Stand and Deliver: Taking Your
Presentations to the Next Level
Alan Barker, is Managing Director of
Kairos Training Limited, a consultancy
based in the UK. He has over twenty
years experience training and coach-
ing communication skills, creativity,
problem-solving, and innovation. Alan
has published over 20 books and also
works regularly as a freelance blogger,
copywriter, and speechwriter. He grad-
uated with an MA from the University
of Cambridge.
Baker_Stand_163713.indd 1
Alan Barker
Abstract: You make presentations regularly. Theyre good.
But you know they could be better. In the post-PowerPoint
era, audiences are making new demands of presenters.
Attention spans are shifting (and probably shrinking).
Social media are introducing challenging new forms
of interaction. How do you take your skills to the next
level? How to make your presentation smarter, bolder,
and more compelling? Help is at hand, not just from the
latest research findings but also from a long tradition of
knowledge and practice that remains as relevant now as it
has been for centuries. This article will help you address
your audiences expectations, take command of the mo-
ment, and deliver presentations that engage, influence,
and inspire.
Key Words: presentation skills, conference speaking,
persuasion, influence, leadership, rhetoric, management
Introduction: Presentations, from Good to Great
My guess is that youre already a good presenter. But you
know you could do better. What will make your presen-
tations, not merely good, but great?
Well, lets start by dispelling two common misconceptions.
A presentation is not a slide deck. Dont be fooled when
people ask you for a copy of your presentation. They
want those slides because they cant remember what
youve been telling them. Thats not your fault. Its the
way presentations work.
Which brings us to misconception number 2.
A presentation is not an effective way to present information.
Try this exercise: write down, from memory, six points
from the last presentation you sat through. You can prob-
ably remember the presenter, a few stories that they
told, and perhaps one or two startling facts. But could
you follow a detailed process accurately after having it
presented to you?
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 Stand and Deliver: Taking Your Presentations to the Next Level
So why is your audience asking you to
present? Not, I think, to be informed. People
ask you present because they want to engage
with your material: to participate more fully
in decisions or contribute more creatively to
a project. More than that, they want to engage
with you. And somewhere, deep downeven
in the most corporate of presentationsyour
audience wants to have a good time.
Its not putting too strongly to say that
your audience wants you to inspire them.
What Makes a Great Presentation?
A good presentation, then, talks about its
subject and informs. A great presentation,
in contrast, talks to its audience and inspires
them. How does it do that?
A great presentation is well spoken. At the
heart of any presentation are the words you
speak. Those words need to be clear, inter-
esting, and stimulating, and they need to be
well spoken. The hesitations and vocal tics
that might work in a normal conversation
have no place in a presentation.
A great presentation tells us something
authentic about its speaker. The audience
should learn something about you: yourview
of the world, the way you think, your values,
hopes, and dreams. If the audience glimpses
your heart and mind, theyll be more ready
to believe you.
A great presentation is bold. It has a sim-
plemessage, expressed in memorably simple
language. Life is complicated; its easy to
find yourself qualifying and hedging. A great
presentation offers a clear point of view and
presents it respectfully and with conviction.
A great presentation persuades. At the very
least, you want the audience to believe you.
But you also want them to believe in you.
And you may well want them to believe that
something is worth doing.
A great presentation touches the imagination
as well as the intellect. It addresses those
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parts of the mind that mere information
cannot reach. It includes vivid images and
emotions, stories, and descriptions of real
people doing real things. It does more than
persuade; it moves its audience.
A great presentation binds its audience into
acommunity. By the end, the audience
should feel, however fleetingly, that youve
welded them into a single body. Not only
should they agree with what you have said,
but they should identify with youand with
what you sayand, indeed, with each other.
Rhetoric: The Ancient Art of Persuasion
Creating a great presentation is clearly a chal-
lenge. Luckily, we have a body of knowledge
and practice to help us.
Rhetoric is both persuasive language and
the study of persuasion. It has its roots in
ancient Greece: Aristotle wrote a book on
the subject.1 In the Roman period, Cicero
studied and practiced rhetoric in great
depth. Quintilian, a Spanish Roman, wrote
a massive manual called The Institutes of
Oratory, which became hugely influential
in the Renaissance.2
And yet, rhetoric has always had a du-
bious reputation. Many in Greecemost
notoriously, Platocondemned it as false
knowledge. Today, the word carries conno-
tations of deceitful language: we speak of
empty rhetoric or mere rhetoric; we ask
what lies behind the rhetoric or how we
can avoid rhetoric.
But we cant avoid rhetoric.Rhetoric is all
around us. Every time we seek to convince,
to market or to lead, we speak rhetorically.
The skills and ideas developed by Aristotle,
Cicero, and their descendants over the last
2,000 years can still help us to create great
presentations.3
Three Modes of Persuasion: Ethos,
Logos, Pathos
According to Aristotle, any presentation in-
volves three elements: the presenter, the
presentation, and the audience. Each ele-
ment offers the opportunity to persuade.
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 Stand and Deliver: Taking Your Presentations to the Next Level
Presenters can persuade by virtue of their
character; the presentation can persuade
through the logic of its argument; and
the audience can be persuaded by being
moved emotionally. Aristotle named these
three kinds of appeal ethos, logos, and pa-
thos, and he called them artistic proofs,
meaning that they were skills that can be
learned.
We could translate ethos as reputation
or credibility. We tend to believe people
we trust or respect. For Aristotle, ethos con-
sists of three qualities.
Virtue
The Greek word, arte, means excellence.
If you can show that you share your audi-
ences valuesor better still, demonstrate
how you share themyoull increase your
ethos with them.
Practical wisdom
The Greeks called this phronesis; Cicero
called it prudentia or prudence. We might
call it common sense or street smarts.
Phronesis rejects the extreme and seeks the
middle way (remembering, of course, that
the middle way for one audience could be
an extreme solution for another). Phronesis
knows that rules are sometimes meant to
be bentor even, possibly, broken.
Selflessness
This is disinterested goodwill: the Greeks
called it eunoia. Cicero translated the word
as benevolentia, giving us our word benevo-
lence. Explaining the personal sacrifices
you have made will increase your eunoia.
You could explain that you haveperhaps
reluctantlychanged your views to one
the audience holds.
At the heart of logos is argument. All ar-
guments address an issue, which we can
best express as a question.
Should we open a new factory?
Is the leader of this political party an
extremist?
Is this man guilty of murder or manslaughter?
An argument addresses the issue by:
making a case;
supporting the case with reasons; and
binding the reasons to the case with logic.
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At its simplest:
[Case] because [Reason].
No argument, however, is wholly logical.
The reasons supporting your case must be
based on the assumptions that you know
your audience holds. Those assumptions
will be based on deeper values or beliefs.
Thus, logos connects closely to ethos.
Pathos appeals to the audiences feelings.
If you want your audience to do some-
thing, they must feel that they want to do it.
E-motions, after all, provoke motion: thats
their natural function. Pathos, though, in-
volves more than mere emotional arousal.
Stories, for example, can engage your au-
diences feelings. And pathos relates to
ethos through the idea of identification: the
sense that speaker and audience share the
same values. (Think of the pleasure of ex-
periencing an exciting movie with a large
audience, of singing in a choir, or watch-
ing your home team play with thousands
of other supporters.)4
The Five Canons of Rhetoric: Five Steps
to Success
In his book De Inventione, Cicero divides
rhetoric into five canons.
1. Invention: deciding on a topic
Invention concerns finding something
to say (its name derives from the Latin
invenire, to find).
2. Arrangement: creating a structure
Arrangement is about how we order the
ideas and material in the presentation.
3. Style: finding the best possible words
Style concerns the artful expression of
ideas. If invention addresses what we
say, style deals with how we say it.
4. Memory: helping yourself and your
audience remember what you say
We need to remember what to say. But
we may also need to recall new informa-
tion if we find ourselves improvising.
And we need to help the audience to
rememberespecially as theyre likely
to remember very little.
5. Delivery: using your own natural
resources
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