Handing Over to Others – Presenting Remotely #9

“Next slide please… Can we go over to the next slide please?”

When presenting remotely, often you are presenting together with others and you need to share the time speaking. This will inevitable lead to some handovers. There are a few tricks and considerations that can help make these smooth and this can prevent awkward pauses.

Make everyone present for themselves: depending on the ratio of time shared and the bandwidth and reliability of each presenters’ network connection you need to decide who will be sharing their screens into the presentation. If you don’t need to use screen sharing and can get by with uploading the slides and using PowerPoint Live inside the Teams meeting, then it is very simple to hand over as the next presenter just needs to press the “Take control” button at the top and continue presenting. Don’t forget to turn off the ability to privately view slides if that is what is best for your session, otherwise your audience will be free to roam across your deck.

If PowerPoint Live is not an option, then you can have everyone share their own screen. There are a few little tricks that can make this look more professional:

• Agree to handover points ahead of the time or quickly indicate that you will be handing over so the next presenter can start sharing their screen. It will take a moment until the screen shows up for every participant so it is better to start early. If you agree ahead of the time then they can get through the sharing delay while you are still speaking to your last topic.
• You can also bridge with Q&A. If you are handing over presenting, it is a good thing to spark some engagement with the audience and stop for questions, comments and discussion. This will allow your audience to breathe, reflect and also allow the next presenter to start sharing their screen while you are answering the questions.
• It is worth avoiding the stereotypical “can you see my screen” cliché by having a speaker’s chat in the background and giving feedback silently that the sharing has arrived. Just a little touch that makes the flow more professional and the presenters look more confident.

If some of the presenters have lower bandwidth of an unreliable connection then it may be better to have someone with a good connection do all the sharing. In this case, you can still grant control of the slides to presenters on the other side of the call, just make sure that you don’t go multitasking in other windows as that may disrupt the control. Making sure to distinguish presenters from attendees will help with making the list of people to share control with short and simple.

If you end up being the clicker for someone else, there are a few good practices that you want to consider:

• Listen to what they are saying and try to anticipate their transitions. Remember, that progressing slides or even animations may take some time on the receiving end so if you’re sure that you are about to switch slides, you may want to start early so that by the time they get to their next thought you will have the right slide up as if by magic, before they can say “next slide please”.
• It is worth agreeing before the presentation that you will be listening for phrases like “and on the next slide” or “as we move on” as cues so you don’t need to get more explicit about getting “the next slide please”.
• If at all possible, use presenter view on your side so you can see the next slide and notice if they start talking about that and with that you can also navigate across slides in a non-linear fashion without the audience seeing it.
• You can add a nice touch to the presentation if you use annotations and zoom to highlight parts of the slide as the speaker moves along. Not all slides lend themselves to this but a highlight here or underlining something there can go a long way to keep the audience paying close attention and your presenters will thank you for it.

If you end up on the presenting end with someone else driving your slides for you then you should think about the following:

• Remove builds from the slides as much as possible. It is enough to keep track of slide transitions let alone elaborate animations. You can talk through the slide without needing to instruct about builds. Many times presenters end up asking for the slide to be built up at the start anyways.
• Think of your cues for transitions for the other person. If possible, agree ahead of the time. Phrases like “as we move on”, “on the next slide” etc. will help the person in control to follow your lead. Don’t expect the transitions to happen immediately though. Many people freeze in transitions until they see their next slide. You know your stuff, you can even have your slides open on your end if you need help but start talking to the next slide and it will eventually arrive. If it doesn’t after 30 seconds, then you can stop and check but this will remove most of the awkward “can we go to the next slide please” moments.

What other tips do you have for shared presentations?