Numbers often occupy a central place in presentations. Plots, pies and histograms fill slides to convince, mobilize, alert. But how to make sure that they actually produce the expected impact?

The usual practice consists in displaying all the numbers available to give the audience a global view of the situation, then to attract attention on such disbalance between columns or such evolution, whether positive or negative. Yet, laying out all our cards at the outset is counterproductive. Expert in communication Nancy Duarte recommends seeking inspiration from storytelling and provoking an emotional reaction that will more durably impact the audience. You can thus create some suspense by only displaying the first elements of your diagram, to then unveil progressively the other data by telling a story, like a narrator. For example, invite the audience to guess the evolution of a curve before letting the final result appear. The narrative tension thus created will facilitate the assimilation of the figures that are presented.

Source: The Simple Power of the Slow Reveal, Nancy Duarte, MIT Sloan Management Review, March 2023.