HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

The point of a presentation is to persuade people to adopt your ideas. This guide covers the spectrum of skills needed to move people to act.

HBR Guide To Persuasive Presentations book cover

Introducing HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

This comprehensive go-to guide is a distillation of 25 years of experience covering everything from presentation development to delivery.

Book overview

Take the pain out of presentations

If you’re terrified of speaking in front of groups or simply looking to polish your existing skillset, this guide will provide the tools and confidence needed to get results from your presentations.

In the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, written by presentation expert Nancy Duarte, you’ll learn to win over tough crowds, organize a coherent narrative, create powerful messages and visuals, connect with an engage with your audience, and much more!

This book is part of the HBR Guides series which is designed to help you learn and apply strategies and tactics to work smarter and more effectively, every day.

10 tips for powerful persuasive presentations

Use this guide as you’re finalizing your presentation and use our checklist to more clearly convey your ideas and get your audience to support your message.

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Meet the author

And hear from some notable readers.

Nancy Duarte

Nancy Duarte

Chief Executive Officer


Nancy Duarte is author of six best-selling books and CEO of Duarte, Inc. For over 35 years, Duarte, Inc. has consulted and trained the highest performing brands and executives in the world. Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Time Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Los Angeles Times, and on CNN. Her TED talk has had over 3 million views. Nancy has received several awards for communications, entrepreneurship, and been honored for her achievements as a female executive. She’s ranked #67 on the list of top 250 Women in Leadership and is the #1 Global Communication Guru. Nancy lectures at Stanford University and her course Resonate is taught in the Stanford School of Business. As a persuasion expert, she cracked the code for effectively incorporating story patterns into business communications. Her favorite role is “Grandma” to two grandsons and grand-dogger.

linkedin.com/in/nancyduarte

Nancy Duarte’s best-seller,The HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, earned a place on the HBR Ideas with Impact list as one of HBR’s top 20 most broadly distributed titles of all time!”

“This concise, yet packed little book might contain all you need to know about giving a better presentation … If you do any kind of public speaking, or want to, this book will be extremely helpful and useful.”

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