The 5X5 Rule for PowerPoint Slides

How to make sure you give a great PowerPoint presentation, every time, for any audience.

Have you ever sat in a presentation or training, looked up at the PowerPoint, and said to yourself “Oh, so this is death-by-PowerPoint?” What you were looking at was just a wall of text, followed by another wall of text in the next slide. Then, to make it even better, the presenter was just reading straight from the slide. You saw more of their back than their face.

You know this feeling. Everyone has been in that type of setting. It is just plain awful. Unfortunately, no matter how much we hate them, as soon as we are tasked with creating a training or presentation, odds are we are going to do the same thing. We create too many slides with too many words.

The 5X5 Rule ends that. It is a way to organize your slide deck so you keep your audience focused throughout your entire presentation. It is a streamlined approach to ensure you won’t be the one reading word-for-word from your PowerPoint and that your audience will not lose focus.

The 5X5 Rule is simple. For every slide, no more than 5 bullet points with no more than 5 words per bullet point.

This post will talk about why this rule is crucial to having that killer presentation that stays in your viewers’ minds for months, if not years. I will discuss why you should be using PowerPoint as a tool rather than your crutch. This post will give you strategies to break down your slides effectively and what your slides should look like.

Why is the 5X5 Rule important?

I briefly touched on why the 5X5 Rule is important in my blog post Presentation Tips to Solve Presenter’s-Block. However, I wanted to write a post to dig deep into why the rule is so important. I also wanted to show techniques on cutting down information in your slides.

First: Focus your message.

Your mind is forced to focus on the most important things. You get rid of that extra information that muddles your true message. Information is important. But there is a priority level of information that you need to figure out first before you deliver your presentation. Your audience doesn’t want or need to know every aspect of your topic. They need to know the main points, and if they are interested they will continue to research on their own.

Second: Don’t compete with your slides, you won’t win.

Your audience shifts their focus from the slides to you. You won’t be competing for attention, because the slide is just a guide to keep their minds focused and on pace with what you are saying. When you compete with your slides, you won’t win- neither will the slide. This information overload usually leads to audience members just plain shutting down and shutting you and your slides out. Their minds begin to wander and they are completely mentally checked out.

Third: You won’t read off your slides.

You won’t be reading off of your slides, because there isn’t anything to read from. People usually confuse their slide deck with their speech. They write down everything that they want to say directly on their slides and then call it a day; no editing, and no slimming down. It’s true, it takes time to cut down the information on your slides. There is a skill and a technique of understanding what is truly important and what is just extra information. You have to set aside time to understand this and then apply it to your slides. Many people don’t have the time or the patience for this, which ends up in the presentations that we all are too familiar with.

Fourth: Information is only new once.

Information is only new once. If you put up all your important information on your PowerPoint slide and then read it, or recite it perfectly, your audience will be receiving your information twice. By the time they are at the bottom of your slide, they are so bored that they, once again, are gone.

But HOW do I do it? I just have SO MUCH information!

Below I’ve taken a very wordy slide and trimmed it down to what I would present on the exact same information. There are two strategies to narrowing down what to leave on your slides.

Strategy one: Question Words.

Focus the content of your slides around your question words: Who? What? Where? Why? and How? These questions will target your message towards the needs of your audience. When you answer these questions you have a well-rounded discussion on your topic and you are less likely to have confused individuals complaining afterwards.

Strategy two: Phrases and sayings.

Think of short, quirky sayings or easy to remember phrases that your audience can take away. If you need your audience to memorize certain dates or certain key points, write the headline of an anecdote or rhyme the data points so they will leave the room saying them in their heads.

If you focus on these, then you are focusing on the questions that your audience will have regarding the topic. This audience-centric approach ensures that you are not muddling your overall message with too much information. It keeps your audience engaged and they will appreciate you targeting their needs rather than just talking for talking's sake.

Is there any wiggle room in this rule? Of course! This rule is a template to focus your brain on making the slides work with you, not for you. By putting as little on the screen as possible, you are in effect editing your speech as you go. You are deleting all the information your reader doesn’t necessarily need to know. It is easy to assume your audience will not read your slides and listen to you at the same time.

So, What does it look like?

Okay, now you’ve read my soap-box on why I think you should use and trust the 5X5 Rule. I’ve included a couple of samples here below to show you the difference in slides depicting the same exact material.

Example: A History Lesson

Today your boss tells you that she needs a presentation on the history of the Taj Mahal. She tells you that this is for a meeting she has tomorrow with potential clients of your environmental protection company. She wants to showcase the importance of Indian architectural history. It as a marketing incentive to begin promoting anti-pollution in India.

All of this is great information. It is interesting and it stays on topic. The problem with this slide, however, is that you have confused your script with your slide deck. This is what you should be talking about, but it doesn’t mean that your audience necessarily needs to see it. Information is only new once. Every time after that it becomes boring. If your audience has to read and listen to the exact same thing then they are receiving it two times. By the time you’ve gotten to the bottom of the slide, your audience is lost and ready to move on.

This, however, is what you need to be showing your audience. Your slide doesn’t give away your information before you present it. It keeps them wondering. This also keeps the focus on you as the speaker, not your presentation slide. If you want to make eye contact with a client make your slides with less information so you are not competing with it. The more questions you can get your audience to ask by looking at your slides, the more they will be focused on what you are saying. Plus if you have missed their questions you have now created an environment for them to inquire further about the topic. This is every presenter’s best gift.

Again, this is a template for designing effective PowerPoint presentations. It has worked extremely well for me in the past. I’ve had coworkers come up after my presentations thanking me for not killing them with fountains of words on a slide, and some who told me it was the first presentation that they haven’t fallen asleep through.

Originally published at https://notsuitableforthecubicle.com on August 29, 2019.