In the era of AI slop this skill will set you apart

Presentation skills have always been critical to career success. From a functional perspective, strong communication skills help leaders outline vision, motivate followers, and coordinate collective action. From a symbolic perspective, good presenters just look more like leaders. They come across as competent, capable, and charismatic. Indeed, some evidence suggests that their delivery matters more than the content they present. But presenting in public can give people nightmares. They can’t sleep the night before because they fear stumbling over their words or drawing a complete blank. Public speaking is so reliably anxiety inducing that psychologists use it as a means of creating stress in their laboratory studies. In the Trier Social Stress Test, for example, subjects are asked to prepare a free-form presentation to deliver in front of an audience. In one study, just a few minutes of preparation triggered spikes in heart rate and stress hormones like cortisol. For those who fear public speaking, I have some good news, and I have some bad news. Let’s start with the bad news first. These presentation skills recently became more important, and I mean a lot more important. The AI p…