PowerPoint: A key competence from school to business

Last updated on 23 November 2025

At one time or another, we all had a soporific presentation: a speaker who reads his or her cards, turning his or her back on his or her audience, while a screen projects walls of text in font 10. Whether it is during a class council, an academic training or, later for our students, during a company meeting, the observation is often the same. The tool is there, but the method is lacking.

Yet in the business world, the Powerpoint Presentation is not an option: this is the cornerstone of strategic communication.

For us, teachers and trainers, understanding the codes of professional presentation is essential: Refine our teaching materials and prepare our students for a key skill in the world of work.

Convince and mobilize through a successful presentation

There is a striking parallel between a successful pedagogical sequence and an effective business presentation. In both cases, the objective is the same: transmit complex information in an intelligible way to generate buy-in or memorisation.

In companies, when a manager presents a project, he does pedagogy. It must:

1. Capturing attention (hooks him up).

2. Vulgarize the point (the didactic transposition).

3. Check the comprehension (formative evaluation).

The major difference often lies in form. Where national education has long favoured pure content, the professional world has understood that form is a condition for listening. A PowerPoint presentation in a company does not serve as a prompter for the speaker, it serves as a Cognitive Visual Support for the audience.

Cognitive load: The common enemy

You may be familiar with John Sweller's theory of cognitive load. It applies abruptly during a presentation. If your slide forces the audience to read while you are speaking, you create interference (the redundancy effect). The brain picks up.

The best professional presentations apply a golden rule that we should all engrave on our boards: an idea by slide. Studies show that easing the cognitive burden of visual media directly promotes deep learning.

• The image before the text: The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. For this, do not hesitate to take advantage of free image banks for the class to illustrate your words without infringing copyright.

• Storytelling: A presentation is not a bulleted list. It is a story with a context (problem), a perpetuation (analysis) and a resolution (solution proposed).

By incorporating these codes into our courses, we not only make our materials more digestible (and therefore more inclusive for students with reading difficulties), but we also model a practice of excellence.

Preparing students for professional standards

Our students are digital natives, but this does not make them experts in professional communication. Knowing how to use the transition animations "origami" or "vortex" on PowerPoint does not mean knowing how to present.

It is crucial to teach the presentation as a synthesis exercise and not as a filling exercise. Control of flow, vocabulary and non-verbal is as important as the medium itself.

In the business world, time is a scarce resource. A presentation must be:

• Impacting: Go straight to the point.

• Aesthetics: Design conveys credibility.

• Focused on the hearing: What matters is not what the speaker knows, but what the audience should remember.

This is where digital tool education (TICE) makes sense. If new AI tools are to emerge to create slides quickly, it is imperative to accompany their use with genuine information design education. The tool facilitates the form, but the student must master the background.

When the requirement becomes a trade

The importance of this exercise is such that, in the private sector, the creation of presentation materials has become an expertise in its own right. The financial or strategic stakes of certain meetings (fund raising, mergers, international conferences) do not tolerate any approximation.

This is why many companies are now delegating this task to a Powerpoint Agency specialised. These experts don’t just “make it pretty”; they structure speech, prioritise information and create a strong visual identity to maximise the impact of the message.

PowerPoint, a transversal skill

Considering the PowerPoint presentation as a simple "duty" or administrative formality is a mistake. It is an exercise in modern rhetoric.

We have the power to transform the image of this often decried tool. By adopting the codes of professional presentations – clarity, conciseness, visual – we make our teaching more impactful and give our students a head start for their future careers.