Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of executive

coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you

want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel

your executive coach and today we're talking about the power of PowerPoint.

Toward the middle of our coaching engagement, Adrian earned the rare opportunity to present her group's achievements to the CEO's staff meeting.

She was understandably nervous and wanted my help polishing her style.

I brought my video feedback gear to our session, but we didn't end up using it.

The moment she showed me her slides, I felt we had way more important work to do.

PowerPoint is just a piece of software. By itself it's neither good or bad,

but all too often it blurs rather than clarifies our messages, and it prompts behaviors

we would never otherwise display.

What follows are eight tips for using PowerPoint more effectively. Each tip comes with this

caveat. If your culture has a different standard than what I'm proposing, don't use

my suggestion. Stay within your company's norm.

All right here's tip number one.

Create visual themes and cues.

PowerPoint is a and cues.

PowerPoint is a visual medium.

At its most effective, it gives us a visual picture of how groups of information relate to each other.

It was not intended to generate pages of a book

to be read. Let's imagine you're discussing the status of a customer service initiative. The initiative has three major milestones,

call center expansion, development of support material, and training.

...