From Ideas to Impact: Andrea Pacini on Storytelling, Authenticity, and AI

Brian Tomlinson: Hey, everyone and welcome to a new episode of the Aspire to Inspire Podcast. Today, I have with me Andrea Pacini. Andrea is the head of Ideas on Stage in the UK and he is a well-known author, speaker, and presentation coach. Andrea, welcome to the show.

Andrea Pacini: Thank you. Thank you, Brian. I’m looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for having me.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. Thanks for joining us. Hey, let’s just jump right in. You are an expert in presentations and this is something that leaders, CEOs, executives are forced to do at some point in time throughout their career. How can they be able to deliver their message in a way that’s inspiring, that helps people take action? How would you get going? An executive comes to you right now and is like, “I need help, I need help right away.” Where do you start?

Andrea Pacini: It’s interesting that you use the word “deliver”. You said, how can an executive deliver the message effectively? The way I would start is I would not start from the delivery side of things. When we think about presenting, public speaking, many people immediately start thinking about exactly that, delivery. How can I deliver it more effectively? When I say delivery, Brian, I mean things like eye contact, body language, gestures, posture, voice. These things are important, but these are not, especially in business communication, they are not the most important thing. If we want to become more confident presenters, we need to understand that confidence comes from three things. Number one, familiarity and preparation. 

I watched an interview, I know that you are a sports fan, Brian, and I know that for you it’s mainly football, but I’ve got an NBA basketball example here. I watched an interview of Kobe Bryant, one of the best NBA players of all time. One question was, “Kobe, how is it possible that every time I see you playing, you always look so confident?” And he said, “The only reason why you think I’m confident is because when you see me doing certain things, I’ve done those things a thousand times before.” Confidence comes from familiarity, from preparation. That’s the first thing. I would start from that.

I’m talking about confidence in presenting, it also comes from following a certain process. There’s a structured way of thinking about presenting that goes beyond just opening up PowerPoint, because that’s the very first thing most people do, they just open up PowerPoint and put together some slides. There’s a structured way of thinking about presenting, from understanding your audience to knowing how to identify your key messages, to knowing how to create a clear and engaging storyline, to then, if you need to, knowing how to illustrate your content effectively from a visual perspective. To then, we get to the end of the process, which is your ability to make a strong connection with the audience. And you also do that with your delivery skills. Not following this process is often what creates discomfort when we are in front of an audience.

And then finally, I would start with people’s ability to develop a compelling message, now with their delivery skills. In my experience, Brian, at least 80% of your confidence, of your effectiveness as a presenter comes from your ability to develop a compelling message. Without a story, I know that you are very much into storytelling, without a story that resonates with your audience, it doesn’t matter how good you are from a delivery perspective. That’s where I would start: the message.

Brian Tomlinson: Oh, absolutely. I love that. I love that you brought storytelling in. Maybe let’s jump into complexity. I think as executives, it’s very typical that they have really complex topics that need to get down into the organization. Sometimes this can be full of data. It can be just quite simply a complex topic. You have industries that are complex. How can someone be able to deliver, again, there’s that word, deliver, but give a presentation that breaks these complex topics down into a simple way that’s understandable for everyone? What are some ways that they can be able to do that, taking that structure that you mentioned before?

Andrea Pacini: Sure, I’ll give you one practical thing we can all do. It’s not the only thing we can do. We can discuss in more detail. But definitely one thing we can do is to use simple language, simple words, simple sentences. Brian, simple can be harder than complex, because anyone can use long, confusing sentences. Anyone can use jargon or technical terms, or acronyms that you understand, not necessarily the audience.

Of course, it always depends on who we have in front of us. It always goes back to the audience. By the way, that’s what a lot of people do. A lot of people use complex language because they think that if they do that, then they sound smarter and more credible. The opposite is true. If you think about people who you consider smart and credible, I can promise you, from a communication perspective, what they do is the opposite.

They replace complex language with simple language, simple words, simple sentences. And don’t get me wrong, when I say that we need to speak simply, I’m not suggesting that we need to oversimplify our subject. This is not about dumbing things down. This is about finding and using language that everyone in your audience, of course, will understand. What great communicators do is they use language that a 15-year-old would understand. Again, going back to what you said, your topic, your ideas could be complex. Of course, they could be very technical. That’s okay. But the way you explain them, the language you use to explain them shouldn’t be.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. Let’s even double click on that. The copywriter in me comes out every time I hear that. And I know that you, on a recent episode of your podcast with our mutual friend, Jeremy Connell-Waite, who was also a guest on the Aspire to Inspire Podcast before as well, talking about readabilityand things like the Gunning Fog Index, really trying to find that more simple language is such key tools when you’re trying to create a presentation, when you’re trying to communicate. What’s your two cents on that?

Andrea Pacini: I’ll give you a couple of quick examples. If you take the introduction of Steve Jobs’ launch of the very first iPhone. We’re talking about many years ago. If you take the first 1,000 words of that presentation and you upload them onto tools like Grammarly or the Hemingway app, there are many other tools, and these tools, in addition to giving you suggestions for improving your text, they also give you a grade. That grade tells you how old someone needs to be for them to be able to understand what you wrote. The same can be applied — It’s not just for writing. It can be applied for speaking as well. Now if you do this exercise with the first thousand words of that presentation, it returns a grade of eight to nine years old. Believe it or not, an eight to nine-year old watches that presentation, at least the introduction, and he or she will be able to understand what Steve Jobs was talking about.

And again, we are talking about a business presentation, launching a new product, a new piece of technology. I’ll give you one other example. If you take the shareholder letters that Jeff Bezos, Amazon, sent when he was the CEO of Amazon for more than 20 years. If you take all of them, so letters sent to the shareholders of Amazon. Again, business letters where he was talking about strategies and new trends and products, technology.

Again, the content may be complex. It may be technical. If you do the same exercise, 70% of them returns a grade of 13 to 15 years old. So these are real examples. The bottom line is that it’s okay if your content is complex. It can be complex. It can be technical. But that doesn’t mean that the language we use to explain a content should also be complex.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. I would even add to the Jeff Bezos one. Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. It’s because it’s quite interesting, over the years you see how his prose became more conversational and a lower grade level, easier to read and consume. A lot of people think that we’re executives, we need to sound smart. But you’re fully right, there’s a beauty in simplicity.

Andrea Pacini: The interesting thing, Brian, is that you will appear smart because of this. It sounds counterintuitive but the ability to express your ideas in a simple way, in a way that’s accessible, in a way that makes sense for everyone, in your specific audience of course, that will make you appear and sound smarter than you think.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. And that’s what we want, right? At the end of the day. You already touched on it. How about storytelling? Let’s go a little bit down that road. So we’re taking these complex topics, we’re taking data. I think you and I know that storytelling is such a powerful tool in business communication.

How can someone take that and leverage it within their presentations? Because I think a lot of people who might be watching are thinking,”Well, I have a PowerPoint slide, what are you telling me about storytelling?” Maybe let’s go down that road. What are some really key actions people could really implement in their next presentation to take their storytelling to the next level? And why is it important?

Andrea Pacini: It starts from an understanding of why this is important, your question. The reason why that’s important is because we all know that people remember stories much more than just facts and figures. And when we say story, in business, it shouldn’t be a “once-upon-a-time” type of story. It could be an example, an anecdote. It could be a case study, it could be something that happened to you. Essentially, there are three types of stories. To make it practical, actions that people can take. Think about the idea that you want to communicate. Then how can you illustrate it with storytelling? There are three types of stories.

One is a personal story. That’s something that happened to you. Of course, that something that happened to you has to be connected to the point you want to make. Storytelling is not about telling a story for the sake of telling a story. We want to tell a story because it makes a point. And if you do that, your audience will remember the story and the point you want to make.

That’s one type of story, a personal story. It could be a story about other people. Something that happened to someone else. Again, if it’s connected to the point that you want to get across. It could be a story of brand success. Say, for example, that there is another company, another client, and that could be an external client, it could be an internal client, depending on the context, there is another client that has already successfully implemented the strategy that you have in mind, or they are already successfully using your product or your service, or they are already following your idea. That’s a story. So if we think about it, there’s always a story to tell. The problem with most business presentations is that they are 99% facts. And then if we are lucky, Brian, if we are lucky, 1% is story. It’s a bit unbalanced. We need to include more stories in our presentations, in our communications. And that’s the best thing we can do to make our message more engaging, more original, more enjoyable. And it starts with a very simple question. You want to communicate something, you need to ask yourself, is there a story that I can tell to illustrate that point?

Remember, a story could be as simple as an example. Let me give you a very quick example here. There’s a study carried out by Professor Atkinson. He’s the author of a public speaking book, “Lend Me Your Ears.” There was a study where during a conference, there were two cameras. One camera was looking at the speaker and the other camera was looking at the audience. And every time the speaker used the phrase, “for example,” or “let me give you an example,” or” I’ll give you an example,” then you could see people were checking their phones, and then immediately, boom, going up, paying attention to the speaker just because he or she said, “for example,” or something similar. So storytelling sometimes at its basic level could be as simple as thinking about a quick example that illustrates your point. That’s what your audience will remember because our brain is hardwired to remember stories, to enjoy them, to listen to them and the key message behind it.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah, absolutely. I think from our side, knowing that storytelling really elevates the message you’re trying to get across by 20x, I think it’s such a powerful tool to be able to leverage within your presentation, speech, whatever the case may be. While we’re on storytelling, let’s talk about the hero’s journey, because I know that you are a big proponent of “audience first,” right? Maybe first explain to us what you mean by audience first. And secondly, how can we make our audience the hero of our story?

Andrea Pacini: Yes, audience first in the context of storytelling. Let’s make this less intellectual and very practical for listeners.

Brian Tomlinson: Keep it simple.

Andrea Pacini: And simple as well. How can we make sure that the audience comes first? How can we make sure that the audience is the hero of the story? Now, there’s a simple story framework that I use all the time. We use it with our clients as well. It’s something that I’ve borrowed from Mike Adams’ great book, “Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell,” or something along those lines. It goes through this four-part story framework, which works really well. It’s context or setup, complication, turning point, resolution. The first step is the setup. Then you have complication, turning point, and resolution. The way it works is this. You can use this, for example, if you want to tell a client success story, for example.

But you can apply it in many different contexts. Let’s take the example of a client success story. Setup could be as simple as time and place. If you start something with time and place, where you say, for example, three years ago, we worked with client ABC in Berlin, in London. Just time and place. Then you start with this. Very simple.

The audience knows that you are about to tell them a story. You are about to give them an example. That’s the setup. Then complication and this is key to your question. This is the complication from the perspective of the client or from the perspective of the audience. This is not about you. You said hero’s journey. You as the presenter or you as the company presenting, you are not the hero of the story. The client is the hero of the story. The audience is the hero of the story. So you want to talk about the complication, the problem that the client or the audience was facing or is facing. Because the mistake we often make is the opposite. We make our communication all about us.

It’s always about how great we are, how great a product or service is. It’s not about us. It’s about them. Then you have the turning point. This is your opportunity to come along, but you come along as a guide, not as the hero of the story. Your role is the role of a guide that gives the hero, the client, the audience, a plan, a product, a service, an idea, a strategy that helps them solve that complication, the problem, and get success.

So when you get to the resolution, again, this is the resolution from the perspective of the client. You want to talk about what — or I say the client, it could be the audience, depending on your context, this is what they have achieved. This is how great they are. Again, it’s not about you. Now of course, if you do that indirectly, your audience will think that if this other client, or whatever you are considering in your story, has achieved that success, of course it’s thanks to you. It’s thanks to your company. But you are getting the message across in a much more elegant way. That’s an example of what I mean by audience first in the context of storytelling.

Brian Tomlinson: Amazing. That’s a really great explanation. It reminds me a lot of Donald Miller in “Building a StoryBrand.” I love the analogy that he gives about, if you’re a Star Wars fan, of course, you don’t want to be Luke Skywalker. You want to be Yoda. Be the guide.

Let your audience be the hero. Definitely something that a lot of people can learn and really having that empathy towards their audience. That being the case, let’s also jump into a big buzzword that’s everywhere right now and that’s authenticity. It’s really become a huge buzzword.

You hear it all the time. You see people actually literally roll their eyes when they hear it about creating content or doing a presentation and being authentic, which, let’s be honest, really just means to be yourself. What do you think about that? Because I know that you talk about that in your book. What are your thoughts on authenticity? What’s the balance that you need to bring of that into your presentations?

Andrea Pacini: I like that you said, what’s the balance, because that’s exactly my point. We need some balance, because exactly as you said, Brian, everyone talks about authenticity and we hear experts saying someone wants to improve their presentation skills, oh, you just need to be authentic, just be yourself. Of course, but what does that mean? Of course you want to be authentic. It’s not about copying anyone else. We were talking about Steve Jobs. You don’t have to become Steve Jobs. You don’t have to become Simon Sinek. You don’t have to become Brené Brown. Of course you be you. You want to be yourself, but often I see authenticity as an excuse for not changing, for not improving.

For example, before, Brian, we started with the idea of delivery. So if you think about some delivery techniques for you to make a strong connection with the audience, like eye contact and body language, and gestures, and voice, all these things, when we practice these techniques with our clients, sometimes there’s a bit of resistance and people say, oh, I don’t want to do this because it doesn’t feel like me, doesn’t feel authentic.I want to be myself. That’s what I mean by using authenticity as an excuse for not improving, for not changing. Now for example, if you want to learn how to play the piano and you work with a teacher and the teacher tells you, Brian, you need to sit in a certain way, you need to have a certain posture, and you need to move your hands in a certain way, now, would you tell the teacher, no, I’m not going to do this because it doesn’t feel authentic? No, I guess you would just shut up if you really want to learn and listen to what the teacher has to tell you. 

Also, say, for example, that you secretly think that your friend’s new baby is ugly. Would you tell them, just because, again, you want to be authentic and a part of the authenticity is that you have certain values, you are honest, honesty is an important value to you. Would you tell them? No, you wouldn’t tell them. You would say that the baby is beautiful. Now I’m saying this because there are many areas in our lives where we choose not to be authentic because we understand that sometimes being effective is more important than being authentic.

What I mean by this is that of course you want to be authentic, but I think we should take it for granted. Of course you want to be authentic. Of course you want to be yourself. But at the same time, you want to become the best authentic version of yourself. You do that by — sometimes, that requires change. It requires embracing things that perhaps we are not doing at the moment from a presentation skills perspective.

Brian Tomlinson: Amazing. Totally agree with you there. How do we take, then, this balance of authenticity, this storytelling? Because a lot of times we are talking about people maybe standing on a stage or standing in a room full of people giving a presentation. But as you know over the past few years, a lot of us are now doing more and more presentations in the virtual world.

We had Joe Navarro on the episode before. I think he’s been on your podcast as well. And one of the key things that he talked about is how important body language still is even in a virtual setting. How do you take all of that and create a really great virtual presentation? Because I think a lot of people struggle with the fact that you’re presenting, you can’t really see the audience. You can’t get a feel for their body language and have that feedback loop so that you know, do I need to speed up? What do I do? What tips do you have for someone who’s really, on a regular basis, giving these virtual presentations, or even on social media? Because I think presenting, doing videos for social media is a norm nowadays. How can we take these presentation skills and transfer them really behind the screen now?

Andrea Pacini: Yes I know Joe Navarro. However, I hadn’t had the pleasure yet of interviewing him. I interviewed Abbie Maroño. You also interviewed Abbie, his student. Maybe one day Joe — his book,” What Every BODY is Saying” is a great read. Okay, virtual communication. For me, there are three key things to consider.

Number one is, and these are key differences between online and in-person, the first one is the setup and technology in general. In person, the setup is not the most important thing to consider for obvious reasons while we are online. Even now, Brian, we’re having this conversation online, the setup does make a difference. Make sure that you have a good setup in terms of webcam and microphone.

We were talking about lighting before pressing record, this kind of thing, the setup. The other thing is the level of interaction with the audience. Interacting with the audience is always important because any presentation should feel like a conversation for the audience. It shouldn’t be a monologue. But research tells us that when you are presenting in person, the audience’s attention will drop after about every 10 minutes or so. It’s as if every 10 minutes, you need to buy the audience’s attention back. You can do that with a simple moment of interaction. It could be as simple as asking the audience a question which is connected to something you’ve just said, or it’s connected to something you are planning to say next.

You need to do that more or less every 10 minutes if you are in person. Now online, you said it, Brian, it’s even harder to keep the audience’s attention high. So the 10-minute rule becomes the 3 to 5-minute rule. Very few people do it. But if you are presenting online and your presentation is longer than three or five minutes, then it means that every three to five minutes, you need to create a moment of interaction with the audience.

So that’s another thing. And then from a delivery perspective, then the principles are the same, but the way you implement them is different. If we take eye contact, just to give you a practical example. It’s the same principle. We want to make eye contact with people because that’s one way to have a good connection with each other.

The way we make eye contact in person is very different from what we need to do online. Online, we need to look into the camera as much as possible because that’s where the audience is. What do most people do instead? They look at the screen, they look at the slides, they look at themselves. But then if we do that, you miss out on the opportunity to make a good connection with the audience. So you need to look into the camera as much as possible. Now what I do, for example, Brian, when it comes to eye contact online, I follow the 80-20 principle that works in any area of our lives. 80-20, which means that 80% of the time, I look into the camera. And then 20% of the time, you said, for example, how do we read the room? If you look into the camera all the time, it will be impossible for you to understand, to get those signals that you do need to understand to be able to see whether your message is landing well. So 20% of the time, then I look at my screen, I could look at my notes, I could look at myself, 80-20. And that’s just one.

I’ll give you another practical example if you think about hand gestures. Now, the more you move your hands, within certain limits of course, the more dynamic you will be. So you can become a more dynamic speaker, presenter with your hand movements. Online though, depending on, again, your setup, sometimes you may need to move your hands a little bit higher than you would normally do in a face-to-face presentation.

So for those who are watching or will be watching the video recording here, if I move my hands here, in person, I would never do that. That feels weird. For those who are just listening, I have my hands very close to my chin, that would be weird. But if it’s online, then if you are using your hands, you need to make sure that they are visible. Not always, but from time to time, you need to keep them a little bit higher than you would normally do in a face-to-face presentation. So again, the principles are the same. The way you apply them may differ if you are online.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely. That’s great advice. I know that there’s a quote that you said that great ideas often fail because of how they are presented. Maybe could you tell us a little bit more about that and maybe give some examples of where great ideas have fallen flat? I know that that ties into your origin story. Maybe you could give us a little bit of the backstory and why that’s important to you?

Andrea Pacini: Thank you. Thank you, Brian, for the opportunity. I do believe that you can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate it, it doesn’t matter. The reason why personally I’m so passionate about these things is because when I was a little kid growing up in Italy, I grew up in a family of very small business owners. My parents have always been running their own very small business together. They still do. So as a kid, I saw their challenges because raising four kids while trying to run a business is not easy. But I also saw their proactive approach to life, their entrepreneurial mindset. So that’s why I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, to run my own thing.

To answer your question, in reality, that remained a dream for a long time because before doing what I do now, I tried many things, many projects. We can talk about in more detail if you want to have some examples. But all of them failed. But it was useful because in that process, what I realized was that there are so many great ideas. Again, they fail not because of the ideas themselves. When I say an idea, it could be a product, a service. It could be a project. They fail not because of the ideas themselves, but just because of the way they are presented. And that’s why, to cut it short, eventually, I became a presentation coach. That’s why my mission today is to stop great ideas from failing just because of the way they are presented.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. More than 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, I started a blog. It was called Echo Presentations. It was a blog where every week I would publish an article on all these things, presentation skills. My objective was to get to thousands and thousands of readers. After a few years, I was very consistent. One article every week. I think that in total, two people had read my articles. One was my wife. So it wasn’t super effective from that perspective. I also then started a newsletter where my idea was, instead of creating content myself, what I could do is I could curate content. Every week, I can curate lots of articles and videos for people who are interested in these things: public speaking, presenting, communication. Then I would offer that in the form of a newsletter every week. Again, my objective was to get to thousands of subscribers. After a few years, I had 119 subscribers. I could give you a few other examples, but it wasn’t that the idea didn’t make sense. It was just that the way the idea was presented, was communicated, was not effective enough.

Brian Tomlinson: Understand. I feel you there. I think a lot of times, at least online, a lot of great ideas really go to the graveyard because that messaging, that story, that audience-first approach of really solving people’s problems and challenges, sometimes is missing. And then you end up — 

Andrea Pacini: Oh no, sorry to cut you off. Because before, you mentioned Warren Buffett. And there’s a nice anecdote that illustrates the importance of this. A few years ago, he gave, and maybe you are familiar with this, but it’s for our listeners, he gave a lecture, I think it was at Columbia University, if I remember well, to some students. And he said, “Right now I’m willing to invest $100,000 on each of you for 10% of your future earnings. If you’re interested, see me after class.” That’s what he said. Then he said, “Well actually, you can increase your value by 50%. I would be willing to invest $150,000 on you for 10% of your future earnings if you learn public speaking.”

He’s always been, Warren Buffett has always been a big advocate. He took a Dale Carnegie course at the beginning of his career. And he wanted to make a point. His point was that if you want to succeed, whatever success means for you at a personal level, especially at a professional level, then the single greatest skill that will boost your business or career, or reputation, or your level of influence is your ability to pitch, present, and communicate your ideas. And that’s why I think that you can have the greatest idea in the world but if you can’t communicate it, it doesn’t matter.

Brian Tomlinson: Yeah absolutely. That’s such a critical skill. I mean that’s why we do this podcast as well, is really to help people communicate better, especially leaders. Because when you’re trying to create a movement, you’re trying to bring people together on a path towards a vision, you have to be able to communicate that vision in such a way that you can have them take action.

So I think that’s so important, the things that we do. There’s something else I wanted to quickly touch on as well. Like you mentioned, you’re from Italy, but you’re now based in the UK. What advice do you have for CEOs and executives in multinational corporations? You have a lot of leaders who are out there leading people in 50 countries, in 100 countries. Are there any things that these leaders need to take into consideration when they are presenting towards a very diverse group?

Andrea Pacini: The most important thing there, and this is, we could talk for hours here, but the most important thing is having a very, very, very good understanding of who the audience is. Again, audience first. Now it may sound obvious here because we’re talking about, it’s the same company, yes, but a multinational company, you have teams in one country, you have other teams in other countries, different roles, different expectations, different cultures. And so in general, for us to be able to communicate effectively, the foundation of effective communication is knowing your audience.  That’s the first step. We need to have a very good understanding of who the audience is, what their burning needs are, and a little bit about the context as well.

At Ideas on Stage, Brian, we have a framework that we use to help our clients. We call it ABC, the ABC of preparation. ABC stands for audience, burning needs, context. In preparation for any presentation or meeting or any opportunity you have to communicate your ideas, then you need to take some time and ask yourself some questions about these three things. Who is the audience? What are their burning needs? What challenges do they have? How do those challenges relate to your activities? Do they have any concerns about your activities? You may want to know. This is what I mean by burning needs. And also a little bit about the context. This is the only way for you to then create something, share a message which is relevant to them.

And of course, the ABC will be — If you take some time, it could be just a few minutes, to go through your ABC for one particular team in one particular country, great. And then if you do the same exercise in another country for another team, it could be that the result is the same, it could be that it’s very different. So it always goes back to having the foundational knowledge of your audience.

Brian Tomlinson: Got you. You touched on it a little while ago as well, and it’s preparation. That made me think of, there’s this great book, “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” from Carmine Gallo.

Andrea Pacini: Carmine Gallo. Carmine was on our podcast as well. Yeah.

Brian Tomlinson: I mean he has some amazing books on communication. So highly recommend if you’re watching, definitely check those out. But he talks again about Steve Jobs and how meticulous Jobs was in his preparation for keynotes. Sometimes rehearsing for up to two days, two full days before. What are your thoughts on preparation and rehearsal versus impromptu? For example, for me, I’m so much more comfortable in an impromptu situation than necessarily a very structured way of presenting. How would you recommend someone go about making sure that they are prepared and rehearsed for their presentations? What’s your take on that?

Andrea Pacini: By the way, Carmine is amazing. I also recommend his work and all his books. I’m a big fan of rehearsing. Rehearsing, if we think about most of the challenges or all of the challenges we may have from a public speaking or presentation skills perspective, I wouldn’t say all of them, but most of them can be solved or at least improved, addressed just by rehearsing. And the difference, I think, Brian, is not really about rehearsing and feeling more comfortable on the spot or with impromptu speaking. For me, it’s mainly about, are you more of a memorizer or are you more of an improviser? Because in my experience, I see two types of speakers. You have memorizers, and they like to have a script, word for word. Then you have improvisers. It sounds like maybe, Brian, you are more of an improviser.

By the way, there is no right or wrong approach. There’s only the approach that works best for you. Improvisers like to have more freedom on stage. When I say stage, it could be a meeting room. Now here’s the thing. First of all, you need to know where you are, because it’s a spectrum. It’s not that you are either 100% a memorizer or 100% an improviser.

Maybe you are somewhere in-between, or maybe you are more towards the memorizers, more towards the improvisers. Once you know where you are in the spectrum, from a rehearsing perspective, it doesn’t really matter where you are, I would always encourage you to rehearse a few times, and especially for improvisers. So if we’ve got improvisers listening, it’s okay if you’re an improviser, but I would always encourage you to rehearse a few times. And I can promise you that even if every time you say something, you say it in a different way because you are improvising, that’s fine.

But whatever you say will be much more powerful the fifth time, for example, than the first. When I say rehearsing, there’s a big difference between rehearsing and practicing. What many people do, Brian, is they don’t practice at all. They just wing it. They hope for the best. That’s not what we want to do. Other people, what they do is they practice.

Practicing means things like, for example, let’s say that you have some slides, you open up your PowerPoint and you go through your slides. As you do, you think about what to say. So you look at your slide and you say,” Okay here, I will be talking about this. Then when I get here, I will be talking about that.” What you’re doing there is you are practicing. That’s useful, but it’s not enough. Rehearsing is a different level of preparation. Rehearsing means, which is something that most people don’t do, but that’s what great presenters do, you want to repeat your presentation out loud, not in your head, out loud, from the very beginning to the very end without stopping, as if there is a real audience in front of you. That’s what confident presenters do.

Brian Tomlinson: Oh, I love that advice. That’s definitely something, because a lot of times you find executives or so, they just don’t have the time. Even though it’s so, so critical, at least even if it’s one time, to run through that presentation. Cool, looking at the time, one thing that I think is a huge part of our lives now, and I’d be curious to get your take on it, AI. What does AI look like in the world of presentations, in the world of public speaking? Where do you see that taking us in the future? Is it something that’s going to help us or is it something that could have more of a negative effect? What do you think?

Andrea Pacini: I think that AI is mind blowing. I’ve never seen, and of course I’m not the only one who says this, it’s obvious, I’ve never seen a technology like this in my life. And I think that it can be extremely powerful in a positive way. We just need to be careful that it has to be AI plus human, because otherwise, the human element is missing and the human element still makes the difference and will continue to make the difference. And I’m going to explain why. Again, going back to Jeff Bezos, he famously said once, focus on the things that don’t change. He says he’s often asked, what do you think is going to change in the next 10 years? He says, nobody ever asked me, what do you think is not going to change in the next 10 years?

And he thinks that the second question is much more interesting because if you focus on the things that don’t change, as he says, you will be successful. In the case of Amazon, for example, they know that 10 years from now, people will still want low prices, fast delivery, and a massive selection. That’s it. And so if they keep focusing on those things, they will never change. 10 years from now, they will continue to be successful. In communication, it’s the same thing. There are things that change and things that don’t change. The things that change are tools and technology. For example, 50 years ago, we didn’t have PowerPoint. Now, Brian, we are using StreamYard to record this episode. A few years ago, we didn’t have StreamYard and we didn’t have Zoom.

Now, all these things will change. These are great tools, but that’s inevitable. They will change. What will never change are the fundamental principles of communication. Aristotle was the first one more than 2,000 years ago who gave us the building blocks of effective persuasion, influencing others’ communication. Today’s best communicators still follow his advice. For example, Brian, in your case, let’s say 10 years from now, that you give a presentation at a conference.

Let’s say that after your talk, someone comes to you from the audience and they say, Brian, that was a great talk. I just wish that your message was not so simple for me to understand. Or I just wish that your message was not so relevant to me and my needs. Or I just wish that your presentation was not so clear for me to follow, so engaging. That will never happen. And it will never happen because these are the fundamental principles of communication. Having said that, I think that today, if you don’t leverage AI also in your communication, you are missing out. I think you have to do it. It’s a must. In a very positive way, it can be a game changer. I use it daily for myself, with our clients. But again, I go back to the very beginning. It has to be AI plus your own, and that’s what I mean by human, your own understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in communication because otherwise, something will be off.

Brian Tomlinson: No, absolutely. What are some key ways that you’re using it within the presentation? What are three ways that a leader can leverage AI to build a better presentation?

Andrea Pacini: I’ll give you a couple of examples. The first ones that come to mind, one is for brainstorming purposes. Say, for example, that you know what you want to communicate, at least at a conceptual level, you know, “Ok these are the key things I want to communicate in my next presentation.” then Brian, we were talking about the importance of storytelling. Sometimes people ask me, where do I find stories? Today it’s much easier because we’ve got AI. And so you can tell AI, ChatGPT, or whatever tool you prefer, you can say, okay this is the idea I want to communicate. Can you give me 10 examples? Of course, the better the prompt, the more specific the prompt, the better the response.

But can you give me some stories or examples that illustrate this particular point? Can you give me 10 analogies or metaphors that illustrate this particular point? So rather than you spending two days thinking about those things, then in one second, you’ve got something to play with. That’s one application. Another one is we talked about the importance of simplifying your language. Then again, very easy today, you have a concept that you want to communicate, you’ve got an idea, and then you can tell AI, look, this is my idea, what language can I use? How can I explain this concept so that a 15-year-old would understand it? Then boom, in a second, you get a very good response.

Again, it has to be connected to your own understanding because you need to be able to give it a good and specific prompt. If you just say, “Take this, improve it,” then the outcome is not going to be as impactful. But if you have that foundational understanding, which has nothing to do with technology, then you can guide the tool. Then you can lead the tool. You should not be led by — in the same way you should not be led by PowerPoint, you should not be led by ChatGPT, for example. With your knowledge, with your preparation, you should lead the tool.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely, yeah. I think that’s one key thing that everyone should understand, that it’s there, it’s a tool to be used and to be leveraged, but it’s not there to only do your work for you. It’s there to leverage your experience and expertise that you have. Super. Thank you so much, Andrea. This has been an amazing discussion and conversation for me, lots of takeaways as well. And I’m sure for the audience as well. Where can people find you? What do you have going on? Please let everyone know what would be the best place to look you up.

Andrea Pacini: Thank you. A couple of things. On social media, my main platform is LinkedIn. Andrea Pacini, you can find me there. Feel free to connect and say hi. And then something that can be useful is we have a scorecard, which is a self-assessment. And you can access it at Ideas On Stage. 

That’s the name of our company, ideasonstage.com/score like when you score a goal. It’s the Confident Presenter Scorecard, which allows you to, very quickly, in less than three minutes, assess your current presentation skills against some key principles. And you can do that for free. You just need to answer a few questions. You will get a score from 0 to 100% and the tool will also identify opportunities for improvement for you. And also, when you take the scorecard, then you can get free access to a free copy of my book, “Confident Presenter.” Again, if that’s of interest, people can explore it.

Brian Tomlinson: Absolutely amazing. We’ll be sure to add that in the show notes so everyone can be able to access that. So again, thank you so much, Andrea. It’s been wonderful. And thanks for, again, being on the Aspire to Inspire Podcast.

Andrea Pacini: Thank you, Brian. Thank you very much.

Brian Tomlinson: Bye, everyone.