It’s really not the question. Don’t script. It’s hard to accept this because you want to control the result, and everyone has their opinion about what you should say. Dean has a solution for you: The sweet spot between scripting and winging it.
Check Dean’s post out here, and if you want help with your next shareholder’s presentation or leadership speech, take a look at our support service here.
Leaders run into a classic conundrum: to script or not to script for important presentations. Whether it’s a board meeting, a major client pitch, or especially those high-stakes shareholder presentations, everyone around you has an opinion about what you must say and how you must say it. The pressure pushes people toward scripting, because scripting feels “safe.”
Here’s the problem: very few people can read or recite a script in a way that sounds natural. That is a trained skill—it’s what actors spend years mastering. And you already have a full-time job. Some people can do it, but it requires a lot more practice than most leaders realistically have time for.
And when someone is tied to specific words, you can tell. If they miss a phrase, lose their place, or swap a word, the whole thing wobbles. It feels like laying bricks—every brick has to be perfect.
On the other end of the spectrum is improvising with no structure. That’s unpredictable. Where is it going to go? What will you forget? Improvising without guardrails creates anxiety, not confidence.
The magic middle ground is this: follow a sequence, but speak in the words of the moment.
You design a flow—a series of movements, beats, or checkpoints that guide your message from start to finish. Then, when you deliver it, you let the actual wording be natural, spontaneous, and real.
This gives you the best of both worlds: structure without rigidity, authenticity without chaos. Even your mistakes fit the moment because the sequence keeps everything on track.
When you’re preparing for a big presentation, rehearse the sequence rather than memorizing every word. Each run-through will sound slightly different—that’s exactly what you want. Time it. Feel it. Let patterns emerge naturally.
Before long, you’ll have a well-designed message delivered in a way that sounds fully human, fully present, and fully you.
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