Slide Transitions: Are You Doing Them Wrong?

You put a lot of thought into your PowerPoint slides, but have you ever stopped to think about how to get from one slide to another when you’re giving your presentation? Most people don’t. After all, what more is there to think about than clicking a button? A lot, says Gene Zelazny, director of visual communications at McKinsey & Co. for the last four decades and author of Say It With Presentations: How to Design and Deliver Successful Business Presentations (McGraw-Hill, 2006). Presenters who know how to transition properly from slide to slide keep the presentation flowing smoothly and the audience’s attention focused on them. And the way they do that, says Zelazny, is by transitioning verbally before changing visuals.

“Most speakers show the new slide and then start talking about it,” says Zelazny. “When this happens, the audience doesn’t know whether to read what’s on the visual or to listen to what the speaker is saying. The audience may also get the impression that the speaker needs to see the screen to know what to say.” The result: speakers look unprepared and audiences are dividing their attention between the speaker and the slides. Want a better solution? Here’s Zelazny’s four-step procedure for making a great transition:

Step 1: Summarize with eye contact. Continue eye contact with the audience as you finish discussing the last slide. For instance, “As we’ve just seen, the United States holds tremendous potential for ABC Corp.”

Step 2: Transition with eye contact. Maintain that eye contact as you make your verbal transition statement to the next slide: “But will ABC be able to enter the U.S. market? We say yes, that there are no insurmountable barriers to entry.”

Step 3: Be silent as you replace the old visual with the new one. This step takes some practice, but it’s absolutely critical. When you talk to the audience while changing visuals, you create confusion. The audience doesn’t know where to look. By remaining silent, it frees you all to look at the new slide when it appears. “Don’t be afraid of the silence while changing visuals; the audience appreciates it,” says Zelazny. “Remember, you’ve given them the transition so they’re willing to take a few silent seconds to think about what’s coming up.”

Step 4: Re-establish eye contact as you begin to talk about the new slide: Before you address the new slide, look back at the audience and make eye contact. Then speak: “Here are the barriers you’re familiar with and our recommendations for overcoming them.” Then be prepared to lead the audience through the visual. Here are four ways to lead them well:

A. Explain the elements on the chart: “On the vertical scale at the left….”
B. Define any coding you’ve used: “Note the three colors. Yellow indicates….”
C. Point out what the visual is designed to show: “Note the trend that’s moving up diagonally from the lower left to the upper right….”
D. State the “so what:” “So you can see that the high-tech market will be an attractive one to enter over the next six months….”

Of course, once you’ve completed your discussion of the visual, don’t forget to summarize it and verbally transition to the next slide before you change it, Zelazny concludes.