Numbers are exactly where the temptation to over-narrate is strongest, because it feels irresponsible to leave a number unexplained. In practice, reading out numbers that are already visible on the chart just doubles the same information across two channels, and the room ends up processing neither version properly.
The alternative is to let the chart carry the numbers and use your spoken words to carry the one thing the chart can’t: what the number means and why it matters right now.
Try this now. Take a slide with a chart on it and write what you’d actually say about it out loud. If your draft repeats numbers that are already labelled on the chart, cut those and replace them with the interpretation instead — “this is the third quarter in a row this has grown” rather than restating the percentage already printed next to the bar.
Said well, a chart and a sentence about it are doing two different jobs. Said badly, they’re both trying to do the same job at once, and the room ends up with neither.
