The value of a strong presentation is structurally underestimated. All the attention goes to the content, to what you know and want to get across. Too little goes to how you make it land with your audience. Out of ignorance? Often, yes.
And yet a presentation is often the very starting point of new opportunities: a new client, a pitch won, a stronger position in your career. John Medina, developmental molecular biologist at the University of Washington and brain scientist, has spent years researching how the brain learns and remembers.
This is where many presentations go wrong. Nothing is remembered, or exactly the wrong thing. Nothing is learned.
I used Medina’s insights in two ways when developing my presentation training. First, to build the training itself so that it sticks, even years later. After all, you forget a training just as quickly as a presentation if it isn’t built according to those same brain rules.
Then I wove his theory into the content itself, as concrete insights you can apply straight away when creating your own presentation.
Here are the eight that make the biggest difference.
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Repetition is not an unnecessary luxury
Your short-term memory throws new information overboard within seconds, unless you repeat it a few times. If you don’t, it simply disappears. So let your key message come back several times in your presentation, but in a different form each time: a figure here, a story there, an image at the end. That way it doesn’t feel like repetition, and the message still lands a layer deeper each time.
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You remember an image, not a sentence
“The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things”, Medina writes, and that applies just as much to what you show as to what you say. If you only hear information, 10% of it is left after three days. Add an image, and that rises to 65%. Your brain is simply wired for visuals, there’s nothing you can do about that. So choose images that make your audience stop for a moment, and the more senses you engage, the deeper it sticks.
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Boredom is the fastest way to lose your audience
John Medina uses a ten-minute rule: give your audience a new stimulus regularly to hold their attention. Because however interesting your subject, without variety you risk losing people along the way. So build tension into your presentation and surprise them now and then with something unexpected. Also build in interaction, for example with a multiple-choice question: answer A, B or C. Working with a timeline? Let your audience guess first in which year something happened and only then show the answer. Not a history lesson, but a game.
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No two brains process information the same way
One colleague remembers a story, another a chart, a third only when they can try it out themselves. Take that into account and vary the format: figures next to stories, complex content next to a metaphor that suddenly makes it clear. Your audience is rarely a uniform group.
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Movement keeps the brain awake
Fortunately, you don’t have to make your participants jog between slides. But physical movement does activate the brain and increases concentration. Let them vote with a show of hands now and then, stand up for a moment, or walk to the other side of the room for a short exercise. Small effort, measurable effect.
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A stressed brain doesn’t learn
Stress blocks the ability to learn, simple as that. And nothing stresses an audience faster than a slide they first have to decipher before they can listen to what you’re saying. Keep your slides accessible, always explain a chart, including what the axes mean, and resist the urge to show every detail you know. Less stress, more remembered.
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Emotion is the glue of memory
Facts persuade the head, emotion anchors them in memory. So tell stories, use examples with a human dimension, and tell them about your own challenge and doubt. That engages people, and touches something figures alone don’t. That’s not a weakness in a presentation for experts, it’s exactly what makes it stick. See also the tip: emotion in your presentation.
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Give them something to take home
One last rule from Medina that I deliberately saved for the end: we are born explorers. As a baby, you want to touch, taste and test everything, and that hunger to learn something new never completely disappears. So always give your audience something to take home that they didn’t know yet. That’s the detail they’ll remember longest, long after the last slide.
Cramming eight brain rules into one presentation backfires. Choose two or three that fit your story and you’ll already notice the difference. In the training, I turn the full Brain Rules into concrete tools, ready to apply to your own presentation tomorrow.
