When preparing a presentation, it’s never a good idea to begin with a rule. If you do, you’re focusing on the appearance of good delivery and not the effect of it.

Just as you can’t rehearse your way to success, you can’t design your way there either.

Well-designed visuals do more than provide information; they bring order to the conversation.

A successful presentation needs to be both buttoned up (orderly) and free-flowing (a conversation). The tension between the two, the fact that both things are happening at once, defines the process.

We should just stop calling these things presentations altogether. Everyone gets hung up on that word. Wouldn’t it be easier to just call them conversations? That’s really what they are.

Her favorite stepping-aside technique was to lay out a dizzying mountain of complex steps and then pronounce the conclusion self-evident. Excuse me? Things that are self-evident don’t need you or the presentation anyway. Relying only...

Improvement is achieved by the ripple effect of a few simple changes in approach, attitude, or habit.

During the first few minutes of your presentation, your job is to assure the audience members that you are not going to waste their time and attention.

It’s hard to hold a conversation with people when you’re not seeing them.