One of the main things that I feel speakers do badly when they're first starting out, is how to work with glide. Most of the time when you're speaking, you probably will have slides in some form of software, usually PowerPoint, but it might be keynote or Prezi, or something else. But the thing is, you're going to have some sort of pictures or text projected behind you a lot of the time. Now, we don't walk around in life like that. So it's quite weird, really, when you think about it, and it does take a bit of practice to make it look natural. So what's the biggest crime when people are speaking when we think about fly?

Well, of course, it's turning around to look at them all the time. tempting, isn't it? The trouble is huge, a lot of the time a lot bigger than you are. And you just feel yourself being drawn to them. As a speaker, and also, if those are functioning as you're known, then that will make you look at them a lot. Don't do this, it looks very good if you barely turn around, and you just know what they're.

So how can you achieve that? Well, first of all, don't let those be your notes. You should never be reading from a slide, except in very rare circumstances where you might want to read out a quote, or make something a little bit clearer. If you're showing a graph or some data. In general, that is not a script. We do not want your script projected behind you to do why, because we can read faster than you can speak.

And that is why we get bored when people read out bullet points. I do not approve of bullet points on slides. I like lots of imagery. And if you're going to have text, think about having no more than five to seven words on a slide. That's a good rule of thumb to stop you putting your notes up there, if you need to have them in your hand as we've discussed on the lectern, or on postcards. So don't turn around when you're looking at the slides.

If you want to turn around and look, it's a bit like the rule talking to humans, it's fine to look while the audience reads. Let's say you've put an interesting quote out there or a video. Then you turn around and you wait until they are finished reading. It's really good actually for giving yourself a little bit of break so that you're not talking continuously. So if it makes you feel nervous that you don't know what slide is coming next. I know it does with me quite often.

Then you need to again arrange with the technical team that you can see something you should be able to see ideally a monitor that shows the current slide behind you and the next one that's coming up. You can do this in software like that. Putting on your laptop. So have a little practice before you set off. And this is one of the questions you can ask about the setup of the day, if you're going to speak on a bigger stage in particular. So make sure that there are things that are supporting you in your speaking one is being able to see what slide is coming next and the other is making sure you've got notes in your hand and not on the slide behind you.