distracted as the focus is on reading instead of listening to you. Jerry Weissman (2004) says that “a presentation is a presentation and only a presentation, and never a document” (p. 103). Handouts of the slides also minimize the importance of the actual presentation as teachers may think if they just get the copy of the slides, they won’t miss much by not being in attendance for the actual presentation. Therefore, your handouts should not be the actual slides but rather provide important takeaway information, which could include a graphic organizer that the audience fills out as you’re speaking or a summary page with the key points.
Elements of Effective Presentations
Now that you know what can make your presentation ineffective, this section reviews several strategies and tips to help you make your presentation effective.
Clear Beginning, Middle, and End
Every effective presentation has a clear beginning, middle, and end. This requires school leaders to spend time knowing and understanding what the purpose of the presentation is and then prepare an outline for how the presentation will begin, what the content in the middle of the presentation will be, and how the presentation will end. Not only is this good for making your presentations effective, it is also a good way to model good teaching practices. Every time school leaders present is an opportunity to demonstrate what good teaching should look like.
The beginning of the presentation is where you capture the attention of your audience. For every presentation you create and deliver, think through how you will start it. There are many great strategies for opening your presentation. As teachers and other staff are walking in, you can play music and have a slide up with an opener such as a quote that they need to reflect on or an open-ended question related to the presentation that they can answer or discuss with their colleagues. Starting with a thought-provoking task (that is related to your presentation) such as answering an open-ended question or thinking about a quote engages the audience right away. You are putting your listeners in the right frame of mind for your presentation. Another engaging strategy for opening your presentation is to start with a story (again, a story that is related to your presentation). You can also begin with a what if or imagine scenario in which you ask your audience to think about a particular concept or situation related to your presentation. Weissman (2004) shares the following suggestions for opening a presentation.
• Factoid (share a surprising statistic or a little-known fact)
• Retrospective or prospective (take a look backward or forward)
• Aphorism (use a familiar saying)
The middle of the presentation needs to contain two main points: (1) content and (2) execution of that content. You should structure it in such a way that the content is organized and makes sense, and the audience can follow it. Eric Garner (2012) quotes American businessman Phil Crosby who states, “No one can remember more than three points.” You should limit the number of main ideas or key points you communicate in your presentation to three or fewer so that the audience learns or remembers them. Inundating people with too much information during a presentation isn’t always a good idea. Imagine sitting in a one-hour presentation where the presenter talks about the following items.
• New school board policy on grading
• Expectations for safety procedures
• New bus transportation changes
• Requirements for the annual evaluation instrument
• Student discipline hearing procedures
All those topics covered in one hour? Your mind will want to explode. And quite honestly, at some point, it will become difficult to continue to pay attention because of the sheer volume of information coming your way. Now of course all these topics are important, but think about how to effectively plan to deliver information so that you’re not communicating everything all at once. Instead, aim for manageable chunks.
The second aspect that you should plan for is how you deliver that content. What instructional strategies will you use throughout the presentation to keep the audience engaged? Before examining those kinds of strategies, it is important to note the average attention span of adults. Several authors have stated that the average amount of time an adult audience member can pay attention is twenty minutes (Goodman & Cause Communications, 2006; Rehn, 2016). This means that after twenty minutes or so, the audience begins to stop listening, gets bored, or thinks of other things unrelated to the presentation. Molecular biologist John Medina (2008) supports the ten-minute rule. In other words, after about ten minutes, the brain just becomes uninterested. Based on this research, an effective presentation includes something every ten to twenty minutes to get the audience either up and moving or talking in groups. No staff member wants to listen to school leaders talk for more than ten to twenty minutes at a time, so build certain strategies into your presentation that take this into consideration. Those strategies can include the following.
• Turn and talk to a neighbor about a specific question.