Ingrid Gudenas

May 20, 2026

Designing Presentations

How the smartest people lose their exec audience

Ingrid Gudenas

May 20, 2026

Designing Presentations

These technical people are geniuses. That’s their strength and their downfall.

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Each weekly issue of Causative Communication offers you fresh insights into your communications and relationships, both at work and at home, along with specific actions to take to become more causative in your life. To get on the list to receive the next issue, enter your information below.

Featured

May 20, 2026

How the smartest people lose their exec audience

May 20, 2026

These technical people are geniuses. That’s their strength and their downfall.

May 20, 2026

May 13, 2026

Managing 12 people in a heated debate

May 13, 2026

The meeting transformed from conflict into a collaboration.

May 13, 2026

May 6, 2026

The seven-figure presentation

May 6, 2026

Where are you supposed to look when you’re presenting?

May 6, 2026

April 29, 2026

For those of you who are parents

April 29, 2026

It’s not surprising to me that our clients start applying what they’re learning at home, because it helps them do just that.

April 29, 2026

April 22, 2026

Becoming a trusted advisor to the C-Suite

April 22, 2026

This is a story about an Executive Assistant whose communication skills were better than the executives she supported.

April 22, 2026

April 15, 2026

When a “nobody” can influence the CEO

April 15, 2026

The ability to cause willingness in others will unlock the door to any outcome you want to achieve. Without it, you’ll stare at the door that is locked to you for a long time.

April 15, 2026

April 8, 2026

A new approach for when they just don’t get it

April 8, 2026

What I used was only one of the tools from a very select set designed to help you remove any obstacle standing between you and what you want to achieve.

April 8, 2026

April 1, 2026

I am so excited to announce this!

April 1, 2026

This course teaches you a skill no one has, at least not up to this point.

April 1, 2026

March 25, 2026

The first step to creating extraordinary outcomes

March 25, 2026

The shift from ordinary to extraordinary begins with this moment: knowing the exact effect you want to create and stating it precisely.

March 25, 2026

March 18, 2026

How to astonish your boss, the world, and you

March 18, 2026

When you have real communication skills, you have the ability to transform others and see the transformation happen before your eyes.

March 18, 2026

March 11, 2026

Reading the mind of your audience

March 11, 2026

If you’ve ever taken presentation skills training or gotten coached, you know most presentation coaching focuses on the presenter.

My work focuses on the audience.

March 11, 2026

March 4, 2026

Transforming a screen full of "black squares" into real connection

March 4, 2026

This meeting, however, was virtual with seven people Isabella had never met. None of them had their camera on. She was looking at a wall of little black squares with names written on them. They looked more like gravestones than people.

How do you build rapport with that?

March 4, 2026

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February 25, 2026

How to achieve a standing ovation

February 25, 2026

Standing ovations are the hallmark of highly skilled presenters. They occur in proportion to how precisely you reach your audience, whether you hit a true bull’s eye with your delivery and your message. They start long before your final sentence. There’s only one driving element that produces them. Simply put, the depth of your skill in both message and delivery determines the depth of your audience’s response.

February 25, 2026

February 18, 2026

The 10 Rules of Executive-Level Presentations

February 18, 2026

That email came from Vikram, a senior leader who had sent his top team to our Art of Executive-Level Presentations workshop.

Before that, everyone was frustrated. The ELT was frustrated with long, unfocused presentations that buried the point. Vikram’s direct reports were frustrated because they couldn’t get anything approved.

They had an abundance of good ideas, intelligence, and spent hours preparing their presentations to the ELT. None of these were working because they weren’t playing by the rules.

Everything changed once they learned The 10 Rules of Executive-Level Presentations I’m making available in this PDF. (Free Download)

February 18, 2026

February 11, 2026

How to move people when logic isn’t enough

February 11, 2026

David leads a large group in an organization that has over 80,000 people. They’ve been getting hammered in the news for months now, trying to recover from mistakes made by the then-CEO five years ago. Unfortunately, they’ve just had to announce layoffs. There’s a tremendous amount of unsettling re-organization and re-shuffling going on. Where people will land is up in the air. The future of the organization is uncertain and morale is at an all-time low.

David’s group is the only inspired group in the whole organization. They’re engaged, focused, forward-looking. And helping the new CEO turn the whole organization around. That wasn’t always true.

They’re inspired not because conditions are better for them, but because David changed the story he was telling them.

When David first came for Beyond Persuasion, his attempts to “inspire” his team were falling flat. He was saying all the right things: the new vision, the plan, the priorities, the outcomes, the call to action. All good, but none of it was working.

February 11, 2026

February 4, 2026

How to become a fearless presenter

February 4, 2026

Most people begin presentations unsure how the audience will react. It’s the not-knowing that undermines self-confidence. They look for the first response to regain their footing. And when the reaction isn’t what they expected, confidence drops again.

Prediction vanquishes fear, even when the starting point looks dismal. You’re not needing. You’re not guessing. You’re not hoping or wishing. You’re able to predict. With certainty. Prediction becomes possible when …

February 4, 2026

January 28, 2026

Communication Doesn’t Transmit Reality. It Creates It.

January 28, 2026

Most leaders assume communication transmits reality, that if the words are clear enough, they will see it.

But communication doesn’t transmit reality. It creates it.

That’s a subtle but seismic shift.

And that means every time you speak, especially at a senior level, you are not just sharing ideas. You are shaping how reality is experienced in the room.

January 28, 2026

January 21, 2026

The 10 rules of “Audience Logic”

January 21, 2026

Most people don’t know how to create instant acceptance. It’s rare to see someone who does. When the stakes are high, most think they’re being “logical” when they’re actually relying on a kind of logic that generates too many words. They talk a lot, present too much detail and explanation, believing it’s essential to creating understanding and agreement. Audiences don’t work like that.

Especially at the executive and senior levels. They have their own logic.

To be successful you have to master a different logic. Audience Logic. Audience Logic decides the outcome.

Here are the rules of Audience Logic (especially senior level audiences):

January 21, 2026

January 14, 2026

How to win the audience before you say a word

January 14, 2026

Laura: “You weren’t watching me!”

Me: “No, I could hear you. I knew what you were doing. I was watching the audience to see what change you produced in them.”

Laura had asked me to be there when she presented at an industry conference with hundreds of potential customers. The revenue potential was enormous if she was successful with her presentation. I spent several days coaching her to get her messaging, and the way she delivered it, just right.

The big day came. I was watching the audience like a hawk. I wanted to see the audience reactions from the moment she said “Hello”, all the way through exactly how they looked as she walked off the stage. Were they looking at her with admiration as they applauded? Or shuffling around and checking their phones?

I started watching the audience before Laura even walked on. They were on their phones or talking to the person next to them. Laura entered the room. I could feel something change in the room as they watched her walk. It was the way she was walking. They could see she carried herself differently.

January 14, 2026

January 7, 2026

He didn’t argue. Everything changed.

January 7, 2026

Many people come to us for training and coaching because they want to create a personal transformation. What surprises, and blows them away, is when they find they’re also creating a beautiful transformation in the other person, whether it’s one person or thousands. That’s where the true power is.

This is Michael’s story, which started when he said:

“I am so frustrated! My new boss won’t listen and keeps overriding me. If this keeps up, I’m going to quit.”

Michael was one of the students on the Beyond Persuasion: The new route to extraordinary outcomes course. He chose this “unsolvable problem” to work on as part of the course.

January 7, 2026

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December 31, 2025

Dreams don’t take a day off

December 31, 2025

My parents came to America from Lithuania with nothing. They had a beautiful life in the old country, and lost it all when the Soviets occupied their land and took it all away. I gained something infinitely valuable from them as they built a new life here. My parents showed me by example that the only real security we have is our innate ability to dream new realities and create them into being, abilities which nothing and no one can take away without our permission, and which they did so well.

I always think about what I learned from them as we go into a new year. I’m filled with a feeling that was well expressed by the great poet Ranier Maria Rilke, “And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been.”

This threshold into a new year is a beautiful time for self-reflection, for dreaming of the future.

December 31, 2025

December 24, 2025

The moments that give life meaning

December 24, 2025

I’m a first-generation immigrant. My parents came from Lithuania, right across the sea from Sweden.

We have a beautiful Christmas Eve tradition I think you’ll enjoy hearing about. It creates a very special moment.

Each person at the dinner table receives a large wafer of unleavened bread and we have communion.

You might have heard of “Holy Communion”, which is different. That’s when a Priest blesses the wafer and gives it special religious significance.

This Christmas Eve tradition of communion is not religious. If you look the word communion up in the dictionary, without the word “Holy” in front of it, it means:

The sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.

You can see it’s something special.

December 24, 2025

December 17, 2025

Creating meaning when it's just you and a camera

December 17, 2025

I have no doubt you have been extensively virtual this past year. Me too. I’ve been coaching hundreds of people, trapped in a machine-based communication medium that feels stripped of soul and humanity, teaching them how to make all their virtual communications meaningful to their audience.

December 17, 2025

December 10, 2025

How Henry became a VP without changing who he is

December 10, 2025

I’ve met too many people who have no personality left. It’s been sanitized out of existence.

I’ve met people who are afraid to speak up and are way too quiet. They say way less than they should. I’ve met people who are always apologizing for what they think and who they are (“I’m so sorry I feel this way …”). I’ve met too many who are filled with self-doubt, trying to figure out “what’s wrong with me”.

And I’ve met too many “corporate professionals” who have learned to say and do all the right things, and then wonder where the satisfaction is in life.

Henry didn’t let the outside world influence him at all.

December 10, 2025

December 3, 2025

Mastering “Direct to Camera” presentation skills

December 3, 2025

Jake, the executive I was coaching, was looking at the camera like it was a snake. He had come for coaching for what’s called “Direct to camera” presentation skills.

Many executives are coming here for this coaching because so many are being asked to make Direct to Camera videos. They’re being asked to sit in a small room and talk to a camera, with no actual audience present, to create a solo video that will be watched by 200 or 10,000 people. Many of these videos will be posted online for the public to see. I recently coached an executive who posted a video to 5,000,000 views.

It’s a weird feeling to talk directly to the camera. It’s not a “natural” skill.

December 3, 2025

November 26, 2025

The love we feel today

November 26, 2025

Me: “I just called to tell you how much I love you.”

Justine: “What’s wrong?”

Me: “Nothing‘s wrong.”

Justine: “Yes there is. You never call me in the middle of the week. And you sound like you’re about to cry.”

Justine’s my big sister. She was right. I was driving across the San Francisco Bay, on my way home …

November 26, 2025

November 19, 2025

One presentation strategy almost no one knows

November 19, 2025

“I don’t know if it’s possible, but I would like to be captivating.”

This came from Jeffrey who sounded like it would never happen. He was telling me his goals at the start of the presentation skills workshop for senior execs their CEO had arranged. Jeffery is in Finance and no one would have described him as captivating.

Alan, the senior exec over Engineering, said, “Me too.”

The rest of the group all nodded, they wanted that too.

They all did their “Before” videos. They came across as brilliant, smart, experienced. None of them was captivating.

They looked at me hopefully.

By the end of the training, they were each not only captivating, but irresistibly compelling, and even charismatic. They came across as true leaders.

I’m going to talk to you about one of the things they learned that contributed to their transformation…

November 19, 2025

November 12, 2025

How not to lose the audience … or yourself

November 12, 2025

I was watching the audience. When Arte walked on stage, they were looking at him with mild interest, light curiosity. It was his quarterly All-Hands presentation to 1500 in his division. Arte started:

“Good morning, I’m excited to be here, I hope you’re excited about being here also. Today I would like to talk to you a little bit about…”
By the time Arte got to that point, the audience had lost their spark, they were fading. He didn’t see it. By the time Arte got to the middle of his presentation, even to him something felt flat. He started to talk faster. He tried to inject enthusiasm, but it felt forced. He ended by telling a sea of polite but uninspired faces they had an exciting future ahead.

Arte knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what. He felt a powerful need to break free of something, but had no clue what was binding him and holding him back.

November 12, 2025

November 5, 2025

The 2 skills that enabled her journey from hopeless to VP

November 5, 2025

Bryony hung up from the virtual meeting with her boss with a heavy heart and a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had just gotten the news she dreaded.

Bryony was a Senior Manager who’d requested a promotion to Director. Her boss said, “Well, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll recommend you because you’re doing good work” and had unenthusiastically taken Bryony’s request to her boss. The answer was not only “Not now,” the top boss dismissed Bryony’s future possibilities as well.

Her boss thought she was being helpful when she said,” You don’t really have a chance of getting promoted because you don’t have leadership communication skills.”

Bryony had no idea what she was talking about. She asked what skills were they? The boss had trouble defining them, just that Bryony wasn’t coming across as “a real leader”.

Bryony sat for five minutes trying to figure it out, wondering if she needed to be bossier. It was not her style and if that’s what was required, it was hopeless. She also didn’t see how being bossy was a good thing.

November 5, 2025

October 29, 2025

The skills an SVP needs to create trust and inspire loyalty

October 29, 2025

A large corporation had acquired 8 successful companies through their Mergers and Acquisitions. They paid a lot for them. Each one of them had a CEO. Now the CEOs were Senior Vice Presidents, high up in the large company, but no longer the men in charge of everything and everyone.

The CEO had gone through our special virtual Leadership Coaching Program based on Mastering Virtual Presentations. When he saw each one of these 8 new SVPs speak to internal audiences, he cringed. They had good content, but lots of sharp edges and missing key skills in their delivery that would make them great. So, he signed them up for the program.

The 8 men showed up skeptical and arrogant, but willing to give me a chance to see if there was anything good in what I presented. They didn’t think so, but they weren’t rude about it. They were quite pleasant. But arrogant. Especially with each other. Each one tremendously competent. Each one exceptionally accomplished, and the proof was the organizations they had built from nothing and then sold for hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars.

October 29, 2025