Tell and show

👏 Your work will NEVER speak for itself. 👏

Your amazing-creative-strategic-innovative concept simply doesn’t have the capacity (nor the vocabulary) to persuade, make a point, or accomplish anything without you.

If you only show your work to your audience (whether it’s your manager, your team, a client, a group of students, whoever), they become so preoccupied evaluating what they’re looking at instead of really listening to what you’re saying.

⚠️ Remember: When you’re presenting, you don’t command the attention of the room by default.

You’re actively competing against gut reactions, assumptions, distractions, and cognitive bias.

🌟 To avoid this, take a moment to tell BEFORE you show. Don’t skimp on adding context and paint a picture of what they’re about to see.

The result?

✅ The anticipated idea will more closely align to what they end up seeing, instead of leaving it up to their own assumptions and guesswork.

The work should feel expected and mildly familiar, not totally out of left field.

This is such a powerful but definitely underrated technique that has changed the way I approach presentation.

So yes, it’s still “show and tell” … but trying “telling” first.