Episode 218: Jeanette Washington & Mai Ling Chan: Creating Effective & Engaging Presentations

This week, we share Chris’s conversation with Mai Ling Chan and Jeanette Washington on making our presentations and trainings more engaging and effective! Chris, Mai Ling, and Jeanette are seasoned presenters, and they have a ton of useful tips that you can use to improve your presentations right away! 

Before the interview,  Rachel shares about a client who was moved to tears by a sad video that he saw, but was confused about what was happening when he was crying - he wondered if someone was cutting onions. Chris and Rachel talk about engaging kids with experiences that teach them to anchor abstract emotional concepts with something that is real for them, like how it makes their bodies feel or how they feel when grandma leaves.

Key ideas this week:

🔑 It is more important to engage with your audience well rather than focusing on having “pretty” slides. Also, from an accessibility standpoint, it can be more difficult to follow slides that have lots of animations and graphics that don’t really add to the experience.

🔑 Instead of putting several bullet points on a slide, you can just take each bullet and make it its own slide. This makes it less distracting and allows the audience to follow along with you at the same speed.

🔑 Most presentations are three act plays - the first act is a problem we are working to solve, the second act  is strategies we can put together to solve the problem, and third act is the action plan and takeaways.