The corporate world has a meetings problem. And if you’re regularly responsible for conducting or facilitating meetings at work, you might (unfortunately) just be part of that problem.
We know that most times, work presentations are boring and induce sleep. But we simply can’t afford to escape or avoid them because at some point, they’re needed to enhance collaboration, present new ideas or projects for approval, or for other noteworthy occasions.
Back in 1998, a Verizon Conferencing white paper entitled “Meetings in America.” highlighted that approximately 90% of work meeting attendees are daydreaming while you’re presenting, and more than a third are most likely dozing off in the meeting.
Unfortunately, more than 20 years later, the situation hasn’t improved significantly. Although video-conferencing technology and AI presentation tools and software have been introduced and gained widespread popularity and adoption, people are still disengaged in presentations. This is why we have the term, “death by PowerPoint.”
This also explains an interesting observation from an AVCOM survey, which noted that in their research of 200 professionals, 97% of business event attendees are disengaged during presentations and spend their time browsing through their phones, chatting with someone, multitasking, or working.
This results in lost productivity, wasted time for both you as the presenter and for your attendees, and the fostering of a disengaged work culture. For work presentations to be more engaging, they must fulfil several criteria, including:
- Encouraging active participation from attendees
- Being relatable to attendees in their line of work (and this should be obvious)
- Having attractive visuals and multimedia
- Holding a clear structure and be well-organized
Below are 12 ChatGPT prompts that, with a little fine-tuning and background context from you on the details of your presentation, can help you craft and deliver a highly engaging presentation at work, whether you use PowerPoint, Canva, or other slide deck creation software.
- Suggest some attention-grabbing, catchy titles for my work presentation to draw in my audience, who will consist of [job titles].
- I am a [job title] presenting to [job titles of audience] for the purpose of [objective of presentation]. Give me an outline for this PowerPoint presentation, [title], which will last 15 minutes. Keep it to no more than 12 slides.
- Provide some ideas for starting my presentation with a bang, including attention-grabbing opening slides. (Once it provides the answer, write this prompt:) Repeat the above with this presentation [title] in mind.
- Generate a list of ideas for supplementary handouts and resources to complement my presentation.
- How can I handle or field questions about my presentation, from the audience of stakeholders effectively and confidently?
- How can I strike the right balance between text and visuals to keep my slides visually appealing and informative?
- Give me a list of techniques for improving readability through choosing appropriate fonts, sizes, and text formatting for my work presentation.
- Explore some ways that I can make my presentation interactive through quizzes, polls, and audience participation.
- Suggest some ways I can introduce and present the concept of [name of concept] to a non-technical audience.
- What key points should I cover in a presentation about [name of topic]?
- Provide a list of topic-relevant icebreakers that I can use to kick off my presentation on [name of topic], which will be suitable for the 30 team members who will be attending.
- Suggest some ways I can include storytelling in my presentation.
Bonus prompt idea in line with the last recommendation: Create an outline for this story, and incorporate it into my presentation outline [detail list of main points from your story].
From generating title and content ideas when you’re stuck with a mind blank, to best practice and structure for engaging your audience at work, make use of ChatGPT prompts to coach you through the process, enable more engagement, and reduce your prep time.
Forbes
