Why PowerPoint Continues To Be The Most Powerful Communications Tool

Despite the bad press PowerPoint has received over the years, I've discovered a secret. PowerPoint is an amazingly underutilized tool that can exponentially improve communication skills if used properly... REALLY. It is more powerful than most people ever realize.

Not long ago, while in Costa Rica, I enrolled in a Masters program in Technologies of Education. My thesis research led me to a book called Relational Presentation: A Visually Interactive Approach by Robert Lane. Reading that book not only changed my perspectives on presentation, it totally altered the direction of my thesis and brought me to a higher level of effectiveness in my job as a trainer in distance education.

The relational presentation process Robert describes is relatively simple and straight forward. A relational speaker doesn't just move strictly forward through a linear slide show like most of us do. Such talks are flexible and non-linear. Content is chosen on demand. Any slide can be displayed in any order using PowerPoint's hyperlinking functionality.

I find this style of presenting both liberating and respectful to audiences. Have you ever been in a talk where you ask a question and the presenter says: "Wait. I plan to answer that question later when I get to slide number X." That can be really frustrating. If you're like me, any unanswered question tends to linger in your mind and sometimes distracts from remaining presentation topics. Or, by the time the speaker finally does get to "that slide," you both have forgotten a question was ever asked in the first place!
A hyperlinked, navigation-based approach, on the other hand, gives presenters the freedom to jump around and select appropriate content immediately as needed. Audience members feel as though they are in the driver's seat because messages can be tailored to their interests easily.

I discovered another benefit of Robert's methods, as well. My passion in life is helping Latin American countries integrate more technology into their educational systems. Certainly PowerPoint is an important part of that process, but there's a problem. Many educators I work with produce a lot of teaching content, year-after-year. In other words, they create many slide shows and need a practical, inexpensive way of managing all that material.

Relational presentation methods come in handy here, as well, because separate slide shows can be linked together to form an organized group, kind of like creating a Web site. Such a structure helps teachers intelligently navigate a vast amount of information in a systematic way. In a sense, they become their own instructional designers, with all educational objectives laid out for easy selection and display while teaching.
At the moment, few people seem to know how to use PowerPoint at this level. That's sad and I hope it changes. The software can go so far beyond its current reputation.


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