TJ Walker explains why you should hand out materials after you speak, not before. If you give people printed slides ahead of time, they'll read ahead instead of listening. Pause while they read the handout, then move on.
Chapters
We live in a high tech world with apps and smartphones and every kind of computer program. But one of the most underused tools, I believe, when it comes to speaking and helping people speak, the handout. There's nothing wrong with good old fashioned pieces of paper. There are several ways of doing that. The worst way, what I think is the least effective, is to have a traditional slide deck that you've printed out with bullet points and you hand that out to people before your speech starts, because then you have this situation where they are sort of shuffling through it because people can read faster than you can talk. So if their head is buried, they're no longer looking at you, they're no longer focusing on what you're saying, they're trying to piece it together. So that's the one way I would suggest that you not use handouts. What I like to do is finish a particular segment, for example, on how to tell stories. So I've maybe talked, lectured to a small group or a large group for 15 minutes. I'll then give a handout. That handout will have the seven or eight elements of what goes into telling a story when you're giving a speech or presentation. So it's there as a nice reminder and it reinforces it. Here's the thing about handouts. Don't ask people to multitask. If you're speaking, don't give them anything to read. If you hand out something, close your mouth. If I hand out, say a group of eight people a handout on storytelling, I give it to everyone and I physically wait until everyone head has come up and they're now looking at me again, signifying that they're through reading. And then I go to the next subject. So that's one way of doing it. Something else that is a handout of sorts, although you're not literally handing out, is emailing people. So anyone I'm doing media training with, or if I'm giving a speech on media training, I'll email them a PDF version of my book Media Training A to Z. Or if it's public speaking, I will email them a PDF version of Secret to Foolproof Presentations and a few other books. I'll give it to them in advance, I'll give it to them afterwards, and occasionally I may print out a particular section to give to them after the speech or during sections of the speech. So please don't overlook the role of handouts. The big problem so many people have though is they think there can only be one presentation, the PowerPoint slide, and what they project has to be what they email has to be what they hand out. No, you can project just images. You can hand out something that has lots and lots of data and lots and lots of text. For people who want to dive deeper, don't Forget, in Microsoft PowerPoint there is a section called Notes, where if you email it or you print it, you can have lots and lots of notes, numbers, words, data. But if you're projecting it, the notes don't show up. So please keep that in mind. Handouts are a highly effective tool to get people to remember points. Plus, it's something where you can, if you're doing any kind of new business, pitch to prospects. You can have your phone number, website, email, ways for people to get a hold of you. So don't neglect the option of handouts for any presentation you give.
