If you show or watch presentations, you may find yourself being asked to receive or give feedback for presentations. However, not every colleague, employee, friend, or you know the rules of meaningful and insightful feedback that doesn’t offend but inspires you to do better next time.
After all, the presenter worked hard or addressed professional presentation design services to give this presentation, so they deserve a pat on the back and valuable presentation comments. Your first reaction is always to say “Great job!”. However, if you’re someone’s boss or advisor, what you really need to do is to help them improve their skills.
It’s time to cringe when you have to give and receive feedback. To diminish this feeling, let’s talk about good comments for the presentation, techniques to give feedback, and how to react.
How to Listen to Presentation Evaluation Feedback?
The majority of people struggle to listen to others. Many of them take everything said to their persona too personally. Meanwhile, listening and, most importantly, accepting a critique is one of the ways to advance. But people usually brake themselves from progress because of two main personality problems.
Big Ego Problem
They are perfect. They never make mistakes. And their presentation is 10/10. Perfect color matches, perfect font, and model speech.
It is hard to talk to such people who either pretend they listen to you or clearly demonstrate no respect for your view and authority.
Big Shame Problem
They are always not enough. They are afraid of making mistakes. And their presentation is not enough as well. But their fear of mistakes is what restrains them from more creative and unique approaches.
They get red at the slightest comment and want to come down. Some of them can even start crying right in front of the feedback giver.
How to Deal With It?
Interestingly, the feeling of shame about your work stems from the same ego problem. People just have different behavior patterns, and that’s it. Both think they are not rough, but one reacts with aggression and the other with shame.
The advice for both problems is to accept your own mediocrity and start noticing the value of a fresh view. Critique is neither a punishment nor an attack on your perfection.
How to Give Feedback on Presentation?
People who give feedback can also have ego problems and desire to humiliate and not teach. Therefore, it is important to follow a presentation feedback protocol and presentation feedback questions not to skid into your own inferiority complex. Similar protocols respect an individual and create a context and guidelines for real improvement of presentation skills.
6 Feedback Practices for Successful Interactions
- Get permission: unsolicited feedback is never appreciated and seldom followed. In fact, it is most commonly discounted. You need to get an agreement in advance to provide your thoughts. You never know if the person chose this color combination because they wanted to or because they are colorblind.
- Treat the presenter with respect: everyone takes feedback personally since it is hard to differentiate yourself from your presentation. If you say colors are dark, they might think they are dark. Sounds silly but this is how it works in the world of childhood traumas.
- Listen to their thoughts first: ask the presenter to tell what they think on their slides. Did they like how it looked in the audience from different angles? Did the text help them to speak or distracted them?
- Start by reinforcing the positive: tell them what you liked and what worked best. Most of us struggle to see what’s good about the slides and focus on imperfections. The coach who notices a valuable contribution wins the speaker’s trust.
- Offer constructive feedback: be specific in suggesting how the PowerPoint or Google design slides can be improved. For example, it is wrong to say “I don’t like this font, and the pictures are dull”. Instead, you can say “Your slides would be easier to perceive if you use Verdana instead of Comic Sans. I also have a gorgeous website with stock pictures, and I can share the link with you if you need it”.
- Speak from experience: offer your suggestions in terms of what has worked for you or speakers who you coached or worked with.
Wrapping Up
Giving and receiving the same feedback from different persons can either improve or spoil your day. Few people relate to you as coaches with good intentions, so don’t take and give it too personally. And don’t sugarcoat the message, people know when you’re not being straight with them.
If you have mastered your presentation skills but need help with design, make sure to contact our presentation design services to receive not feedback but questions about how you created such attractive slides 🙂
