You may know someone like this. The engineer who understands the system better than anyone. The analyst who can see the shape of the numbers before the spreadsheet has finished loading. The specialist people turn to the moment something goes wrong. Plenty of people like this are superb presenters, but for some, something strange happens[…]
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Think about the last time you sat in an audience and found your mind quietly passing comment on the person at the front. Not unkindly, perhaps, and certainly not out loud, but steadily, the way a mind does when it has been asked to sit still for forty minutes. You might have wished they’d slow[…]
Think back to the last presentation you attended that wasn’t your own, and try to recall the very first words the speaker said once the thank-yous were out of the way. Was it something like “I know I’m all that stands between you and lunch”? Was it an apology for not having had enough time[…]
Think about the last presentation you sat through that was not your own. Forget the content for a moment and just remember how it felt. Did you leave that room, or that call, with more energy than you took into it, or with a little less? I have been thinking about that question since[…]
If your mind has ever gone blank in the middle of a presentation, you will not need me to describe it, because you will probably remember that moment far more vividly than anything you actually said that day. One moment you are talking about something you know well, something you have prepared and perhaps rehearsed[…]
Think of a speaker who genuinely connected with you. Not the slickest person you have ever sat in front of, and not the one with the best slides, but the one you were still thinking about on the way home, probably without being able to explain to anybody why. I would be surprised if the[…]
