Who's the boss? It's an important question you have to ask, Is it going to be you when you stand up to speak to your audience? Or is it going to be your PowerPoint deck, there's only going to be one boss, and your audience is going to figure it out pretty quickly. I would maintain that you need to be the boss, you are the expert. This is your presentation. The slide is there to help you.

Now, unfortunately, that's not how we see a lot of people use PowerPoint. Too many people kind of shuffle up to the front of the room meekly. As you can see here on my first slide, and they act like they are the assistant to the slide deck. It's kind of like that old movie Wizard of Oz where the curtain is pulled back. And there's the little man pulling, knobs and buttons, wanting you to look entirely at the big screen the big wizard That's not how you want to come across, he was revealed as a fraud at that moment, if your audience can see you, kind of ignoring them, putting all your energy and effort looking at the slides, reading the slides, changing the slides, referencing the slides, then you're nothing but that so called Wizard of Oz, who lost all credibility. So you get to decide who is in charge.

If you're in charge, that PowerPoint can be a great assistant for you and an assistant for your audience. If the PowerPoints in charge, you've lost control and you're not going to communicate effectively.