Set up, Transition, Pause (STP)

By Alastair Greener, presenter of Present Yourself in a Minute · Updated 5 November 2026

Most slide problems are timing problems. The slide arrives before you have made the point, you talk over the change, or you click ahead and then have to explain a slide the room has not read yet. STP fixes this with three habits you can drill in one rehearsal.

Set up

Before the talk, write one line on each slide saying what the audience should take from it. If you cannot write that line, the slide probably belongs in a handout. In the room, the set up happens in your head: you finish the sentence before the click, so the slide arrives as an answer to what you have just said.

Transition

Make the change with one click, from the same place each time. Do not look for the button on the screen while you are speaking. Keep your eyes on the room. If your slides advance on a timer, keep the timing loose enough that a change never catches you in the middle of a sentence.

Pause

After the change, stop. Let the room read the slide, then start with the point, not the slide's title. A pause always feels longer to the speaker than to the audience, so rehearse it with a colleague watching from the seats or with a camera running.

A worked example

Say a slide shows a chart with one headline. Set up means you know the point is that sales dipped in the spring and recovered by the summer. Transition is one click, with your eyes on the room. Pause means you wait while the chart is read, then say the point before the detail: "Sales dipped in the spring. Here is why." Without the pause, the room hears the detail before it has seen the shape of the chart.

Practical settings

• Use presenter view on a laptop that faces you. Your notes and the next slide sit on your screen, not on the wall.
• Do not turn your back to the audience to read the screen.
• Insert a blank slide when a point needs discussion and you want the focus back on you. The wall goes dark, and the eye comes to you.
• If your talk branches, type the slide number and press Enter to jump straight to the one you need, such as a backup chart after a question.

Mistakes to avoid

• Reading the slide word for word while it is on screen.
• Talking through the change, so the first part of the new point is lost.
• Clicking back and forth to check something. Use a backup slide instead.
• Building a slide for every sentence, which gives the room more changes than it can follow.

For a practice routine, record a full run with the slides and review the changes using the self-review sheet. If your slides carry a lot of text, the slide rules explain why the pause stops working when the wall is full of words.

Related guides

• PowerPoint as wallpaper: slide rules that work on a big screen
• All guides and tools

The picture at the top of this page is an illustration, not a photograph of a client or a real job.