PPTmatters Structure and Storylining Workshops: Conversation with Thomas Eckhausen

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  Thomas Eckhausen is a Presentation Communications Expert and Partner at the Danish presentation agency PPTmatters. With 12 years of experience at McKinsey & Company and 10 years at Danske Bank, Thomas has extensive expertise in all aspects of PowerPoint usage in a corporate environment. Today, his primary focus is on helping companies train employees in the art of structuring their presentations into cohesive and easy-to-follow storylines.

In this conversation, Thomas discusses his training sessions.

Geetesh: Thomas, we already spoke with Luise and discussed the design and template work that your agency, PPTmatters does. You also train corporate clients via structure and storylining workshops. What is the importance of this training?

Thomas: If you want to ensure your presentations are not just heard but also understood and acted upon, you can’t simply present a collection of facts and leave it up to your audience to draw their own conclusions. The teams I work with are often tasked with creating high-stakes presentations, such as:

• A strategy presentation for the CEO team and Board of Directors that sets the direction for the company’s future success.
• The next big sales presentation for an important new customer with the potential to generate millions in sales.

A lot of work goes into fact-finding, analyzing, strategizing, and concluding. Therefore, it’s important that the presentations used to communicate all of this are not treated as an afterthought.

Luckily, more and more companies understand this and prioritize training their teams to ensure their presentations get the attention they deserve. Typically, I am contacted by department heads who see the need to upskill their employees’ communication skills. This is to ensure a more unified approach to structure and storylining, and often addresses the need to spend less time creating PowerPoints and more time communicating important ideas.

Considering most people are not trained designers or communications experts, creating presentations can often become a chore that no one is really excited about. This is where our workshop comes in. Through theory and numerous practical examples, we give participants a structured step-by-step approach to presentation creation.

Geetesh: What does a typical workshop look like?

Thomas: I often start by presenting participants with various quotes from executives I have encountered over the years related to the pitfalls of relying on PowerPoint. Surprisingly, many CEOs have spoken about this, and without fail, workshop participants recognize how they themselves use and sometimes misuse PowerPoint. This leads to some very interesting and honest discussions about what works and what doesn’t. Seeing how the groups, through this initial discussion, start realizing things can be done differently is really inspiring and sets the stage for the rest of the workshop. Participants are really motivated.

I spend some time going through theory to ensure we are all aligned on why we do what we do when we communicate. The overall message here is that we communicate for the audience, not for ourselves. The main focus is always on how the interests of an audience should inform every decision we make when communicating. This part of the workshop often leads to interesting discussions about finding the balance between what you find important and what the audience actually needs to know.

The part of the workshop that is often the biggest success is the “Before & After” section. Prior to the workshop, each participant provides me with a presentation. From these presentations, I select 15-20 slides that I rework and show during the workshop. My focus is on the communication aspect, but with help from Luise, we also redesign the slides to ensure design and communication match. The success comes from the fact that participants see how big of a difference it makes when you apply all the learning.

The final part of the workshop is practical. Now they have to do it themselves. In groups, they select one or two slides and apply everything they learned to rework them, and then present to the other groups. This often leads to completely different slides and messages, and even slides that are scrapped altogether. To ensure we do not get caught up in PowerPoint functionality, all this is done using flip-overs—no PCs allowed.

Also, can you share some feedback from attendees of these workshops?

Thomas: Sure. It’s always great to hear from participants that found the workshop useful. Also I use the feedback to continuously adjust how I approach certain topics.

Feedback often fall into different categories

1. Some participants focus on the fact that they can immediately change how they do things:

It was good – not boring at all! So informative, and I feel very ready to begin work on my next presentation. I will immediately begin structuring my story in the Notes Section as recommended.

The training gave us a common understanding of how to clearly and effectively structure a story.
The instructor did an excellent job getting the points across. The training has changed the way we create presentations – our stories and arguments now connect more powerfully.

2. Others are happy with how the workshop is structured:

This was truly a workshop and not just another training session. The perfect balance between theory, discussions, and group work.

I generally have low expectations when attending sessions with external speakers. I often feel I don’t get a lot out it that I can apply to what I do. However, this workshop was an exception. Really well put together with relevant topics, and expertly executed by the facilitator.

3. Still others focus on specific parts of the workshop they found useful:

The presenter was good at communicating. I really liked the structuring part. It’s very important when I need to create a good presentation and time is limited that I have a framework I can use.

Incorporating our own slides as ‘Before/After’ versions, showing us how they could be improved by applying what we learned during the workshop, was truly eye opening.

I really enjoy the many discussions I have with participants about their challenges as well as their presentation success stories. As mentioned, more and more companies recognize how important good presentation communication skills are to the success of their teams and ultimately the entire company.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.