Maybe you're the senior employee in a small business and the owner has asked you to conduct the training presentations for the new employees. Maybe you're the business owner yourself and, now that you have a few people working in your company, employee training is another job to add to your To-Do List. Either way, if you're like most first-time trainers, you've already reached for the Microsoft™ PowerPoint. But be careful.

Effective training sessions provide all of your participants with information in a variety of ways and that includes using slides. And, Microsoft™ PowerPoint can be a wonderful tool in the classroom if used correctly. But it can also be a dangerous distraction that interferes with your training rather than facilitating it. Unfortunately, over the years Microsoft™ PowerPoint has become the catch-all, fallback, crutch, and number one trainer-trap for everyone who has to create and present a training session and who hopes that a few slides with music and animated gizmos will do the trick. Most of you have sat through countless seminars like this. Most of them are done poorly. And all of them are suffering from "Power Pointlessness". That's not what you want happening to your training session.

So, since Microsoft™ PowerPoint isn't likely to go the way of the horse drawn wagon anytime soon, let's look at four strategies for skillfully using Microsoft™ PowerPoint to help create an effective and enjoyable training session rather than getting in the way.

Strategy 1: Don't give your slides centre stage. That's your spot! This is the biggest mistake most trainers make. They forget that Microsoft™ PowerPoint is a tool designed to enhance the training not BE the training. It's the scenery...You're the star! You are the trainer. You are the focus. Not your slides. Not your props. And remember, no amount of "animated gizmos" can overcome a weak training session. If you haven't done adequate research and preparation, Microsoft™ PowerPoint can't save you. It will only make an ill-conceived workshop even worse.

Strategy 2: Create a logical flow to your presentation. Don't turn your training slides into a random jumble of bulleted lists. There must be a flow; a beginning, middle, and end. Build your Learning Objectives and Teaching Points in a logical progression just like you would if you were writing a report on the topic instead of presenting a seminar.

Strategy 3: Make your slides readable. If your workshop participants can't read your slides from the back of the room, your text is too small. If your employees are squinting during your presentation, trying to make out what's on the slide, you have lost your audience. Their focus and attention isn't on the training topic anymore. The font size and colours that you choose depend entirely on the size of the room, the size of the screen, lighting, other visual distractions, etc. so you can't afford to leave this aspect of your presentation to chance. Test your slides and make certain that they are readable from all angles and distances.

Strategy 4: On slides, less is more. Keep things simple. Fancy slide transitions and fly-ins get old quickly. A basic dissolve from one slide to another is sufficient. Have all your bullets appear at once rather than one at a time. Avoid sound effects - they serve no other purpose than annoying your audience and distracting them from the point of the training. And finally, cut down the number of slides. Put the majority of your presentation in your participant workbooks or training manuals.

Keep these four strategies in mind when you create the Microsoft™ PowerPoint component of your training program. Ensuring that your slides are logical, legible, and simple will keep your employees' focus on you and the topic at hand.