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Your surrounds will help you present

If you complicate this bit, you’ll kick yourself!

When someone says “visual aids”, what do you think of? A Powerpoint deck? Some hi-tech gizmo to impress peers, clients, prospects, investors or stakeholders?

Have you been there? Struggling to get slides to load, the projector to sync with your laptop, the video to sync with the slides?

I have.

Worse still, have you had to endure the umpteenth bullet point of a show you lost track of nearly an hour previous?

Been there too.

Move away from the screen, Madam, Sir

The most powerful visual aids aren’t technological at all.

Try this. Together with a colleague, pick up the nearest item on your desk and make up a story about it. It can be as real or as fantastical as you like. It’ll be fun and diverting. Go on – do it!

The point is that your talk – whether a humdinger to many or an informal heads-up with a few choice colleagues – doesn’t need to be a complicated, involved or involving one to get an important or even complex idea across. Illustrating it with something everyday and completely familiar can be much more resounding than any GANTT or Pie chart.

Your surroundings are your visual aids

Now I’m not advocating ditching those precious digital presentations. There are positive values to those of course, particularly the take-home factor. It’s just that you could be ignoring the very thing in front of your nose – on your desk, in your office, at home – that would make your salient points drive home.

So pick up a pencil, an orange or an old walking stick now and go deliver the goods!

Photo by Plush Design Studio on Unsplash

Thanks to The Projects for use of their beautiful sitting room.