How to craft compelling presentations using story structure and empathy

Executive overview

Most people default to dumping information into slides, losing their audience before the first slide ends. The presenter is not the hero — the audience is. Their job is to come alongside the audience like a mentor, not to perform.

The core insight: structure every communication around contrast — what is vs. what could be — and the audience will long for the future you're painting.

Audience as hero: the empathy-first mindset

• The audience holds the balance of power — they decide to accept or reject your idea
• Presenter's role mirrors Obi-Wan Kenobi: provide an outer tool (call to action) and an inner tool (emotional resolve)
• Before building any deck, ask: who am I speaking to, and how will I help them get unstuck?
• Signs you got it right: people react, share, and engage before you've even asked them to

The what is / what could be framework

• Every talk moves along a baseline of "what is" (current reality) punctuated by rises to "what could be" (future state)
• The pattern repeats — what is, what could be, what is, what could be — then ends on "new bliss"
• This mimics how stories build and release tension; audiences are wired for this cadence
• Works at any scale: a two-minute ask, a Gettysburg Address-length talk, or a full keynote
• Steve Jobs' iPhone launch used rapid-fire what is / what could be contrasts when comparing to BlackBerry

Making your audience see what you're saying

• Ask yourself: can they see what I'm saying? If not, make it visual
• One slide, one point — every slide supports a single "big idea" for the whole deck
• The big idea = your point of view + what's at stake if they don't adopt it
• "Star moments" — dramatic data, evocative stories, powerful images — create lasting memory
• When slides are off, the audience is 100% focused on you; Dr. King had no slides for a reason
• Whiteboard sketches and napkin drawings are often more effective than polished decks in small meetings

Slide-making in practice

• Storyboard on paper before opening the software — get the narrative right first
• Slide docs (presentation software used as a memo) work for async sharing: write full prose, include appendix
• Dense slides are fine for internal team meetings where everyone shares context and shorthand
• Don't pull from the repository and assemble; build from your audience's perspective each time
• For exec audiences: start with the conclusion (new bliss); for audiences who need to be convinced: build the longing first

Presenting without nerves

• Nervous presenters tend to have the best content — depth and thoughtfulness correlate with anxiety
• Fight-or-flight is triggered because the brain perceives a stage as a physical threat
• Sit in the audience seats before the talk; visualise a friendly face looking back at you
• Build a pre-talk playlist of videos that make you laugh — the chemical shift from fear to laughter is real
• Calm down or fire up depending on your baseline energy — know which one you need

Leading movements, not just meetings

• A single presentation is rarely enough; sustained change requires a five-act movement structure
• Acts: dream → leap → fight → climb → arrive
• The leader is a torchbearer — a torch illuminates only a few feet ahead, but that's enough to keep people moving
• Use speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols at each phase to give followers the emotional fuel to continue
• The messy middle (fight and climb) is where most movements stall; leaders must communicate through it

Lessons from Apple, Al Gore, and Airbnb

• Al Gore's success came from five years of seed-building before the Inconvenient Truth presentation went public
• Apple's early presentations pushed the medium — one bold word in hot pink on black lit up an entire auditorium
• Airbnb hired a Pixar storyboard artist to walk through a customer's day; a single insight from that exercise shifted strategy to mobile-first
• A multinational exec won a $100M budget by ditching five slides and drawing on a whiteboard instead
• Informal, information-dense video content consistently outperforms polished, high-production equivalents on social

Practical tips for product managers and founders

• Sketch a storyboard before opening presentation software
• If a meeting is small and internal, dense slides are fine — match the format to the room
• Ask: do I even need a deck? Eye contact and a whiteboard beat slides when stakes are personal
• Map every slide back to your one big idea; cut anything that doesn't support it
• Use the what is / what could be contrast in any moment of influence — meetings, emails, one-on-ones