One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.
You are not the audience
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I was sitting halfway back in a local cinema. My kids beside me, hands deep in bags of sweets. On screen, Mario and Luigi were racing through the desert. The sound effects were all there. But the voice wasn’t. Chris Pratt instead of Charles Martinet. It should have worked. It didn’t. Next to me, my kids were completely absorbed. I wasn’t. A few days later, I found myself leaning forward in the same seat. A quiet karaoke scene before launch. Not slow. A moment where the real person slips through. Two films. Two completely different experiences. The first was The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. The second was Project Hail Mary. 💡 ONE IDEA WELLIt would be easy to say: One film is good. But that’s not true. They’re both doing exactly what they were designed to do. Just for different people. 🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGEWhen something doesn’t land, we assume the problem is the thing itself. The slides weren’t good enough. But often the real issue is simpler. You built it for yourself. Not for the audience in front of you. A ConfessionI’ve done this. My first talk on ingested foreign bodies - the one that eventually led to the Lego experiment - fell flat. It was an audience of serious clinicians. And I gave them something that didn’t match what they were expecting. Too playful. At the time, I thought the problem was the talk. It wasn’t. It was the fit. 🛠️ TRY THISBefore your next talk, post, or teaching session, ask one question: 👉 Who is this actually for? Not in general terms. Specifically.
And then this: 👉 What would they love that I might not? The best communicators don’t just make things good. They make them fit. For the people in front of them. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: You are not the audience. And if it didn’t land - they might not be wrong. If this resonated, share it with someone who’s preparing a talk right now. |
TEACHING ISN’T A SCRIPT. NEITHER IS THIS.
One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.
You know the poster. A bald eagle glides across a bruised blue sky, wings outstretched above the shadow of a pine forest. Beneath it, in silver capital letters, is a single instruction: DARE TO SOAR There is a quotation underneath, in writing too small to read from any useful distance, about attitude and altitude. The whole thing is surrounded by a heavy black frame. You may have seen it in the corridor of a conference centre. Or on the wall of a manager’s office. Or in a meeting room where...
I used to hate facial hair.But then it grew on me. That joke only works if you leave a gap. Not a dramatic silence.Not a raised eyebrow, step forward, Netflix-special sort of pause. Just enough space for the audience to catch up. The first line sets them off in one direction.The second line turns the corner. But if you rush from one to the other, the joke collapses before anyone has time to enjoy it. Comedians know this instinctively. They don’t just write punchlines.They leave room for the...
Like him or loathe him, Jimmy Carr understands something many presenters don’t. The brain is a difference detector. For ninety minutes, the room moved at speed. Rapid-fire jokes. Setup. Punchline. Setup. Punchline. The audience barely had time to recover before the next gag arrived. And then, suddenly, he slowed down. He started talking about male loneliness. About suicide. About how men often struggle to ask for help directly because they feel the need to feel useful first. The jokes...