Generally, here's what happens when you overuse slides.

1. Your slides lose their ability to make an impact- Essentially, slides become white noise in presentation, so constant that they are no longer noticeable.

2. The audience focuses on your slides, rather than on you. If 55% of your communication power comes from your body and face (based on universally accepted research by Albert Mehrabian), than NOT having audience focused on you diminishes about half of your POWER as a presenter. Can you really afford to cut your power in half?

3. You are demoted to position of slide narrator. The slides take center stage and like narrator of a play, you are anonymous voice in background.

Just like too many slides can detract from your success as a presenter, having a few well designed slides can strengthen your impact. Consider these quick tips designed to help improve your use of slides:

1. Develop your presentation first, then determine where a visual might help audience better understand your message. This is a much better approach than developing your slides first.

2. Try to boil your presentation down to six most important slides that speak to heart of your message. Make sure that each slide you chose complies with 6 x 6 rule-no more than six lines of text with six words on each line.

3.Better yet, make impact of your slides visual, rather than verbal (words written on slides). The best slides arouse audience visually so take a creative approach to translating words into meaningful pictures.

In retrospect, it's not so much that I am anti slides-I am pro YOU! While slides do serve an important function, even best designed slide can't compete with power of YOU. YOU are greatest visual aid of all. Take focus OFF slides and put it back where it belongs-squarely on YOU! Invest time you used to spend on your slides on your delivery practice and you will STAND APART from rest!

Debbie is author of the book "15 Presentation Secrets - How to WOW Even the Toughest Audience." She is well known for her presentation skills classes and in addition to training Corporate America, has also taught Presentation Skills for United States Marines, San Diego State University, and UCLA Extension

What brings sight and sound together? Meaning and definition becomes only throughout our growing years. When a parent points to something moving in air and calls it a butterfly or a plane. When we sat in class and see pictures of Eiffel Tower or a bullfight in Spain. There was no sound. All we could do was imagine, place assumptions on what sound could be, would be. And wonder if there will be a time when we will be there, when we will hear. And be able to match a picture of an eagle with one actually flying above.

We see a picture of a beautiful women, you know, perfect 10, in some magazine. You wish to be like her or to want her. Then one day you meet her in street and hear her voice. It squeaks as if you were stroking chalk backwards across a blackboard. You can't wait to run and hide. The disconnect, gap, was there. But gosh darn it, she’s a 10, you say. In a split second from sight to sound, desire to be like her to have her dropped, it wasn't same.

It is said, "seeing is believing," is that truth? How many of us know that isn't always truth, yet we've heard it so frequently there are assumptions tied to it that makes its seem like truth. How many assumptions have you made because of things you've seen and hear, made between gap, between speed of sight and slower hearing?

What would change in your daily routine if you began really hearing, slowing down to 1,100 feet per second? What would you loose? What would you gain? Would gain be positive? All thoughts to think about, to mull over in our simple yet complicated little minds.

I encourage you to shift a little in your life and begin to give equal value to hearing if you can. To listening to universal sounds, to what is far below speed of light. Light that gives you ability to see. But to begin to see with your ears.

"Its not what you say but how you say it," is a phrase frequently told. Is it truth? Or is real truth how everyone else hears it that makes a difference?

The truth is that gap can never be brought together. All our senses are on different parts of our rainbow. Don't loose sight of hearing. Practice differently today and tomorrow. Lie in bed and hear walls. Hear breeze whenever outdoors. Hear plants grow. Yes, you can once you learn to hear again. Hear your heart beating and watch cravings for things you know you shouldn't have go bye. Learn discernment between two. Close your eyes in next meeting, what do you hear? What do you not?

As Shakespeare once said, "That is question?" This is from me to you and for fuel for thought. Just so you grow.

Catherine Franz, a Business Coach, specialized in writing, marketing and product development. Newsletters and additional articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com