What you shouldn’t learn from your teachers

Lately I’ve been lucky enough to go to several universities and talk to students on how to make better presentations. The great thing about talking to university students is that most of them have not yet been spoiled by really bad presentations in the business environment. However, they have no examples on how to make good presentations, so they pull from what they see.

After I’ve given my talk trying to inspire them into being creative and presenting their information in more visual ways, as opposed to using a bunch of bullet points, they all ask me: But how do we learn to make good presentations? My answer usually surprises them, but at the same time puts a smile on their faces: Don’t learn from your teachers.

Photo credit Night Owl City

The reasoning is simple: teachers don’t give presentations, they give lectures. Yes, they usually use powerpoint to explain the subject and then distribute it easily to their students, but that is not a presentation. It’s okay to use powerpoint this way, it’s helping structure the ideas, students can print them and take notes and they can study off of them. The thing is that no one ever told the students that these aren’t real presentations. So when they are faced with giving a presentation in class they imitate what they’ve seen and make slides full of bullet points with as much information as they can.

A presentation is not a way to distribute all the information, we have books for that. A presentation is always going to be a summary of main and supporting points, a way to communicate your point of view or introduce something new. However, since students never learn that presentations are not a list of bullet points, but a way to communicate the essential to drive your point, they graduate from university, start working and make the same mistake! Which puts us in the present situation, as Guy Kawasaki says: 99% of presentations suck.

So how can we solve this problem? Communication and public speaking courses should be required courses in every degree if we want to stop wasting time with bad presentations at work. Failing that, don’t learn from your teachers!