Why I Never Let My EMBA Students Use Slides

In the 15 years I taught leadership in the Kent State University school Exective MBA program, I never allowed students to use slide presentations to communicate to the group. These were experienced corporate middle managers who were already communication weak because of years of slide dependency.

Communication weak means not having to use visual language because the slides did that for them. It means spending more time looking up at your slides than being fully present to your group. It means feeling comfortable turning communication into monologue instead of dialogue. It means acting like the one with the remote is smarter than all of us.

Instead, they practiced communication rich sharing of knowledge. The world is better for it.