A few weeks ago, while I was sitting at a stop sign, I white Nisson Rogue approached from my left. As the car got closer, I could see the driver, a 20-something year old with a mop of brown. He wore ear buds and glanced his eyes down at a cellphone. He was close enough and had the right of way, so I remained stopped, waiting for him to pass. Suddenly, he turned, veering to the right, leaving me a touch aggravated that I had sat at the stop sign because I presumed he was going straight.

He didn’t use his blinker to signal he was going to turn.

It wasn’t the end of the world, but as I took a quick assessment of my irritation at being left hanging, it struck me that audiences frequently feel the exact same annoyance with presenters who don’t signal where they are going either.

You’ve seen it a hundred times: A presenter puts up a complicated slide with a lot of information, a graph, a chart, a spreadsheet and then he starts talking about one of the columns or one of the rows or one of the trends represented by the graph, and while you are looking at the column on the right or a graphic on the left, or words in the middle, he goes in a completely different direction than you expected and leaves you hanging—and a touch irritated—because the presenter never signaled where he was going.

Much like the driver of the Nissan Rogue who didn’t use his turn signal, it’s not the end of the world. But the confusion is so easy to avoid if you just show people where you are going—one of the concepts we teach in our presentation skills courses.

Here are five ways to keep your audience from getting lost and irritated with you by signaling where you are going when you use PowerPoint slides:

1. Use Whitespace.

When possible, use slides with as much white space as possible on them. This is one of the most effective presentation strategies. Whitespace makes it easy on your audience. When you are in the audience and you see a slide with a lot of white space, your brain feels like it can comfortably absorb what is on the slide and still listen to the presenter. It makes it easier for the audience to stay with you.

2. Use more graphics/photos and fewer words

The human brain process pictures and graphics 60 thousand times faster than words. It’s far easier for your audience to listen to your words while looking at pictures or graphics on your slides than while listening to one set of words that you are saying and looking at different set of words on the slides. Pictures and graphics support what you are saying. Words on a slide compete with what you are saying. Don’t compete against yourself in front of the room. You’ll lose every time.

3. Play Show and Tell

The easiest way to signal to an audience where you want them to look is to show them with a bright, bold arrow. Look at the graphic below. You have a lot of options when it comes where to look and your eye will probably roam all over the place. When that happens, the presenter loses the audience.

Now, when I introduce a simple, bold, red arrow, notice how your eye goes right to the outline of the woman standing in front of the tree in the lower right corner.

In the first slide, you probably didn’t even see that woman. In the second slide your eye goes there first. Show your audience where to look. Then tell them what they are looking at.

4. Block out part of the screen

Another way to help your audience to focus is to limit what they see on the screen. If you have a complicated graph or spreadsheet, cover the parts you don’t want your audience looking at, so you only reveal the part or parts you do want them looking at. Then gradually reveal more and more of the screen.

Here’s a chart. Again, notice how your eyes wander, and you wonder where you are supposed to look.

By simply covering part of the screen, you eliminate confusion for the audience and keep the audience’s attention where you want it.

When you want the audience’s attention to move, you reveal more of the screen. You can reveal all the information effectively, if you do it step-by-step.

5. Tell them where to look

Each of these techniques has the same effect as using a signal when you’re driving. It telegraphs to everyone where you are going, and it makes it easier for them to follow you.

Everyone in your audience is a busy person and if you lose them in a presentation, you lose them to their to-do list, their email, the internet and all the other forces pushing and pulling on them.

The easier you make it for people to follow you in your presentations, the more influence you have and the more you put yourself in position to accomplish what you set out to do with the presentation in the first place.

So, whether you are driving a car or driving a PowerPoint, please, I beg of you, use your blinker and let your audience know where you are going next. It's one of the easiest ways to improve presentation skills.