Matt and Alper expound on choosing images for your presentations, including the idea that maybe, just maybe, a less-attractive photo might help you more than a more attractive photo. They also go into the need to distribute questions throughout the presentation, rather than saving them up for the famous “Questions?” slide at the end, and better alternatives to the traditional “Thank you” slide.

Episode transcript:

Matt Krause
Alper in today’s episode, we’re going to punch some holes in some favorite punching bag subjects of ours.

Alper Rozanes
I cannot think of a better way to start the day.

Matt Krause
And when we started to make the list of things to punch holes in the list quickly became very long. And so we’re only going to have time for the first couple items.

Matt Krause
And subsequent episodes will be completely dedicated to other subjects. We started out… And just at the beginning, just right off the top of our heads. We immediately came up with punching holes in images, punching holes in various popular slides, the welcome slide the question slide Thank you slide. Punching holes in the 70% punching holes in Toastmasters.

Alper Rozanes
This could go on.

Matt Krause
Yeah, the list could go on forever. And then we would just sound like, you know, angry old men. So we’re just going to… Yeah, grumpy old men punching holes in everything that ever existed.

Alper Rozanes
Like a pair of dinosaurs. Yeah, that sounds good.

Matt Krause
So we’re just going to limit it to the first two things. And let’s start out with with talking about images. Using I assume that we’re talking about using images in our presentations like using images on slides? So I’ve got some some thoughts on that. You tell me what what you think about images on slides?

Alper Rozanes
Sure. Let’s go.

Alper Rozanes
Well, I like how there is all this talk about, you know, when you include images, it will increase the retention rates, it will resonate more with the audience, which I completely agree by the way, I’m not punching holes in that.

Alper Rozanes
But I believe, just like almost everything else in life, not all images are created equal. I mean, usually, if you hit me with the first Google Images result from the web on the particular topic that you’re talking about, chances are you’re going to end up with an overly cliche, standard stock image of what was the song’s name? Shiny, happy people,, something like that?

Matt Krause
Yeah, shiny, you’re talking about the REM song, right?

Alper Rozanes
The REM song. Yeah, yeah. You’re going to end up with these white background photos with shiny, happy, smiling in them literally. Yeah, yeah.

Alper Rozanes
So we can we can punch holes in those that kind of images forever. Because not only I think it’s cliche, but at the same time, obviously, it’s fake. And it’s, in my opinion, in my personal opinion, it brings this sense of fakeness and lack of preparation into the presentation.

Alper Rozanes
Especially when you show generic people working on a presentation, everybody’s so interested looking at the screen, like they’re seeing it for the first time, or they’re looking at the most interesting thing in their lives. And I believe it’s hardly represents the real life. So that’s the kind of images that I can punch holes in.

Matt Krause
Yeah, and we talked about this a little on a on a recent episode, that stock photography is more than just stock photography, stock photography is also trust.

Matt Krause
And if you use an image, you’re searching through stock photography, and you find an image that maybe you like, a lot, but everybody else looks at it and realizes that this is a fake representation of reality, and then all of a sudden, they stop trusting you and you’re standing up there in front of the room, and people aren’t trusting you anymore. And it’s all because of your stock photography.

Alper Rozanes
That’s a good point.

Matt Krause
One of the kind of the things that I am wary of about images, and this isn’t an inherent problem with images. It’s just something that I think people should be warned about is that images are great for many of the reasons that you mentioned earlier much earlier.

Matt Krause
You know, the people retain images better. People respond to images more emotionally, blah, blah, blah. I totally agree with all these things. But one of the dangers of images is that they leave a lot open to interpretation or they allow your audience to make interpretations that maybe aren’t yours.

Matt Krause
Like, like, for example, you might be putting together, you know, a slide about your company and you and you, you know, put one of the one of those shiny happy faces slides on on, on your presentation.

Matt Krause
And you might be thinking, this is a representation of how energetic people are to work in our company, how happy they are to work at our company.

Matt Krause
But somebody else might look at that slide and say, Well, you know, in that slide, there’s only one person wearing a hard hat. And there are 10 people in total. So you know, only 10% of the people are wearing hard hats. And this company, hates blue collar workers or this company hates safety laws or something like that.

Matt Krause
And so So what your audience member is thinking is completely different than than what you’re thinking. And if you put that image on the slide, because you wanted the image to do the talking, maybe what the audience hears isn’t going to be at all what you intended.

Matt Krause
So I think that images have, they need to have an asterisk next to them the, they’re good, they’re good. But they’re open to misinterpretation.

Alper Rozanes
And when you think about it, the way to remedy that is, it’s pretty easy, actually just just go and get a picture of your people in the company.

Alper Rozanes
I mean, even if you take out your cell phone, especially these days, just shoot for two minutes, couple of shots from the company, I think they would serve much better to your message, instead of using just some of those standard stock images. You’re absolutely right.

Matt Krause
And you might be sitting there in your office working on your PowerPoint presentation. And thinking that this picture of my company is not as pretty, you know, the lighting isn’t as good, the people aren’t as handsome, the clothes aren’t as nice.

Matt Krause
But your audience they’re going to be, they’re going to cut you a lot of slack. Basically, they might be looking at your slides thinking that’s not the prettiest image that I ever saw. But it’s a real image, I can trust this person, I can trust this person. And I can trust that image. So shall we continue with images? Or shall we move on to the next subject?

Alper Rozanes
I think we will be beating a dead horse. If we continued. I think the position is pretty clear on that one. What about what about those slides that you mentioned?

Matt Krause
Yeah, the welcome slide. These are the typical slides that you see in so many presentations. There’s the welcome slide. And then at the end, there’s the question slide or the q&a slide. And then at the very end, there’s the thank you slide. So…

Alper Rozanes
Yeah, the horrible thank you slide.

Matt Krause
Should we start with one of them? Or do you want to do all three?

Alper Rozanes
You go ahead. I’ll take the thank you slide. One of my pet peeves.

Matt Krause
Okay. I’ll mention the one of my pet peeves with the question slide, because I am not a fan of the question slide at all.

Matt Krause
When you’re doing your presentation, often the question slide, you know, obviously will come towards the end. And it’ll often be like the last or the second to last slide or something like that. And it’ll say, q&a, and then and then the speaker asks the room, you know, are there any questions? And then there’s dead silence. And it’s uncomfortable.

Matt Krause
So and it’s it’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable for the speaker. It’s uncomfortable for the audience. The audience is thinking, I should be saying something. And yes, I have questions, but and so it, but so there’s a lot going on in people’s minds, but in terms of communication it’s just dead silence.

Matt Krause
And so I think personally, I think that it’s much more important to cultivate questions throughout the presentation. So that people start, they ask questions about slide one, slide two, and slide three and slide four.

Matt Krause
And they’re not just saving up all of their questions for the very end, when this q&a slide comes up. And there’s this uncomfortable dead silence in the room.

Matt Krause
I think it’s much better for the energy and the audience creativity in the creativity of questions, and for encouraging conversation, two-way conversation. I think it’s much better if you find a way to pepper the questions throughout the throughout the presentation.

Alper Rozanes
I completely agree with that. And when you were talking about it, I remember I remember distinctly finding myself in that situation in that situation of dead silence for several times in my life before I gave up the habit of asking. So are there questions?

Alper Rozanes
I completely agree with that you can just derail a 45 minutes, otherwise, relatively good speech in a matter of seconds and they will look at you you will look at them, it’s going to be probably one of the most uncomfortable experiences in life.

Alper Rozanes
And I completely agree with the idea of dispersing the questions throughout the presentation. At the same time, I’m thinking that there could be a way to maneuver towards the end of the presentation, if there will be a q&a session.

Alper Rozanes
What I had to come up with to avoid that silence was, instead of asking at the end of my speech, so are there any questions and just waiting for miracles to happen. I now make a declaration that my speech or my presentation has ended, but I will stick around for any questions that the audience might might have.

Alper Rozanes
And instead of just looking at them, like deer in the headlights, I start moving, I usually start moving towards my laptop, in an attempt to convey the image that, hey, if you have questions, you’re more than welcome. Otherwise, I’ll just move towards picking up my stuff.

Alper Rozanes
And usually at that point, someone jumps in and I’m back to 100% alert, and and I run the q&a session. But yes, I have had my fair share of those uncomfortable silences. I’m never going back to that one.

Matt Krause
That’s a great suggestion that you just made to moving towards your laptop, because there’s something about thinking, from the audience perspective, they’re thinking, this guy who was up here speaking, we’re about to lose him, I better ask my question now, or I might lose him forever.

Matt Krause
So it totally that just that motion of moving towards your laptop would totally provoke. Whatever whatever questions are laying out there dormant people will start asking them.

Alper Rozanes
Yeah, unless we bore them to death. Yeah, they will be pretty happy to see us leave.

Matt Krause
If we bore them to death, then we have bigger problems and and on that, on that subject of boring them to death. Let’s move on to you said that you wanted to talk about the thank you slide. What would you like to say about the thank you slide?

Alper Rozanes
Well, what I realize, I mean, this is almost in all the presentations. Not all but most of the presentations. And with this, literally the words thank you, or whatever language you’re presenting in.

Alper Rozanes
And, and then people are looking at an empty slide with the words. Thank you. I mean, sometimes I imagine I fantasize about audience members flushing out large cards saying You’re welcome.

Alper Rozanes
But I mean, aside from that, I think there’s a big opportunity being missed in this case, which is usually that thank you slide can be followed by a long commentary section or a q&a from the audience.

Alper Rozanes
And that slide will remain on display for longer than probably any other slide that you use in the presentation previously, which contains valuable information or charts, data or anything.

Alper Rozanes
So my recommendation is, don’t put put the words thank you on this last slide, instead, put the main message that you have been talking about during the entire presentation.

Alper Rozanes
Think of it like a billboard, hey, I made my presentation. Now, we can run a q&a, we can run commentary or whatever, but that slide that you that’s going to remain behind me or on display will include my core message which I took half an hour trying to explain to you and that will be in the in the eyes of people in front of people.

Alper Rozanes
And I think it should, it would increase the probability of retaining what you just finished telling them for, you know, how long ago were the presentation was, so I think we’re losing a great opportunity by just putting good words thank you there instead of instead of the the main message that we talked about

Matt Krause
Yeah, that’s an excellent point. Okay, so we have we’re running up on our time limit but we’ve barely put a dent in our list of things that we would like to talk about list of things that list of our pet peeves, so we’ll definitely have to…

Alper Rozanes
I was not under the illusion that we would get everything covered.

Matt Krause
I think our comments on Toastmasters that alone is going to take up an entire episode. I was thinking we can make an entire year out of out of our comments about Toastmasters. So, okay, so but anyway, so we’re gonna stop here for today. And then then we’ll pick up with with with future episodes.

Matt Krause
Alright, so thank you very much for that.

Alper Rozanes
Talk to you later.

Matt Krause
Bye bye.