A speaking coach argues bullet points beat full scripts. He contrasts an accountant who read word-for-word and sounded robotic with a government minister who spoke naturally from key points. Bullet points let you stay focused on what comes next while actually talking to your audience.
I was working with a lady a short time ago, a very clever accountant, and she needed to do a presentation. She'd done a number of presentations before, and she said that her method was to write it out in full so that she got it right. She loved the writing. She loved the writing way, way more than the speaking. She was a writer, not a speaker. And so what happened was when she wrote it out, she had it word for word perfect. She'd gone over it for hours. The problem was when she presented, she read it and it sounded like she was reading it. There was no soul in it. There was no engagement with the audience. When I questioned her about it, she said, But it has to be the right words. Now, my stance on this, having been coaching people in speaking for almost 40 years, is that the right words are nowhere near as important as the right way of delivering those words. And the best way to deliver the words, in my view, is to prepare using bullet points. I say to people right up front, very strongly, throw away the word processor. That's not going to help you to make an engaging an inspirational presentation. It may be okay for a purely informative presentation, but it's not going to engage the audience. So I think bullet points win every time. Bullet points have all advantages and no disadvantages. They remind you of your sequence. They remind you of what you need to say if you've written the bullet points well so that they do become a trigger. And it enables you to engage with the audience and become a much more interactive, a much more engaging speaker. So my view is always prepare with bullet points. Don't ever write out a presentation. Now, I used to be a speechwriter, and I was a speechwriter for some senior government people. And in those situations, we needed to write the speech because sometimes the policies were referred to. But the interesting thing is one particular minister that I used to write speeches for Never used the words that we gave him, never used the speech that we wrote. He always went through with a highlighter and he highlighted the main points and that's all he looked at. He didn't look at the whole thing because he knew what he needed to say. It worked brilliantly and it'll work well for you. Bullet points win every time.
