Your audience cares 8 times more about how you appear than what your message is!  Not only that, but they care over 5 times more about the tone of your voice than your message!

It's true!  A study, backed with hard data, says so.  We have likely heard it before, and to be honest, a lot of us believe it despite being appalled by the implication.

Hold on a second!

Can this really be true?  It turns out that this "hard data" is often misunderstood.  Let's look at the facts...

Albert Mehrabian found in 1971 that there are three elements to any face-to-face communication:

• words
• tone of voice
• body language

These three elements are often abbreviated as the "3 Vs" for Verbal, Vocal, and Visual.  Mehrabian discovered that they are not all of equal importance.  He assigned the level of importance as follows:

• Verbal: 7%
• Vocal: 38%
• Visual: 55%

The implication is that people pay much more attention to your body language and tone of voice than your actual message.  This can be quite disconcerting for the would-be presenter.  Presenters typically put most of their effort into creating their message.

So, should you spend less time on your words and focus instead on your tone of voice and body language?

The answer is no!

Mehrabian defined these levels of importance when the elements were incongruent.  In other words, if your words and your body language are out of sync, people will believe your body language more.  Likewise, if your voice sounds nervous, we are less likely to believe what you are saying.

How does this relate to PowerPoint?

Your PowerPoint presentation falls under the Visual category (hopefully).  If your PowerPoint slides are not congruent with the rest of your presentation, the audience will likely believe your PowerPoint!

This means that when you create your PowerPoint, your message needs to be built into your slides.  If you want to have fun and entertain the audience, then your slides had better reflect that.  Likewise, if you are pitching to a major investor, using cheesy clipart is not going to help your cause.

Your PowerPoint presentation reflects your brand, and is a major piece of your presentation.  Spend the time and effort on your slides to make sure they complement your style, and enhance your message rather than detract from it.

Look at your PowerPoint slides.  Do they match your message?