The “great presentation” checklist

What makes a presentation great? The way it looks? The compelling story? The amount of interaction with your audience? I think all of us have a good idea of what some of those component parts would be, but coming up with a specific list – and one that you and your colleagues agree on – is a step more complex.

Why does it matter?

When you create presentation content – and crucially review and evaluate that content – if everyone is measuring against a different set of guidelines it stands to reason that everything will end up, well, different.

But there’s something else that creeps in here – opinion. Have you ever received comments on a presentation that mix subjective opinions with objective observations? Have you ever received comments that contradict each other? If you thought creating the deck was hard enough, wait until you have to reconcile all of those comments so that everyone can stand amicably in the same room to present it. By the time you hit F5 and start presenting, the deck feels like it’s been bodged together with sticky tape and will fall apart if someone coughs loudly.

So what’s the answer? Having a single source of truth to define what a great presentation looks like is an important step in ensuring a consistent output, and it gives your stakeholders the best chance at giving effective feedback.

Introducing the “great presentation” checklist

So we’ve done exactly that. With hundreds of thousands of slides under our belt, we’ve created a checklist you can use to ensure your presentation is great. It helps you to focus on what’s important without getting bogged down in subjective opinions, and it enables everyone to hop onto the same page and assess against the same core attributes. We’ve also given some extra tips on how to review to turn your team into solution hunters instead of fault finders.

Get your copy at the link below – if you want to print it out you can grab an ink-light version too!

• Download The Great Presentation Checklist for effective reviews
• Download a print-friendly version of The Great Presentation Checklist

Further reading

If you manage a lot of stakeholders when creating a presentation, check out our article on best practices for creating group presentations.