Knowing your subject gets you into the room. Being able to explain it, with energy and conviction, is what turns a good manager into a leader people follow.
Presenting well is a career accelerator. It can tip a deal your way, catch your boss’s attention and make your name in your industry. Yet many presentations send the audience to sleep, and many more never happen because the presenter is too nervous to volunteer. In one study of US university students, 64% said they were afraid of public speaking (Wikipedia).
The good news is that it’s a skill, and it can be learned. I’ve delivered hundreds of presentations to audiences around the world and now coach other people to do the same. This guide pulls together what I’ve learned, as a set of questions and answers. It starts with how communication works, because the best presenting tips make more sense once you know why messages go wrong, and then gets practical. There are eight figures to try, including a planner that times your talk for you.
Why does communication matter so much?
Ask a room of managers for the most important management skill and you’ll hear strategy, decision-making, people skills. Underneath almost all of them is communication: sharing what you know, understanding what others need, and getting people to act.
Patrick Winston, who taught at MIT for almost 50 years, put it more bluntly in his famous lecture How to Speak: your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write and the quality of your ideas, in that order. Most people would put the ideas first. He didn’t.
What actually happens when you communicate?
The classic model comes from engineering. In 1948 Claude Shannon, working on telephone lines at Bell Labs, published a theory of how a message gets from one place to another, and in 1949 he and Warren Weaver turned it into a book, The Mathematical Theory of Communication. A sender encodes a message, it travels through a channel, and a receiver decodes it. Along the way, noise gets in. Shannon’s way of measuring information is also how researchers found that every human language they tested carries about the same amount of it: roughly 39 bits per second, however fast it sounds. Later versions add the most useful part for managers: feedback, the receiver checking what they heard.
Where does the message go wrong?
Add some noise
Shannon’s model is tidy, and real conversations aren’t. In 1967 Paul Watzlawick and colleagues set out some rules of human communication, and the first is the one to remember: you cannot not communicate. Silence, a late reply, folded arms and the slide you skipped all send messages. In 1970 Dean Barnlund described communication as transactional: both people send and receive at the same time, each filtering what they hear through their own history, mood and expectations. What’s being said isn’t always what’s being heard.
What’s going on in the other person’s head?
People are human beings with minds inside, and those minds aren’t always in the same state.
Eric Berne, a psychiatrist, called his way of looking at this transactional analysis, and made it famous in Games People Play (1964). He suggested we each speak from one of three ego states:
- Parent: the voice of rules, judgement and care, learned from the adults around us. “You should…”, “Don’t worry, I’ll sort it.”
- Adult: the here and now. Facts, questions, reasoning.
- Child: feelings, fun, frustration, rebellion. “It’s not fair.” “This is brilliant!”
Every exchange is a transaction. When the reply comes back on the line it was aimed at, the conversation flows. When it crosses, it breaks down, and that’s where most workplace arguments start. Try it.
Complementary or crossed?
Person 1 says
Person 2 replies
The practical lesson for a presenter or a manager: if you want a grown-up conversation, speak from your Adult, and if someone comes at you as a critical Parent, answering from your Adult is usually the way out.
How well do people know you?
The Johari window, devised by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in 1955, splits what there is to know about you into four panes:
- Open: known to you and to others.
- Blind spot: known to others, not to you. How you come across, your habits, that thing you always say.
- Hidden: known to you, kept from others.
- Unknown: known to nobody, yet.
You grow the open area in two ways: by asking for feedback, which shrinks your blind spot, and by sharing more of yourself, which shrinks the hidden area. A high-performing team has large open areas, because people know where they stand with each other.
Grow the open area
Presenting is a fast way to learn about your blind spot. Ask people what they noticed, and listen.
Do you need to play politics?
I know, you hate politics. But not playing the game is playing the game. Every organisation has people who decide, people who influence the people who decide, and agendas that never make it into the minutes. A presentation lands in the middle of all that.
Simon Baddeley and Kim James offered a useful way to think about it in their 1987 paper Owl, fox, donkey or sheep: political skills for managers. One axis is how well you read the politics. The other is whether you act with integrity or play psychological games. The point of the model is that you can be politically aware and still act with integrity.
Which political animal are you?
Be the owl. Before an important presentation, find out who will be in the room, who they listen to and what each of them needs from you. That’s part of preparing well.
How should you prepare?
There’s a saying, often credited to Abraham Lincoln, that if you have six hours to chop down a tree you should spend four sharpening the axe. There’s no evidence he said it, but the advice holds. Most of a good presentation happens before you stand up.
Every presentation is different, even with the same content, because the venue, the audience, the time of day and the purpose change. Before you write a slide, answer these:
- Who are they? Their roles, their seniority, and what they care about.
- What’s their attitude? Friendly, indifferent or sceptical.
- How much do they know? New to the topic, or experts.
- How will they see you? Your status in the room, the power dynamics, and what to wear to suit the occasion.
- What do you want them to do afterwards? Not just know. Do.
- What will they object to? List the objections and questions, and prepare your answers. An AI assistant is good at this: ask it to play a sceptical member of your audience.
The two questions that change the talk the most are attitude and knowledge. Pick a combination and see how the approach changes.
Who's in the room?
Their attitude
What they know
How should you structure it?
Keep it simple. The oldest formula in presenting still works:
- Tell them what you’re going to tell them.
- Tell them.
- Tell them what you’ve told them.
The opening, about a fifth of your time. Say what you’ll cover and why it matters to them. Your first sentence should carry your main message, not a thank-you or an apology.
The middle, most of your time. Your points, in a logical order, each with an example or some evidence. Three points are easier to remember than seven.
The close. Say clearly that you’re finishing, so it doesn’t just tail off. Then summarise the key points and, if you want people to do something, say what. Slow down here. It’s the part people remember, and it often takes longer than you planned, so leave enough time for it.
Put in your slot length and the planner splits it up, estimates how many words you have, and gives you a timing card for the day.
Plan your talk
How do you keep to time?
If you’re given 30 minutes, fill 30 minutes. Running over is rude to the speakers after you. Finishing well short looks unprepared.
Most people speak faster in front of an audience than in rehearsal, and skip things they meant to say. So time your rehearsals at home to run 15 to 20% over your slot. On the day, the nerves will take that margin back.
While you’re presenting, use your slides as milestones: know which slide you should be on with ten minutes to go. Ask the organiser for a discreet five-minute warning, so you can skip a section if you need to. And if there’s a clock at the back of the room, that’s the best seat in the house for you.
Should you rely on slides?
I love technology, especially AI. It can help you develop ideas and make visuals that would have taken a designer days. But I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t rely on it working, especially when it’s someone else’s technology in someone else’s office.
Sometimes technology just isn’t welcome. I once presented to 25 partners of a large financial firm in London. I’d prepared 60 slides for a 60-minute session, but when I asked where the projector was, the CEO announced, “Oh no, Richard, this is a PowerPoint-free zone,” as everyone took their seats in front of me on beanbags. Good job I had some stories.
The best presentation I ever saw was by a sales director to his board. With a black marker on a flip chart, he drew a map of each region he was responsible for, in real time, in front of 20 people, and then talked through the numbers for each. It was hypnotic. Afterwards I asked him how he drew such accurate maps so quickly. “It’s easy,” he said. “I sneak into the room a couple of hours before and draw the outlines lightly in pencil. When it’s time to present, I just go over them.” Innovation doesn’t always mean technology.
The lesson: know your content well enough that the slides are the supporting act. The audience came to see you. If the projector won’t talk to your laptop, take it in your stride and carry on. And carry a backup on a USB stick, in more than one format, including a PDF.
When you do use slides, don’t make them text heavy. A slide full of paragraphs makes the audience read instead of listen, and they read faster than you talk, so they finish first and stop paying attention. One idea per slide, a few words, and a picture or a number where you can.
Assume your slides will be shared, too. People photograph them, post them and pass them on. Build them in bite-size pieces that make sense on their own, with your name or web address on each one, so a slide that travels still makes your point and points back to you.
What about fonts?
Choose fonts everyone can read, and that every computer has. A decorative font can be hard to read for anyone who finds text difficult to process, and a font that isn’t installed on the venue’s computer will be swapped for something else, which can wreck your layout. You often won’t be using your own computer, and there’s never time to ask IT to install your fonts while the audience waits.
I use Arial, which is on almost every system: 28 point for headings, 14 point for body text and 8 point for citations. Whatever you choose, do the back-row test. Stand at the back of the room, or put your slides on a screen and step well back. If you can’t read it easily from there, nor can your audience.
Why should you get to the room early?
Because something always goes wrong: the wrong cable, a software update, a missing clicker, the wrong version of the file. Being early gives you time to fix it without an audience watching.
Whenever I can, I visit the venue the evening before. I walk through the talk, look at the room from the audience’s seats, and decide where I’ll stand. It makes the space familiar, and familiar spaces are much less frightening. It’s as much about settling your mind as checking the technology.
How do you handle nerves?
Almost everyone gets nervous, and experience doesn’t make it disappear. I still get nervous sometimes.
Here’s the most useful fact I know about it: your audience can’t see your nerves nearly as clearly as you feel them. Psychologists call this the illusion of transparency. In experiments by Kenneth Savitsky and Thomas Gilovich, speakers rated their own nervousness as more obvious than the audience did. And in a second study, speakers who were simply told about this before they spoke felt less anxious and gave better speeches, as judged by the audience too. So: now you’ve been told.
A few more things help:
- Hold something. A pen, a clicker or your notes steadies shaking hands. Beyond a couple of metres, nobody notices a slight tremble anyway.
- Make it a conversation. Ask questions, run a quick show of hands, invite a volunteer. It takes the spotlight off you, and a conversation is less frightening than a monologue.
- Keep your head clear. My rule is nothing that changes how your mind works before you present: no alcohol, no energy drinks, and for me, not even extra coffee. Your body will make plenty of adrenaline on its own, and that’s useful. It sharpens you up, and the time flies once you start.
- Trust your preparation. It’s the real cure.
Does body language matter?
Yes, though not in the way the famous statistic suggests. You’ll often hear that communication is 7% words, 38% tone of voice and 55% body language. Those numbers come from experiments by Albert Mehrabian in 1967, and they only apply to a narrow case: when someone’s words say one thing about their feelings and their tone or face says another. Mehrabian himself has said they don’t apply to communication in general. If the words only counted for 7%, you could follow a lecture in a language you don’t speak.
What the research does support is that when your words and your manner disagree, people believe your manner. So make them agree:
- Let your face move. Happiness, surprise, concern: if none of it reaches your face, the audience won’t see it.
- Smile. People smile back, and a room that’s smiling is on your side.
- Make eye contact. Pick a few friendly faces in different parts of the room and talk to them in turn.
- Feel good, look good. Wear something you’re comfortable in, that suits the room.
How do you stop saying “um”?
Filler words, the ums, ahs, “you know”s and “basically”s, creep in when your mouth gets ahead of your thinking. A few are natural. Too many make you sound unsure, and they make the audience work harder to find your point. Try spotting them in this opening.
Spot the fillers
Three things cut them down:
- Know your material. Fillers fill the gap while you work out what to say next. If you know what comes next, there’s no gap.
- Pause instead. A silent pause sounds confident to the audience, even when it feels long to you.
- Record your rehearsals. You won’t hear your own fillers while you’re speaking. On a recording, they’re impossible to miss. Ask a colleague to count them for you, too.
What if your audience doesn’t share your first language?
More and more audiences are international, and many people in the room will be listening in their second or third language. A few habits make a big difference:
- Speak slowly. Slower than feels natural.
- Cut the slang and idioms. “Let’s not boil the ocean” or “it’s a slam dunk” mean nothing to many listeners, and they’re hard to translate. Avoid curse words too, unless it’s after dinner.
- Give people time to tune in. Open with a slide or two that doesn’t matter much, an introduction or an agenda, so the audience can get used to your voice and accent before the important part.
- Put the key words on the slide. People can often read a second language more easily than they can follow it spoken.
If you’re working with an interpreter, treat them as part of the act:
- Meet them beforehand. Chemistry matters, and a quick conversation helps them catch your accent and your pace.
- Share your slides and notes in advance. Better still, write out as much of the talk as you can. Interpreters prepare, and the more they have, the better you’ll sound.
- Leave gaps. Pause at the end of each point so the interpretation can catch up.
- Avoid idioms, metaphors and jokes that depend on wordplay. They’re where interpretation struggles most.
How do you handle questions?
Questions are the one part of a presentation you can’t script, which is why they worry people. But most questions fall into a handful of types, and each has a good way to handle it. Pick one.
Handling questions
You’ll notice the idea of a “bridge” in several of these. Politicians call it pivoting: acknowledge the question, then move to the point you want to make. Used well, it keeps your talk on track. Used too often, or too obviously, it looks like dodging, and the audience notices. Answer the question first whenever you can.
And if you don’t know, say so. Admitting it, and following up properly afterwards, builds more credibility than a confident guess. Nobody expects you to know everything. They do expect you to be honest.
How do you get better?
Practise where the stakes are low. Industry associations and trade bodies often look for speakers. In the language industry, for example, the European Language Industry Association runs events with plenty of chances to speak. Business school events, charity events, internal team meetings and even open mic nights all work. The aim is to get your hours in somewhere a stumble doesn’t matter.
Spend time with people who are good at it. Jim Rohn, the motivational speaker, is often credited with saying we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Whoever said it, good presenters are generous with advice if you ask.
Film yourself. Watch recordings of your rehearsals and of real talks. Sort the sound first, with a decent microphone, and then the lighting. Most phones shoot excellent video, so the picture is the least of your worries.
Ask for feedback, every time. What worked, what didn’t, and one thing to change next time. Then change it.
Use AI as a rehearsal partner. Paste in your outline and ask for the three toughest questions a sceptical audience would ask. Ask it to time a read-through of your script, or to point out where the argument jumps. It’s a good sparring partner. It can’t stand up and give the talk for you.
If you’d like help with a talk of your own, get in touch. And if your presentation is part of a workshop, how to plan a corporate workshop covers the rest of the day.
The greatest asset in any presentation is you: your knowledge, your stories and your commitment to giving the audience something worth their time. Prepare well, and let that come through.
Sources: Winston, P. (2018) How to Speak, MIT OpenCourseWare; Shannon, C.E. and Weaver, W. (1949) The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press, via Wikipedia, Shannon–Weaver model; Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J. and Jackson, D. (1967) Pragmatics of Human Communication, via Wikipedia, Paul Watzlawick; Barnlund, D. (1970) “A transactional model of communication”, via Wikipedia, Dean Barnlund; Berne, E. (1964) Games People Play, via Wikipedia, Transactional analysis; Luft, J. and Ingham, H. (1955), via Wikipedia, Johari window; Baddeley, S. and James, K. (1987) “Owl, fox, donkey or sheep: political skills for managers”, Management Education and Development, 18(1), pp. 3–19; Wikipedia, Albert Mehrabian; Wikipedia, Glossophobia; Wikipedia, Illusion of transparency, summarising Savitsky, K. and Gilovich, T. (2003) “The illusion of transparency and the alleviation of speech anxiety”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39(6), pp. 618–625; Wikipedia, Words per minute; Quote Investigator, To Cut Down a Tree in Five Minutes Spend Three Minutes Sharpening Your Axe; Wikipedia, Jim Rohn.