The following happened when I was in Orlando a few days ago. It bugged me so much I had to write about it.

So there I was, along with Dave, standing in the front of an almost empty meeting room. Dave had heard me speak to a group of managerial accountants in Boston. It went over so well, he invited me to present to a group of 425 college accounting students. He knew my abilities and trusted my judgment.

So there we were, along with the AV guys, setting up the room for my motivational speech, “Want to be Good, Great, or a Champion?” I asked Dave how many students he expected? He told me “at best” 425, but we both surmised that the room had been set up for many more.

Now, it’s a fact that people do not like to sit in the front rows. It is human nature for people to want to be comfortable. We tend to spread out, so that we are not too close to others if we don’t have to be. That’s why most people prefer to cluster in the back, leaving rows and rows of empty seats up front.

This is not fun for the presenter. Speaking is intimate; a speaker looks to connect with the audience. And rows of empty chairs become an invisible barrier, one that literally and emotionally creates distance between a speaker and the audience.

Did you know that when Jay Leno took over the Tonight Show he added rows of chairs and extended Johnny Carson’s stage to allow him to get closer to the audience? Like Jay, it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to connect better with the audience.

Dave had given many presentations himself. So he understood the problem immediately. He and I agreed that we should either remove some chairs or tape off the back rows, forcing people to fill in the front first.

The event planner for the organization came into the room just then. We asked her if she could take care of doing just that. She replied, “We’ll just have the room monitors at the doors ask everybody to sit up front.” She then ran off to handle another issue.

Dave and I look at each other in shock. “WHAT? They’ll never listen. It doesn’t work that way!” Granted, she was trying to be helpful and thought she had solved the problem. And yes, she had about a million things to attend to. But the fact was, she just didn’t get it. She never had to give a presentation before. She didn’t understand the effect a row of empty chairs had on the speaker.

At almost every conference I’ve spoken, I’ve noticed that they put out way to many chairs: “Just in case.” Just in case what? In case people walk in off the street to go to an accounting conference? Not very likely.

If you have a track record of 100 attendees, even with better promotion, you still have a good idea as to how many people are registered, and how many people might register at the door. So be reasonable. It looks better when tables and chairs have to be added-much better than having lots of empty seats.

In her defense, this was only the second conference so there was not as much of a track record. Yet, I still believe it is better to put out fewer chairs than you need. It lends an air of “excitement” when you need to set out more. Too many empty chairs gives the perception of “low turn out” or “this meeting can’t be that good.”

In the end, it turned out not too bad in Orlando. As people came in last minute, they did not go to the front. There were five rows on the left side of the room that only had 1 person. It could have been much worse.

Event planners: Yes, it is easier to have all the chairs set out ahead of time. But are you going for easier, or a better event? Speakers will do better when the setting is optimal. Attendees will have a more fruitful experience.

Speakers: It is our job to create the best atmosphere, to generate the best connection with the audience. Sometimes we may have to gently educate the event planners. If they are not opened to it, keep in mind that speakers are just one part of their event. Whether we are a big part or not, we must not let our egos ruin our reputations. They are the ones paying you. Do everything you can to optimize the setting for your speech.

Be like Jay: Take responsibility and make the room the best setting for you. If NBC had said “No,” do you think Jay would have thrown a hissy fit? Do the best you can with what you have.

Narrating PowerPoint Presentations designed by someone else can be very challenging. In fact, one of the fastest ways to increase public speaking fear and make your PowerPoint presentations sound canned and… well boring, is to try to deliver a PowerPoint slideshow that someone else designed for you. This doesn’t mean that you can’t deliver PowerPoint slide decks that someone else created. It just means that when you do, you’ll probably be more nervous and have less of a natural flow than what you’d normally have when you stand up and deliver a speech. Remember that a presentation or a speech is just a conversation with your audience, so if you create the speech, you’ll be speaking in your own words. When someone else creates a speech for you, you will feel more uncomfortable and the public speaking nervousness will increase.

If you remember the movie Roxanne or the play about Cyrano de Bergerac, the two male characters, Christian and Cyrano are both in love with Roxanne, but Christian sees himself as being inarticulate and Cyrano sees himself as being ugly. Christian gets Cyrano to write love letters for him, which works pretty well until Roxanne finds out who actually wrote them. In the movies, Christian is portrayed as a dunce, but according to the original play, Christian is a brave and intelligent warrior who is just nervous. Christian is the kind of person that Roxanne would have fallen in love with if he had just used his own words to woo her. But because he was using Cyrano’s verbiage (his slideshow,) it just made Christian even more nervous – not less. Roxanne never got to know the real Christian. Your audiences are the same way. You will feel much more confident if you can communicate your own words to your audience versus trying to manufacture the “right thing to say” about a PowerPoint slide or bullet points that someone else created.

With that in mind, we know that situations will occur where we have no control over the PowerPoint slideshow or any of the visuals really. For instance, if you are a sales associate, and your company requires that you use a standardized PowerPoint presentation when you speak to customers or if someone calls in sick and you have to fill in for them at the last minute, the tips below will help you out tremendously.

Top PowerPoint Presentation Narration Tips

1. Add Your Own Personal Experiences: The main thing that sets one presenter apart from another is the personal examples or stories that they tell when they deliver a presentation. You can easily make your PowerPoint presentation your own by inserting stories and examples from your own experience into the speech. For example, let’s assume your bullet point is “Sales decreased by 10% last quarter,” you’ll want to first clarify the point and explain in more detail what it means. For instance you might show the total number of “call-in” leads that the sales team received in the quarter versus previous quarter. Then once you have explained the point, add a personal experience to further explain it. “A couple of years ago, when I was a sales rep, I remember days that as soon as I would set the receiver down, another new incoming call was already being routed to me. The guys who are on duty now, however, are averaging ten to fifteen minutes between each call. At first, we thought that the time between calls was wasted time, so we looked at downsizing the sales team. However, because each salesperson is able to follow up better with each incoming lead, their closing rations have increased over 250%. So that 10% decrease in sales is coming from less than half the number of incoming leads that we were receiving in the boom.” Without the personal story, the bullet looks like the sales team is failing, but in reality, they are doing a tremendous job with the resources that they have had.

2. Avoid Memorizing Someone Else’s Notes: If you try to write down everything that someone else tells you to say and memorize it, you will increase your nervousness exponentially. Instead, go to each bullet point and ask yourself, “What is the most important thing that the audience would need to know about that point?” Whatever pops into your head when you ask that question will likely be exactly what the audience needs to know. If you use this technique, then if you forget what you have prepared while you are speaking, you can just, internally, ask yourself the question again, and your answer is likely to return pretty easily.

3. You May not Need to Speak to Every Point: When other people write a PowerPoint presentation for you, they often will insert way too much data into each slide. As a result, it can be very challenging to speak to every point. Realize that, as the presenter, you are in control of what you say. I had a client once whose executives decided that they wanted to create one all-encompassing slideshow that any sales rep could use in any situation. The finished PowerPoint deck had over 120 slides. There is no way that any presenter could deliver that much data in so short a period of time. So what my client did was print out the whole deck and had an office supply store put a cover on it. She gave this out to the clients as a reference and hand-picked the slides that were most appropriate to each client at the time she presented. As a result, she didn’t bore any of them. So sometimes, you might have to get a little creative in your delivery.

Remember that narrating a PowerPoint slideshow that someone else creates for you is definitely more challenging than delivering a presentation that you create on your own, however it can be done. Just be sure to make the PowerPoint your own by inserting your own personal stories and experiences into the slides, spend time determining exactly what is most important to the audience, and feel free to cut out some of the bullets if your presentation is too data heavy. If you follow these simple tips, you will be more charismatic and articulate when you narrate someone else’s PowerPoint presentation.