When you’re sitting in a meeting, you know you’re way more likely to switch off or sleep if the presenter turns off the lights so you can see their slides more clearly. It’s also very difficult to connect with the audience members if the lights are off.
I’m Michelle Bowden, an authority on persuasive presenting and business.
Welcome to What NOT to do, a segment designed to help you eliminate all of those annoying little presenting habits that we pick up, and you should definitely get rid of them immediately!
So, what should you do instead of turning off the lights?
1. Maybe you could redesign your slides so that people can see them with the lights fully on.
2. Or maybe you need a backup. Maybe you need to go to the whiteboard, the flip chart, or the handouts.
My rule of thumb is if people can’t see your slides, don’t turn off the lights, turn off the PowerPoint. I know that’s a bit controversial. That’s really best practice.
There is one moment where it is okay, though, to turn off the lights and that’s if you’re demonstrating software, or you’re getting people to watch a video or something like that. You need them to zone right in and bond with the screen. If that’s the case, then it’s fine, absolutely, to switch off the lights. Just make sure you turn them back on again asap so you can reconnect with people’s whites of their eyes.
I have an info sheet that I send to the Professional Conference Organiser that request ‘full house lights on’ when I’m speaking. Better for everyone!
Happy presenting!
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©2024 MICHELLE BOWDEN is an authority on persuasive presenting in business. She’s run her Persuasive Presentation Skills Masterclass over 1000 times for more than 13,000 people over the past 25 years and her name is a synonym for ‘presentation skills’ in Australia.
Michelle is a multi-million-dollar pitch coach to her client list that reads like a who’s who of international business: banking and finance, IT, pharmaceutical, retail, telecommunications plus many more. Michelle is the creator of the Persuasion Smart Profile®, a world-first psychological assessment tool that reports on your persuasive strengths and weaknesses at work, the best-selling internationally published author of How to Present: the ultimate guide to presenting live and online (Wiley) and How to Persuade: the skills you need to get what you want (Wiley).