A client came to me last year with a problem. He was presenting at a safety day with 47 slides, all of which were good information-wise; they had charts, data, and procedures. But by slide 10, people’s eyes were glazing over.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “It’s all important.”
Here’s what I told him: they might need to know it, but they won’t remember it. By slide 10, (or well before), their brains have already checked out.
This is the problem I see constantly, especially with non-native English speakers. They over-prepare content and under-prepare delivery. They put everything on slides because they don’t want to forget anything. And they end up overwhelming their audience so completely that said audience remembers nothing.
Your audience is doing two jobs at once
When you present in English to an international audience, everyone in that room is working harder than they would be in their own language.
Even native speakers have to process visual and spoken information simultaneously, and that takes extra mental energy.
For non-native speakers in your audience, add another layer: they’re translating as they listen, processing your accent, making sure they’ve understood correctly.
Now add dense slides with multiple bullet points and complex graphics. All that can easily convert your presentation into a cognitive overload.
And when people experience cognitive overload, they either stop listening to you and just read the slides, or they stop reading and try to follow what you’re saying. Either way, you’ve lost them.
The one message per slide rule
I gave my client a simple challenge: “Can you distill each slide down to one single message?”
“One message?” he asked. “That’s impossible.”
“Try it,” I said.
Those 47 slides became 8 slides. He was using the same information and was showing the same key points, but now each slide had one clear message he could explain and expand on.
The feedback he got from that presentation was completely different from his previous ones!
When you have one message per slide, you stay focused. You don’t get lost in your own information. You know exactly what you’re saying and when to move on.
And your audience can actually follow you. They process one idea, understand it, and are ready for the next one.
Simple slides don’t mean simple thinking
I hear this objection constantly: “But if I simplify my slides, I’ll look unprepared.”
But the truth is that you won’t. Because complex, cluttered slides don’t make you look smart. They make you look like you haven’t figured out what actually matters. That you didn’t think about the audience and didn’t take the time to present the idea in a simple clear way.
On the other hand, clear slides make you look like you know your subject so well that you can distill it to what your audience truly needs to know.
That shows expertise and confidence.
Think about the best TED talks you’ve seen, the slides are almost always simple. The presenters usually show us a photo, a quote or a single statistic for example. And they do it this way because the SPEAKER is the presentation, the audience is there to listen to their perspective, the slides just support what thE speaker is saying.
When you’re presenting in a second language, less is more
The one-message rule is particularly important for non-native English speakers because it forces you to use simple, clear language.
When you cram multiple ideas onto one slide, you end up with long, complex sentences. And when you’re speaking in a second language, those complex sentences are where you trip up.
But when you’ve written one clear sentence on your slide, you can expand on it naturally in your own words. You’re not reading. You’re explaining. And that’s when you sound most confident.
I had a client who wrote entire paragraphs on his slides and read them word for word because he was afraid of getting the English wrong.
We stripped his slides down to one sentence each. Suddenly, he wasn’t reading anymore. He was talking. Explaining. Connecting.
His English didn’t improve overnight. But his delivery did. Because he wasn’t performing a script. He was just sharing what he knew.
The test: can you explain your slide in one sentence?
Before you finalise any presentation, run this test on every slide:
“Can I explain this slide in one clear sentence?”
If yes, keep it, if no, split it into multiple slides or cut the unnecessary information.
This test forces you to make decisions about what really matters. And that’s exactly what good presenting requires: deciding what your audience needs to hear versus what’s just nice to know.
My client with the 47 slides realised that about 30 were “nice to know” information. Useful in a written report perhaps, but not essential for a live presentation. So we cut them. And the presentation became focused, clear, and memorable.
What about all the information you’re cutting?
“But what about all the details? What if someone asks?”
You can put it in a document or an appendix section at the back of your slide deck. Your presentation IS NOT a document. It’s a conversation. It’s a chance to highlight what matters, connect with your audience, and inspire action. If people need more detail, they can read the full report, they can ask questions, they can follow up after. But during your presentation, just give them what they can actually absorb and remember.
Start with your next presentation
Take your next presentation and ask yourself honestly: “Could I say this in half the number of slides?”
If yes, do it.
Strip each slide down to its core message, remove the extra bullet points, cut the unnecessary charts, simplify the language. Then practise presenting it, you’ll find it’s easier to deliver, easier for your audience to follow, and far more effective.
Because presentations that lose impact after slide 3 don’t fail because the content is wrong. They fail because there’s too much of it.
Less content, more clarity. That’s the formula.
