Presentations are opportunities to build understanding, make a point, or drive action, whether you have a few minutes in front of a small audience via Zoom, or are up on a stage addressing a crowd.
Unfortunately, if you search for resources about presentation skills, most assume your scenario is an event, gearing you up for rehearsal and large investments of time. As project managers, unless we’re talking to a board, executive sponsors, or major customers, so much presentation advice out there doesn’t apply to 99% of our opportunities. Many of us are in meetings multiple times a day where everyone’s attention is focused on us, even if it’s only a few minutes at a time - and these are chances to have influence!
Visuals help us to make the most of our time in the spotlight. Some take less time to put together than others. This series of blog posts will share learnings from 15+ years of presentations across many projects.
Prerequisites for assembling any presentation
Start with the end in mind: Regardless of how basic or elaborate your slides will be, you need to think about: What is your goal for this presentation?
Do you have a call to action?
Are you trying to drive home a point?
Even if you are just sharing a status update, is this an opportunity to:
Reiterate the project objective to keep everyone aligned?
Give kudos & appreciation to boost team morale?
Manage expectations?
Rally help from outside your team?
Then, lay down a foundation: What context does your audience need so that they can consume your information effectively? Skipping context often leads to confusion or improper expectations.
Reality: Prep time is often a luxury
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has put together slides in the minutes prior to a presentation (maybe even during the meeting itself). As project managers, we need to convey important information to drive an outcome, while juggling all the moving pieces of a project + jump from meeting to meeting to meeting.
Text may be all that you have time to throw together. So, let’s start this blog post series by focusing on the most basic case: How do you get visual impact when you make slides with just text & no graphics?
The text-based toolbox
When building text-based slides, we are working with:
Bullets
Formatting
Colour
Tables
Text boxes
These tools either give your information structure or help you to create emphasis.
Bullets are your basics
When used correctly, bullets make your content easy to scan, delivering a lot of information at a glance. Here are a few rules of thumb, given to you as bullets ;)
Keep them concise - avoid full sentences when possible.
Use parallel structure - keep a consistent format for easier parsing.
Limit to five bullets per slide - too many can overwhelm your audience.
Format for emphasis
Not all text is equally important. Draw attention to important words by formatting the text in bold, italics, underline, or strike-through. Just make sure to use the formatting in a consistent manner across your presentation, to prevent confusion.
Colour to create association
The advice given here assumes your slide has a white background and your default text colour is black. If that’s not true for you, adjust accordingly based on your company’s slide template colours to ensure your text has sufficient contrast to be readable against the background.
If you're presenting a project status update, a simple red/yellow/green traffic light format can instantly convey which areas need attention and which are going well. See the example in the header image of this blog post.
If you want to provide information that may be useful, but is not your focus, you can de-emphasize it by making it grey.
If you want to show that a word or phrase appears in multiple places, you can give it the same accent colour in all the places, so that people can spot it easily.
Organize with Tables
Tables are ideal for providing a common set of information across multiple scenarios.
For example, instead of listing project risks as bullets, with sub-bullets for impacts and mitigation plans, a table is easier to digest:
Risk | Impact | Mitigation plan |
Scope creep | High | Weekly scope reviews |
Budget overrun | Medium | Cost tracking every sprint |
Resource shortage | High | Contractors on standby |
Table tips:
Limit columns and rows - no one wants to read an eye chart
Use shading or bold headers to improve readability.
Keep text concise - avoid stuffing full sentences into table cells.
Call out with Text Boxes
Text boxes help to separate critical information from the general bulleted content. Consider using text boxes to make it easier to spot:
Important data
Urgent items
Quotes
A key takeaway or call to action
Drive Action using key takeaway or CTA call out
Once you have delivered your information, don’t just end there! Guide the audience toward your goal for the slide or the presentation. What is the 1-liner you want them to understand? Or, what do you want them to do - what's your Call To Action (CTA)?
Be specific: e.g. “Review and confirm vendor selection criteria by Friday.”
Make it stand out: Use extra white space, bold/colour the text, or put it in a text box.
Save time with templates
Using a consistent slide template makes it easier for your audience to follow along, especially if you regularly present project updates. They’ll quickly recognize the format and absorb the information faster.
Even if you’re not giving recurring updates, setting a standard for how you use text-based tools saves time. You won’t have to rethink formatting every time, and your colleagues won’t have to decode your slides. Consistency makes your presentations clearer and more efficient for everyone.
Conclusion
Every time you are presenting in a meeting, the audience’s focus is on you. Even if it’s just a few minutes, you have the opportunity to build understanding, make a point, or drive action.
Maybe you don’t have time to create charts or search for that perfect picture that is worth a thousand words. Don’t underestimate how much information you can convey in well-assembled text-based slides. By applying the text-based toolbox, you can ensure your project presentation slides:
Convey information clearly and concisely
Highlight the most critical information.
Drive action rather than just delivering information.
The next blog post in the series will discuss effective usage of graphs and charts. Stay tuned!
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