Welcome to the better presentations blog!
I do my best to make this blog a resource for presenters - not pro-speakers, but real people who need to make presentations as part of their 'day job'. If there's something you really want to know about, just email me and I'll see what I can do (no promises except that I'll read your email - use simon@ and you can guess the rest of my address. :) )
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This month's most popular (and useful?) blog posts are:
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I think we’re all agreed that presentations are intended to do something, right? Better presentations make that outcome more likely – don’t they? We don’t stand up and present (or sit !) just for entertainment’s sake. So why do we spend so much of our time faffing about with our presentations instead of getting the …
Read more “Better Presentations from better hygiene”
Content and structure are the Cinderellas of presentations. Everyone fusses about Delivery but that’s not where the bread-and-butter of presenting happens. The real magic lies in knowing what to say and what order to say it in. So here’s a simple-but-powerful tool that’s going to make your presentation structure… well… better. It’s about a five minute …
Read more “Presentation design by using phone calls”
This is a simple blog with simple ambitions! It exists purely as a place for you, gentle reader, to get hold of all the free material I’ve created so far for the. The Reluctant Storyteller itself isn’t free, but these are the free bits. (Most of them are one-take live recordings shot during the Corona-Virus …
Read more “Reluctant storyteller resources”
Intro I did an interview recently with the wonderful (and lovely) Geoff Nicholson for his podcast, talking about the new #ReluctantStoryteller project I’m working on. I’ve popped this into a quick video if you want to watch for three minutes instead of reading 🙂 It’s a the bottom of this post. Step zero This is …
Read more “storytelling – the four steps”
There’s a lot of crap presentations training around at the moment saying “tell stories”… just “tell stores”. That’s about as much use as saying “be tall” to someone struggling because they can’t reach the top shelf. I used to have a problem with Nike’s slogan of “just do it” because I feared it encouraged people …
Read more “How to use stories in your presentations: a story matrix and using them the right way”
Credibility as a presenter comes from how much your audience like you (Warmth) and how much they trust you (Competence). You need both.
A while ago, I started to explore some of the reasons for not using not using stories in your presentations (and a few other things). Now I’d like to expand on that. Let’s assume that you’re using them for a good reason, so the question now becomes “why aren’t the stories in my presentation working?” …
Read more “why telling stories in your presentations isn’t working”
What’s an identity variable? I self-identify as male. I self-identify as married. An identity variable is something that is you use to build your self image. If I looked in the mirror and found that instead of a six-feet-tall white man I could see a five foot tall woman I’d be very, very confused! Personal …
Read more “presentations and identity variables”
How your room is set up makes a huge difference to how well your presentation is likely to go. Lots of it is obvious but some not…