A Communications Coach’s 3 Favorite Decks on Presenting
By Lorraine K. Lee on April 10, 2015
Carmine Gallo has built a career on the art of presenting. Not only was he a broadcast journalist for CNN and CBS, but he’s coached executives at Coca-Cola, Chevron and more on public speaking. He penned the bestselling books “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs” and “Talk Like Ted: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds,” and speaks about leadership and communication at events around the world.
So what, according to Gallo, do speakers need to know — and do — to be successful? He shared with us his three favorite SlideShares on presenting:
Lessons From the Bamboo Fields
Top speaker and presenter Garr Reynolds uses bamboo imagery to show how to give great presentations, in this TEDx Tokyo deck. “The slide design is gorgeous and I love using bamboo as a metaphor for effective presentations. Bamboo is flexible, adaptable, and resilient—the components of inspiring presentations,” Gallo says. “You’ll also notice how few words Garr uses. The average corporate slide has 40 words. It takes Garr 10 slides to reach 40 words. There’s power in simplicity! Fewer words are best.”
Be Like Bamboo (TEDxTokyo 2011 slides) from garr
The New Generation of Storytellers
Your consumers’ attention is changing, so your marketing should too, says Gary Vaynerchuk in his deck about the new wave of storytelling. “This 64-slide deck contains nuggets of wisdom for any designer or communicator,” Gallo says. “The presentation also has humor. Alongside a photo of Gary, slide 5 reads: ‘The reason I was able to be so successful at Wine Library wasn’t my charisma…’ The slides read like Gary is actually speaking to you — humor and all.” Beyond the humor, Gallo likes that there is only one idea and one key image on each slide. “Well designed slides don’t overwhelm the viewer—stick to one idea per slide.”
Storytelling in 2014 from Gary Vaynerchuk
carmineTalk Like TED: 3 Unbreakable Laws of Communication
This deck by Gallo is based off his book of the same name, compiling insights and secrets from some of the world’s top minds and speakers. The deck includes “specific tips that anyone can use, whether or not they read the book,” Gallo says. “I love the fact that Empowered Presentations (which designed the deck) was able to take concepts from a printed page and conceptualize it visually. For example on slide 29, they took a concept from my book about Aristotle, ‘pathos,’ and storytelling. What requires pages to explain, a slide can do so in one compelling visual.” He adds, “I especially like slides 30 and 31 where I explain how researchers are finding that stories ‘light up’ the same regions of the speaker’s and the listener’s brains. Without relying on stock photos, the designers were able to conceptualize the idea in two simple slides.”
Talk Like TED: 3 Unbreakable Laws of Communication from Carmine Gallo