How to speak:
Never open with a joke. Your audience is not ready to laugh yet. Open with a promise of what they will know by the end.
Your ideas are like your children. You are too close to them. What is obvious to you is invisible to everyone else. Explain the obvious.
The 5-minute rule: the first 5 minutes of any talk determine whether people will listen for the next 55. Spend more time on your opening than anything else.
Repeat your most important idea 3 times in 3 different ways. Once is never enough.
Build a fence around your idea. Tell people what it is NOT before you tell them what it IS.
Verbal punctuation. Pause. Let the idea land before moving to the next one.
Ask questions nobody will answer. Then wait 7 seconds. The silence is not awkward. It is processing.
Never read your slides. Your audience can read. They cannot listen and read simultaneously.
Use the board not the slides. Writing forces you to slow down. Slowing down forces clarity.
Inspire before you inform. Nobody learns from someone they are not inspired by.
End with a contribution not a summary. Tell them what you gave them. Not what you said.
Never say thank you at the end. It is weak. End with something that lands.
Stories make ideas stick. Data makes ideas understood. You need both. In that order.
The quality of your communication determines the quality of your ideas in the eyes of the world. Not the ideas themselves.
Practice is not preparation. Practice IS the skill.