Slick PowerPoints seldom engage your audience in a presentation. Authentic questions posed will. Your audience will engage when they see how your message relates to the issues that they are dealing with. You can help them discover this practical relationship with a question art the beginning of your presentation. Some examples:

Meeting Facilitation: What challenges have you experienced when facilitating a meeting?
Time Management: What are some of the things that impact the effective use of your time?
Customer Service: What are the most critical issues that affect customer satisfaction ad retention in your organization?

The sooner you ask the question, —- good if it is the first thing you say —- the better. You will learn much about the audience. You will be able to tailor your presentation to the issues identified by the audience. The group will be engaged at the beginning and throughout the presentation.

Good questions throughout the presentation also keep the group engaged. I have found the question What are your questions? is more effective than Do you have any questions? The first question is open-ended and is an invitation to speak. This question is strengthened by an inviting tone and a moment of silence. The second is a yes/no question that could easily shut down further comments and may be interpreted as “no is the answer I want to hear”.

So what about PowerPoints? What role, if any, can they play in an effective presentation? Here are some guidelines to consider:

Fewer slides and fewer words are better. The slides are not the presentation. They are a resource to support interaction, not replace it.
Instead of putting a lot of information on the slides, consider a handout with the key points you want people to have. This will reduce excessive note taking.
Make the slides interactive. Have questions and scenarios with the slides. If I, as the presenter, am the only one talking with the slide, engagement suffers.

Some lessons learned by building authentic questions into the presentation:

Good questions help people think and reflect. They open up new possibilities and create energy.
The audience has knowledge and experiences that will enhance learning by all present, including you, the presenter.
I have found that good questions build more credibility than good answers.

Next Steps

Think about a question you are planning to make. What is the major issue for this presentation? What is an opening question you can use to start the session/meeting? I would enjoy seeing the question you used. Let me know how it worked at dr.mjcolbutn@gmil.com.

Dr. Michael Colburn has built his career on performance improvement at the organization, team and individual levels for a broad range of clients in the private and public sectors for more than 30 years. He recently retired as an Associate Professor of Management at Ashland University where he taught Organization Development, Operations Management, Strategic Management and Self-Management & Accountability. Michael has authored numerous papers in academic, professional and trade publications. His first book, Own Your Job: Five Tools for Self-management and Accountability in the Workplace will help you think more entrepreneurial and teach you self-management skills and increase your performance and influence.