Storytelling with Nancy Duarte: How to craft compelling presentations and tell a story that sticks

1. Make Audience the Hero

Adopt an empathy-first mindset by understanding your audience’s internal conflicts and challenges, positioning yourself as a mentor to help them get unstuck, as they hold the power to accept or reject your ideas.

2. Structure with “What Is, What Could Be”

Frame your talk using a “what is, what could be” cadence, starting with the current reality, moving to a potential future, and ending with a “new bliss” vision to create longing and persuade the audience to adopt your idea.

3. Visualize Your Message

Use visual tools like presentation software, live sketching, diagrams, or even napkin drawings to help your audience literally “see” what you’re saying, ensuring alignment and preventing misunderstandings, especially for complex ideas or processes.

4. Practice Presenting with Passion

To become a better presenter, choose a topic you are deeply passionate about and practice delivering a talk on it, as this experience will teach you to present from your soul and allow you to tap into that passion for future business presentations.

5. Manage Nerves with Visualization & Humor

Combat public speaking nerves by visualizing a friendly, delighted audience from their perspective, practicing calming breathing techniques, and chemically shifting your state with a playlist of funny videos right before going on stage.

6. Turn Off Visuals Strategically

In powerful moments, turn off supporting visuals to ensure the audience’s full attention is on your verbal narrative, body language, and the words coming out of your mouth, allowing your words to paint the pictures in their minds.

7. Look Directly into Camera Remotely

When presenting remotely, train yourself to look directly into the camera lens, not at the faces on your screen, to create a sense of direct eye contact with your audience and enhance engagement.

8. Sketch & Storyboard First

Before opening presentation software, take time to think, sketch, and storyboard your narrative (analog or digital) to ensure the message flow and key points are right, rather than building slides linearly.

9. One Point Per Slide, Tailored

Ensure each slide makes only one point that supports the overall big idea of your talk, and always modify content based on your specific audience and their communication culture, avoiding generic or recycled slides.

10. Prioritize Direct Interaction for High Stakes

For high-stakes requests or pitches, consider foregoing a full presentation deck in favor of direct interaction, using a mental model, whiteboard drawing, and maintaining eye contact to convey passion and build rapport.

11. Adopt “Pixar-like” Presentation Process

For high-stakes presentations, craft a narrative, big idea, and script, then visualize and chunk out key moments, developing revolutionary models that drive consensus and support the final delivery.

12. Implement Visual Slide Annotation System

To streamline presentation editing and version control, especially with multiple contributors, implement a visual annotation system that clearly indicates the status of each slide, allowing teams to quickly understand progress and focus areas.

13. Conduct Listening Tours & Rough Cuts

For internal presentations, especially those requiring goal alignment, start with a listening tour (surveys, interviews) to understand the audience’s current state, then create a rough-cut message (ugly slides are fine) and gather feedback from leaders before final delivery.

14. Use Slide Docs for Circulation

For presentations meant to be circulated via email without a presenter, create “slide docs” with more words, stronger pictures, and full prose, potentially including a detailed appendix, to ensure the audience understands your thinking independently.

15. Lead Movements with “Torchbearer” Approach

When leading a movement towards an alternate future, articulate the “dream,” guide people through the “leap,” “fight,” and “climb” phases, and use speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols at each stage to provide emotional fuel and dissipate fear, even if the path isn’t fully clear.

16. Seed a Groundswell for Impact

For significant impact, continuously seed an idea over an extended period, travel to plant seeds, and then scale by building training programs to sanction ambassadors, as Al Gore did with his presentation.

17. Enter Overlooked Market Gaps

Seek out and enter market gaps where existing professionals refuse to engage with new tools or methods, then actively learn and push the boundaries of what’s possible with those tools.

18. Thoughtfully Defer to Experts

When working with experts, pause, think, and consider their advice, often adopting their recommendations, as demonstrated by Al Gore’s approach with presentation specialists.

19. “Day in the Life” Storytelling for Product

For product development, use “day in the life” storytelling by walking in the customer’s shoes and illustrating each step of their journey to uncover strategic insights and identify critical areas for improvement, such as shifting to a mobile-first approach.

20. Articulate Product “Why” with Story

Product managers should develop the ability to unpack the “why” behind their product decisions and wrap it in a compelling story, conveying passion and meaning to move the product forward effectively.

21. Push Visual Boundaries for Impact

Challenge conventional presentation design by creating bold, unexpected visuals that evoke a strong audience reaction and return to principles that prioritize clarity and aesthetic appeal over common, poorly executed trends.

22. Align Visuals with Brand Essence

Ensure presentation visuals deeply align with and enhance the brand’s core identity, pushing creative boundaries to make the visuals an experience in themselves, rather than adhering to generic templates.

23. Prioritize Visual Clarity

Design visuals to be extremely clear, ensuring the audience immediately understands what they should focus on, which enhances their reception and enjoyment of the presentation.

24. Use Dense, Familiar Slides with Peers

When presenting to a team of peers who share a common shorthand and way of working, use dense or familiar slides, tables, or spreadsheets if they aid in aligning around a process, even if they might seem dense to outsiders.

25. Start with Conclusion for Execs

For specific audiences like executives or during fundraising, begin your presentation by stating the conclusion or “new bliss” first, as this audience type often prefers direct answers before diving into details.

26. Prioritize Content Over Video Production

For video content, prioritize the quality and informativeness of the message over high production value, as audiences often prefer authentic, content-rich videos even if they are less polished.

27. Apply “What Is, What Could Be” Daily

Use the “what is, what could be, new bliss” framework in everyday interactions, like asking for chores, by providing context on the current state and clearly articulating the desired future, tailored to the individual’s needs or “love language.”

28. Use Psychometrics & Storytelling in Hiring

In hiring, use psychometrics to understand candidates’ self-awareness and ask them to tell a story, as this helps assess their fit for a “systemic story culture” and their ability to adapt to others.