A Blog with Tips & Tricks for Enlightened Presenters
Get Time on Your Side
Most people treat timing like a scheduling chore. They polish the slides, rehearse the story, and then accept whichever hour the calendar coughs up. You’ve probably done this too…. PRESENTER: “When can we present to [audience]?” ADMIN: “They are available at 12:30pm.” But the clock is not neutral. It never has been. Time shapes attention,…
Get Time on Your Side
Most people treat timing like a scheduling chore. They polish the slides, rehearse the story, and then accept whichever hour the calendar coughs up. You’ve probably done this too…. PRESENTER: “When can we present to [audience]?” ADMIN: “They are available at 12:30pm.” But the clock is not neutral. It never has been. Time shapes attention,…
Get Time on Your Side
Most people treat timing like a scheduling chore. They polish the slides, rehearse the story, and then accept whichever hour the calendar coughs up. You’ve probably done this too…. PRESENTER: “When can we present to [audience]?” ADMIN: “They are available at 12:30pm.” But the clock is not neutral. It never has been. Time shapes attention,…
Get “Butts in Seats” for Your Vision
In a World Where Change Comms Fall Flat… Most change communications rush to the good news. “Team, exciting update! Big moves ahead. Bright future. Trust us.” It’s the corporate equivalent of skipping to the last page of the novel. You get the resolution… but none of the meaning. Leaders do this all the time. They…
Boil it Down. Make it Sticky.
Lessons from a Texas Cold Front Earlier this week, North Texas slipped under 40 degrees for the first time this season. Overnight, fleece tech vests appeared everywhere and the trees finally committed to changing color. At my house, that first cold snap means warm apple cider on the stove. Cinnamon in the air. A little…
Familiarity > Originality
Familiar Feels Fresh When it’s Done Right What do Led Zeppelin, Queen, and AC/DC have to do with Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, and Billie Eilish? More than you’d think. Listen closely and you’ll hear it. Zeppelin’s blues riffs echo through the clean pop minimalism of “As It Was.” There’s swagger beneath the polish. The same…
Don’t Cook Dinner in the Dark
Don’t Cook Dinner in the Dark. Ever tried it? You could do it. Probably. But would you like the results? Probably not. That’s what it’s like when leaders accept the responsibility to present, but don’t rehearse. They waste their audience’s time and risk losing their trust. Most leaders don’t have a rehearsal playbook. They click…
Demystifying Executive Presence
Executive presence starts with knowing what you stand for. “Did you love your father?” “Yes.” “Prove it.” That scene from Contact still hits. It reminds us how difficult it is to defend (even define) an abstract noun. Love. Trust. Hope. Executive presence falls into the same category. Everyone talks about it, but few can define…
Stop Pitching. Start Quantifying.
No one buys an idea unless they see what’s in it for them. It’s why so many great ideas die in conference rooms, buried under polite nods and parking-lot comments like “Let’s revisit this next quarter.” It’s not that your idea wasn’t good. It’s that you didn’t make the value visible. When leaders quantify the…
Are You DeckPendent?
We all know the signs. The leader who can’t seem to think except through slides. The team that measures progress in deck length. The meeting that dies by bullet point. But what if (gasp) you’re part of the problem? Give yourself some grace. DeckPendency isn’t a character flaw. It’s a corporate reflex. The habits we…