“Yikes! What’s Next?”

Imagine this: you’re delivering a quarterly report to the Board of Directors about your company’s performance and you show a slide about operational efficiencies and productivity gains that produced significant cost reductions. You’ve just finished your talk track on the slide and you’re ready for the next slide.

Suddenly your mind goes blank. You say to yourself, “Yikes! What’s next?” And you get that sinking feeling in your stomach. “Is it the headcount slide or the growth strategy slide?” You certainly don’t want to lead directly to the headcount slide, only to have the growth strategy slide pop onto the screen. This embarrassing instant is usually accompanied by a nervous “Ahem….!” followed by a rushed, mumbled apology, “But first let’s look at our growth strategy!”

This awkward moment can happen whether you are delivering your presentation for the first time or the one hundred and first time. It can happen with a presentation that has been thrust into your hands only moments before the start, or with a presentation you have delivered so many times that you are on autopilot. When that “Yikes!” moment strikes, you will feel an egg dribble slowly and uncontrollably down your chin.

Perhaps you have never had the misfortune, but many presenters have experienced some variation of this scenario. That’s because creating segues is a major challenge—and not just in presentations but also in other forms of communication such as writing and interviewing.

Poet, author, and teacher Deborah Warren recently published Strange to Say: Etymology as Serious Entertainment, a book about the origins of many English words and expressions. According to Henry Hitchings’ Wall Street Journal review of the book, she struggled with her segues. He wrote that “She has an unusual fondness for introducing an aside with ‘à propos,’ but it’s nothing compared with her enthusiasm for ‘speaking of,’ which she deploys every three pages or so. … some of her others: ‘I’ve been rambling on’…or: ‘Rev up the time machine again and get off at….’”

As a writer, Warren faces the same challenge that confronts every presenter: creating continuity out of seemingly disparate components. In Warren’s case, a list of diverse words and expressions; in a presenter’s case, a slide deck.

David Rubenstein meets the continuity challenge very well. His primary job is the co-founder and co-chairman of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, but he is also the host of two shows on Bloomberg Television and the author of books based on interviews from those shows. It is in the latter that Rubenstein demonstrates his talent for transitioning. A shining example occurred during an exchange with Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.

In 2017, when Amazon announced plans to open a second headquarters to accommodate 50,000 employees, it set in motion a flurry of bids from cities eager to acquire the proposed $5 billion project and the multiple ancillary economic benefits. It also set in motion a flurry of speculation.

While he was considering his choices, Bezos sat down for an interview with Rubenstein at the Economic Club in Washington D.C. and spoke about his company’s success, his wealth, and his philanthropies. Rubenstein then asked him how he would decide which of the more than 47,000 proposals for donations he would fund, and he replied, “We’re going to use hardened intuition.”

Rubenstein then said, “When you use your intuition to make decisions, where is the intuition leading you now on your second headquarters?”

Bezos erupted with laughter and said, “Can we just take a moment to acknowledge that that may be the best segue in the history of interviewing!”

While you may not be fortunate enough to have David Rubenstein help you with segues, you are still obliged to create continuity in your presentations. Here are three segues you can use:

1. Direct Lead to the inbound slide: “Now let’s take a look at how that cost reduction is reflected our headcount.”

This is the most effective option because it sends the message to your audience that you know your presentation cold—with the subliminal message that you are a very thorough person—but, as you saw above, is the most dangerous. Do not try this trick at home unless you are absolutely certain.

2. Indirect lead to the inbound slide. “Let’s take another look at our company story.”

Although not as effective as the direct lead, the indirect does provide a bridge with the words “another look.” And certainly far more effective than Warren’s “speaking of,” or the banal, “Moving right along…”

3. Closure on the outbound slide. “From this timeline, you can see that our company’s operational efficiencies and productivity gains have reduced our operational efficiencies and costs significantly.”

The End. Closure. Say something conclusive about the slide currently on the screen.

The easiest, safest, and simplest of the three is the last, closure. Any one of them concludes your discussion of the outbound slide, and leaves your audience primed for the inbound slide. When they are primed, you have provided continuity.