Guides
Eight things worth knowing before you present.
Written because most presentation advice is either untested or was tested and failed, and it is difficult to tell which from the outside.
Every claim here names its source, and where the evidence is thin or does not transfer cleanly to a meeting room, it says so. Free, and there is nothing to sign up for.
Advice you have been given that does not survive checking.
Both of these are taught in corporate training rooms every week. Both were corrected years ago, in public, by the researchers involved.
Does power posing work before a presentation?
The original study did not replicate. One of its own authors no longer believes it. What survives is smaller than the talk suggests — and more useful.
Is 93% of communication really nonverbal?
Two studies from 1967, single spoken words, photographs of faces. Mehrabian has spent decades objecting to how his own finding gets used.
What is actually going on in the room.
Recall has a shape, expertise makes you harder to follow, and nerves are not the problem they look like. Three mechanisms that decide more than technique does.
What people actually remember from a presentation
Recall is not a flat average of what you said. It has a shape, it has been measured since 1962, and knowing the shape changes where you put your best material.
Why you cannot explain your own work simply
In 1990 a Stanford student had people tap out songs on a table. The tappers thought half their listeners would guess the tune. Three in a hundred and twenty did.
What to do about nerves before you present
Trying to be calm means fighting your own body. There is a better-tested move, it takes three words, and it works because it does not require the arousal to go away.
Specific situations, prepared properly.
The ones people search for at eleven at night, when it is happening tomorrow.
How to prepare for a board presentation
A board meeting is not a presentation with more important people in it. The failure modes are different, and so is the preparation.
How to answer a question you do not know the answer to
The damage almost never comes from not knowing. It comes from the four seconds afterwards, and those four seconds can be prepared like anything else.
How many slides for a 20-minute presentation?
The honest answer is that slide count is the wrong variable. The one that has been measured is how much a person can hold at once, and it is smaller than your deck assumes.