Ever text someone and watch the three dots appear... then disappear?

You wait.

You wonder.

You replay the last thing you said, trying to guess what’s coming next.

And when nothing comes?

You spiral. 🙃 (I wish I could say I don’t do this.)

What is that moment?

It’s not just suspense. It’s a psychological hijack.

That little moment….those three blinking dots….is pure tension.

It hijacks your attention and refuses to let go.

That tension—the not-knowing, the anticipation—is what keeps us locked in.

And in high-stakes presentations or communications, it’s the difference between passive listening and real buy-in.

But most presentations are allergic to tension.

They give away too much, too soon.

They lead with the solution, explain every detail, and smother the audience with clarity before they’ve even felt the problem.

Why? Because tension is uncomfortable.

And most presenters confuse discomfort with failure.

So they rush to reassure, over-explain, and close the loop too fast.

But when your presentation solves the problem before the audience feels it…

You lose your chance to make them care.

Tension creates a gap between what is… and what could be.

And your audience wants to close that gap.

They want to move from uncertainty to resolution.

But only if you let them sit in the space between.

This isn’t just storytelling flair—it’s how the brain works.

When confronted with uncertainty, we scan for:

→ Urgency – Is this a real problem? Why now?

→ Stakes – What happens if we don’t act?

→ Possibility – What’s on the other side of this?

If your message doesn’t create that push-and-pull, that friction between where we are and where we could be—they’ll nod along without actually engaging.

And tension doesn’t mean being vague, confusing, or manipulative.

It means letting the problem breathe. Letting the stakes feel real before you race to the fix.

The best presentations don’t close the loop too early.

They open it.

Hold it.

And make the audience feel the urgency to resolve it.

For example, in a project with a cybersecurity company, we didn’t start with the solution when positioning to CTOs.

We started with the nightmare:

“What if your IAM provider gets hacked?”

Then we let the chaos unfold:

Employees locked out. Customer portals down. Operations frozen.

Only after they’d felt the risk did we offer the fix.

Tension isn’t fluff—it’s friction.

It makes your audience need what comes next.

3 Ways to Create Good Tension in High-Stakes Presentations

Tension isn’t automatic.

You have to build it—intentionally, strategically, and just long enough to make the payoff land.

Here’s how to build that tension (the good kind) so your message doesn’t just land. It lingers.

1. Lead with what’s at stake.

You don’t earn attention by listing what you do. You earn it by showing what’s at risk.

When you open with the problem, you create contrast.

When you open with the solution, you skip the part that makes it matter.

Your audience is scanning for one thing: “Does this affect me?”

🚫 Instead of: “We help companies align sales and marketing.”

✅ Say: “Right now, your marketing is saying one thing, and your sales team is saying another. That misalignment? It’s killing deals you should be closing.”

2. Don’t solve it right away.

Most presenters panic at the first sign of discomfort.

They rush to the resolution. Fill every silence. Over-explain the fix.

But tension only works if you let it breathe.

Name the problem—and pause.

Let the stakes build.

It’s the “wait… then what?” feeling that keeps them engaged.

Here’s how that might play out:

A founder opens their pitch by walking investors through a product failure that nearly tanked their launch.

Then pauses—and says, “That mistake cost us six figures. But it taught us something most companies never figure out.”

That moment holds the room.

Let the stakes land before you solve them.

3. Use the Open Loop Trick.

Raise a question… but don’t answer it. Yet.

Drop a breadcrumb. Tease a twist. Hold back just enough to make your audience need the next slide, the next line, the next move.

And one of the simplest ways? Use an open loop.

“Before we fixed their funnel, we had to blow up something they’d spent months building.” (Wait—what? Why?)

Open loops work because the brain craves closure.

It wants to fill in the blank. Solve the riddle.

So when you pause mid-story or hint at something bigger, it creates tension they have to resolve.

🎯 The “Tension Stack”

Most presentations follow this pattern:

1. State the problem
2. Explain the solution
3. Move on

That’s not tension. That’s a checklist.

High-stakes communication demands more.

You need to stack tension—beat by beat—so the audience leans in with increasing urgency.

Enter: The Tension Stack.

A message structure that uses repeated rising action to create unignorable urgency—by opening loops, delaying resolution, and layering risk.

Think of it like narrative Jenga:

• Each slide adds weight
• Each new beat makes the previous one feel more precarious
• Until the audience needs the payoff to relieve the pressure

Here’s how it works:

• Familiar Setup – Start with what feels safe or expected.
• Break the Pattern – Introduce something unsettling or new.
• Expand the Consequence – Make the problem ripple wider or deeper.
• Personalize the Risk – Shift from “problem” to “your problem”.
• Underscore the Failure of the Status Quo – Show why their fallback won’t work.
• Pay it Off (Only if Ready) – Offer the better path—but only once they’re dying to hear it.

Why This Works

The Tension Stack makes your audience feel the weight of the problem before you hand them the solution.

You win attention by building pressure—and making people need the release.

Real-World Example: Cybersecurity Pitch to a CTO

Here’s how we would apply The Tension Stack™ with our client to restructure a critical pitch:

Slide 1 – Familiar Setup:

Your IAM provider is your gatekeeper.

Slide 2 – Pattern Break:

But what happens when they’re the ones who get hacked?

Slide 3 – Expanded Consequences:

Employees are locked out. Customers denied access. Operations paralyzed.

Slide 4 – Personal Risk:

You didn’t cause the breach. But you’ll take the fall.

Slide 5 – Status Quo Fails:

Restore takes days. Maybe weeks.

When IAM fails, you don’t need recovery.

You need an instant switch.

Here’s how we give you that option.

Slide 6 – Payoff:

Portability is resilience.

We give you the clean exit your business can’t afford to be without.

Each slide raised tension.

Each delay made the payoff matter more.

🤖 Bonus GPT Prompt: Stress Test Your Tension Stack

Not sure if your message is actually building tension—or just feels that way to you?

Use this prompt to simulate how a high-stakes, time-starved audience might respond.

Prompt:

You are a high-stakes, time-starved decision-maker.

You're skeptical by default—and used to sitting through bad decks.

I’m going to share a sequence of slides or message beats designed to build tension and urgency using a framework called The Tension Stack™.

Please give feedback on the following:

1. What emotion (if any) builds as the sequence progresses?
2. At what point do you feel the stakes rise noticeably?
3. Does the tension increase with each beat—or does it stall?
4. At what point (if any) do you feel impatient or confused?
5. What would you change to build even more urgency or personal risk?

Here’s the sequence:

[Insert your slide headlines or key message beats here, 1 per line]

🔄 Your Turn

Got any case studies for me?

When was the last time you felt tension in a presentation—in a good way?

Hit reply and tell me what happened.

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