Presentation Skills Development

🎤 Ever feel like your presentations lack impact?  The first few seconds are critical.   A strong opening grabs attention and sets the tone for success.  Here are 9 unforgettable openers top presenters use to hook their audience:  --- 1️⃣ Start with a Surprising Statistic      ➟ Example: "Did you know 90% of startups fail in the first year?"      Why it works: Shocks the audience and sparks curiosity. 2️⃣ Ask a Bold Question      ➟ Example: "What if one decision could boost your productivity by 40%?"      Why it works: Makes them eager to learn the answer. 3️⃣ Open with a Powerful Quote      ➟ Example: "People will forget what you said, but never how you made them feel." — Maya Angelou      Why it works: Adds credibility and sets a thoughtful tone. 4️⃣ Share a Personal Story      ➟ Example: "Three years ago, I was on the brink of bankruptcy…"      Why it works: Builds trust and creates an emotional connection. 5️⃣ Paint a Vivid Picture      ➟ Example: "Imagine Earth from space, a tiny blue dot… Now imagine it without water."      Why it works: Engages the imagination and sticks with the audience. 6️⃣ Use Humor      ➟ Example: "Why did the marketer get off the trampoline? He was worried about his bounce rate!"      Why it works: Lightens the mood and makes the audience comfortable. 7️⃣ Make a Bold Promise      ➟ Example: "By the end of this talk, you’ll know how to triple your conversion rate."      Why it works: Gives the audience something to look forward to. 8️⃣ Challenge Your Audience      ➟ Example: "Stand up if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by data…"      Why it works: Encourages participation and energizes the room. 9️⃣ Create a Personal Connection      ➟ Example: "I once stood exactly where you are, wondering if change was possible…"      Why it works: Relates to the audience’s struggles and builds rapport. --- 💡 The right opener can transform your presentation.   Choose one that matches your message and watch your audience stay engaged.  💬 Which opener will you try next?   Let’s discuss in the comments! 👇  📌 Found this helpful? Save it for your next big presentation.   ♻ Share it to inspire your network.   ➡ Follow for more insights on leadership and communication.  

For 30 years, I've dreaded giving presentations. But I've still given more than I can count... Presenting is something that many leaders struggle with. But unfortunately, it's par for the course of running a business. The good news is, you don't need to be a naturally gifted speaker. I'm certainly not.  You just need to be well-prepared and follow some simple rules. This is what I would share with any leader before their next meeting: 1. The 20-Word Strategy Rule Your strategy must fit 1 sentence and answer three questions: 1. What are you passionate about? (Your purpose) 2. What can you be the best at? (Your USP) 3. How will you make money? (Your economic engine) 2. The Pre-Read Rule Always make sure you have done the reading beforehand.  Leaders should set the agenda and send pre-read material in advance. 3. The Working Together Framework When a new leader joins, share a short two-page Working Together document. It should answer 4 things clearly: 1. What do I expect them to achieve? 2. How can I get the best out of them? 3. How can they get the best out of me? 4. What motivates and demotivates each of us? 4. The Storytelling Rule Start with the broad ambition, then follow with three supporting messages. Keep in mind: - Practise until you can tell it without a laptop or notes. - Keep it simple. Too much information adds clutter and confusion. - Statistics and data will not persuade people. Make it about them, not you. 5. The Back-To-The-Floor Rule Before any major presentation, do this first: 1. Block out a morning to shadow your frontline team. 2. Put the headset on and listen to real customer conversations. 3. Walk the floor and look for what the data is not telling you. 4. Write down the one or two things that surprised you. 5. Build those observations into your presentation. 6. The Communication Rules Think in news headlines. Do not change the message too often.  Do not sugar-coat.  Be honest about bad news.  Bottom-up communication is essential. 7. Before You Walk In - Can I state our strategy in 20 words or fewer? - Have I sent pre-read material in advance? - Am I leading with a story, not a data dump? - Have I been to the shop floor recently enough to speak with authority? - Have I been honest about what is not working? - Does everyone in the room know what I am asking of them? - Could I present this without opening my laptop? Preparation is not glamorous. It's not meant to be. But if you want to earn the trust of a room, it’s absolutely necessary. If you want more lessons like these delivered to your inbox each week, subscribe to my newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/ergDQtiK If you're a leader, comment below if you've ever struggled with presentations. Or share a strategy that has helped you in meetings.

What makes a keynote truly resonate with an audience? I was recently helping a colleague prepare for his first keynote presentation. He knows that I spend a lot of time on keynote stages and that I enjoy coaching others who do as well. Stepping onto a keynote stage can feel daunting, but managing that adrenaline and delivering a compelling message comes down to preparation. When preparing a keynote, many people focus on gathering information. I encourage them to think instead about building a bridge of comprehension so the audience can clearly follow and connect with the message. One framework I often share is what I call the 5 P’s of keynote preparation. 1️⃣ Purpose. Define your goal. What exactly do you want your audience to Know, Feel, and Do? A clear purpose acts as a filter for what makes it into your keynote and ensures the content is relevant and meaningful. 2️⃣ Prime. Your keynote actually begins before you step on stage. Think carefully about your talk’s title and how it is announced. When you prime your audience well, they arrive ready and eager to hear your message. 3️⃣ Plan. Our brains crave structure. Instead of a wandering list of ideas, package your keynote logically. One framework I often use is “What? So What? Now What?” It keeps ideas concise, establishes relevance, and makes them easier to remember. 4️⃣ Premise. Avoid starting with “I’m glad to be here.” Capture attention immediately with a thoughtful question, a compelling story, or a surprising insight. Make it clear where you are taking the audience. 5️⃣ Presence. How you deliver matters just as much as what you say. Keep your posture strong and balanced, gesture with intention, use the space around you, and vary your vocal tone and pacing. These 5 P’s can help strengthen your keynote and improve any high-stakes communication. Always happy to help in crafting your keynote or delivering one to your firm. A quick glimpse at my keynote address at TiEcon last year, where I used the 5 P’s to prepare my own presentation. 👇

Here are three of the most powerful openers you can use for your presentation (with real-life examples): 1. Relational Daniel Pink started his TED Talk with a confession: “I need to make a confession at the outset here. A little over 20 years ago, I did something that I regret, something that I'm not particularly proud of.” By leading with vulnerability, he earns trust. It’s not his data or credentials that draw people in; it’s his honesty. Use it when:  You need to build warmth and credibility fast. 2. Disruptive In her TED Talk, Pamela Meyer walked on stage and said: “Okay, now I don’t want to alarm anybody in this room, but it’s just come to my attention that the person to your right is a liar. Also, the person to your left is a liar. Also, the person sitting in your very seats is a liar. We’re all liars.” The audience laughs, but they’re hooked. She has just reframed the topic of deception in a way they didn’t expect. Shock. Humor. Curiosity. All in the first ten seconds. Use it when: Your audience feels complacent or distracted. 3. Authority Martin Luther King Jr. began his “I Have a Dream” speech with: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” By echoing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, King immediately positioned the Civil Rights movement as a continuation of America’s founding ideals. He then continued by pointing out how the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation had yet to be completely fulfilled. This stark contrast created a dilemma… American ideals weren’t being upheld, and that was a problem. This intro grabbed his audience’s attention and set him up perfectly to deliver his core message. Use it when: The moment calls for gravity. Every audience asks three questions in the first 30 seconds: - Do I like you?  - Do I trust you?  - Do I need to listen? Any of these three openers can help you address each question. #PresentationSkills #BusinessStorytelling #PublicSpeaking

Why we just make it harder for female founders to get funded. Less than 5%. That’s the percentage of VC funding that goes to all-female founding teams. It hasn’t moved in over a decade. So no… this is not a dealflow problem. And it’s not a talent problem either. It’s something much more subtle and much more uncomfortable. In pitch meetings, we don’t ask the same questions. Not consciously. But consistently. Female founders get more prevention questions: -  “How will you avoid failure?” – “What are the risks?” – “How will you defend against competitors?” Male founders get more promotion questions: – “How will you scale?” – “What’s the upside?” – “How big can this get?” This has a direct impact. Startups asked mostly prevention questions raise 7x less capital. Those who manage to reframe the conversation raise up to 14x more. This is not about blaming investors. The bias is systemic. It affects men and women equally. But ignoring it doesn’t make it disappear. If you invest, try this: Before asking your next question, pause. Would you ask the same thing to a male founder? Because capital doesn’t only follow performance. It follows perception. And perception starts with the questions. Sikili Women for STEAM Sylvie Lemaire

How to build premium pitch decks in Lovable 🔥 I've seen a lot of founders and agency owners recently build their slide decks with Lovable, so I created a guide for you to do the same. Here's how it works: 1/ Start by giving Lovable the full picture Before you touch a single slide, tell Lovable who you are, who you're pitching, and what you want them to feel by the end. → Prompt: "I'm building a pitch deck for an early-stage startup pitching seed investors. The tone should feel confident and credible, and the design clean and modern. Let's build it slide by slide." 2/ Set your design system before anything else This is the mistake most people make. They jump straight into content and end up with a deck that looks different on every slide. Spend two minutes on this first. → Prompt: "Define a design system for this deck. Dark background, white text, single accent color. One display font for headlines, one clean font for body copy. Generous spacing throughout." 3/ Build one slide at a time Prompting your entire deck in one go will get you something generic. Build one slide, get it right, then move to the next. You stay in control of the narrative that way. → Prompt: "Now add the next slide. The goal is to clearly explain what we do and why it matters. Should feel simple and compelling." 4/ Use feeling words to shape the vibe Instead of describing layout, describe how the slide should make someone feel. Try words like "cinematic," "editorial," "tactile," "confident," or "bold and ambitious." Add "calm and trustworthy" for investor slides, or "energetic and forward-looking" for a product reveal. 5/ Visualize data instead of listing it Whenever you have numbers, timelines, or comparisons, ask Lovable to make them visual. A wall of bullet points kills momentum in any pitch. → Prompt: "Turn this data into a clean visual. No tables, no bullet points. Easy to scan and hard to ignore." 6/ Make your most important slide impossible to miss: Every deck has one slide that carries the most weight. Don't let it get lost in a busy layout. Give it space to breathe. → Prompt: "This is the most important slide in the deck. Make it feel that way. Bold, spacious, and visually distinct from the rest." 7/ Close with a clear direction Most decks fade out at the end. Give your audience one clear next step instead whatever moves things forward. → Prompt: "Create a closing slide with one clear call to action and our contact details. Confident and direct." 8/ Do a consistency pass before you share Ask Lovable to review the full deck before you send it. It will catch things you've stopped noticing. → Prompt: "Review the full deck for visual consistency and mobile responsiveness. Check spacing, font sizes, and alignment across every slide. Fix anything that feels off." Pro tip: Write prompts like you're briefing your best designer. Give them the intent and the feeling you're after, and leave room for them to surprise you.

Your startup story probably sounds like everyone else's. Traction, growth, success. Kurt Vonnegut, the famous American novelist, mapped why this fails: humans remember “shapes”, not facts. Without conflict and resolution, you're just noise in their inbox. Vonnegut drew stories as shapes on a blackboard - lines that rise, fall, or stay flat. He called "Man in Hole" the story people never tire of because it has the dramatic fall and climb that sticks: Character falls in hole. Character gets out of hole. We've loved this structure since the beginning of time because the brain prioritizes contrast. The fall creates tension. The climb creates relief. Together, they burn into memory while mundane details fade. Yet 90% of pitches are flat lines. Stuff like, "We help teams collaborate better." No tension. No relief. No memory. Compare that to Stripe's early pitch: "Every time you try to accept payments, you waste weeks on bank integration hell. With Stripe, just paste seven lines of code. First payment processes in minutes." Fall: weeks of integration hell Turn: paste seven lines Rise: processing payments in minutes Here's how to build a pitch that actually sticks: 1. Map the hole to a specific moment in their week Script for discovery calls: "Walk me through the last time this broke. What day? What were you trying to do? How long did it take to fix?" Write their exact answer. If they say "every Monday when we compile reports," your opener becomes: "Every Monday at 9am, you lose 3 hours to broken reports." Not "inefficient processes." Their words. Their moment. 2. The “turn” is one action that reverses direction Wrong: "Our platform automates workflows" Right: "Paste this webhook" (Stripe) Right: "Type instead of meeting" (Slack) Right: "Drag your file here" (Dropbox) Test: Can someone DO the turn in 5 seconds? If not, you haven't found it. 3. Show the slope change with their data Never say "you could save time." Instead: "Upload your last sprint's logs. See that pattern? That's 4 hours of debugging that disappears. Run it now." The shape creates urgency. Features create comparison shopping. A/B test template for cold outreach: Version A: Feature-first (what you probably use now) Version B: Hole-Turn-Rise (Man in Hole structure) Send 500 cold emails of each version to similar prospects. Measure reply rate. The “shape” version typically outperforms. Not because your product changed. Because the story's trajectory determines what sticks. Vonnegut knew: content doesn't drive memory. Shape does. Your product might be revolutionary. But if your story is a flat line, you're forgotten before they close the landing page.

Your first words can make or break your presentation. Here are 12 ways to introduce your idea powerfully: 1. Start with a myth-busting question: Example:  Take a common myth related to your industry. Ask: "How many of you believe this is true?" Then say: “I’m here to bust this myth!” 2. Quote a thought leader to “borrow” authority: Example: "Steve Jobs once said, 'Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.'" 3. Share a surprising statistic to hook the audience: Example: "Did you know that 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last two years alone?" Bonus: To enhance impact, repeat the number afterwards (e.g. “90%!”) 4. Tell a story to connect emotionally. Example: "Let me tell you about a little girl who changed her community with a simple idea." 5. Show a captivating visual to spark conversation. Example: "This is what the future might look like" Bonus: If you used AI to create the image, credit it. 6. Ask a question the audience relates to. Example: "By a show of hands, how many of you have experienced this issue personally?" 7. Use humor to lighten the mood. Example: Use a relevant joke or funny observation about the topic or industry. Watch-out: Don’t use a clichéd joke and expect the audience to laugh. 8. State a bold claim to challenge assumptions. Example: "I'm here to tell you that the traditional schooling system is failing our students today." 9. Play an audio clip to engage the senses. Example: "Listen to this sound—it's the rate of a heart beating in a high-stress situation." 10. Begin with historical context for background. Example: "Back in 1920, this technology was just a wild idea—today, it's a reality that's changing everything." Watch-out: Don’t use a long, boring historical fact. 11. Present a problem to highlight a need. Example: "What if I told you 70% of our project failures stem from a single overlooked factor?" 12. Use a prop to help visualize concepts. Example: "This ordinary-looking pen has a story that might just change how you view writing forever." A powerful starter makes a great first impression. And creates momentum to spark off your talk. Remember: Fortune favors the prepared. So save this- it'll come in handy before your next presentation. Want to impress the next time you speak? Follow Nausheen I. Chen to never miss a tip. P.S. Which starter will you pick?

The Introvert's Guide to Commanding a Room (7 steps without changing your personality): Presence doesn't require extroversion. The quietest voice often carries the most weight when strategically deployed. Here's how introverts can own any room authentically (check my favorite #5): 1. "Selective Contribution" ↳ Speak 20% of the time but own 80% of the impact moments ↳ Focus on synthesizing others' ideas rather than generating new ones 2. "Intentional Positioning" ↳ Arrive early to claim physical space that suits your comfort level ↳ Use stillness as a power move when others fidget nervously 3. "Preparation Leverage" ↳ Send one thoughtful pre-meeting question that frames the discussion ↳ Research speakers and topics to enable confident, targeted engagement 4. "Controlled Vulnerability" ↳ Share one personal insight that others are thinking but won't say ↳ Transform perceived weaknesses into relationship-building moments 5. "Strategic Silence" ↳ Allow uncomfortable pauses that prompt others to reveal more ↳ Withhold immediate agreement to give your eventual "yes" more weight 6. "Energy Conservation" ↳ Schedule recovery blocks before and after high-stimulation events ↳ Redirect group interactions into one-on-one conversations when possible 7. "Authentic Authority" ↳ Speak from lived experience instead of theoretical knowledge ↳ Replace small talk with purposeful questions that showcase others Your introversion isn't a barrier to impact. It's your secret advantage in a world exhausted by empty charisma. Which of these approaches would make the biggest difference in your next meeting? ♻️ Share this to help another leader level up ➕ Follow Helene Guillaume Pabis for more on speaking

Most presentations are structured backwards. You start with context. Build to analysis. Then finally reveal what you want them to do about it. But Jeremy Irons in Margin Call shows the right way: lead with what matters most. The PISC Framework for Executive Presentations: Problem: What's actually wrong? Skip the data dump. Lead with the core issue that demands attention. Impact: How does this affect us? Make the consequences crystal clear. No impact, no urgency. Solution: What are our options? Present 2-3 viable paths forward. Executives decide, they don't diagnose. Consequence: What happens next? Map out the downstream effects of each choice. "Speak as you might to a young child or a golden retriever." Brutal advice. Brilliant results. Most presentations fail because they're structured for the presenter's comfort, not the executive's decision-making process. What's your go-to structure for high-stakes presentations?