Coaching Pain Points Series: 1.Mastering formal Communications

Communication is perhaps the most important skill when it comes to exercising leadership. The day to day informal communication is essential for stake holder management, dealing with clients, managing your team and developing the people you lead. However, all this will not be enough if you can’t talk skilfully to a group or make compelling presentations. 

Missed opportunities

I am amazed at the number of executives who don’t feel comfortable with presenting to a group. I have seen countless cases of well-meaning bosses giving their charges a great opportunity to get more exposure with senior managers or other influential people, only to have them blow it by not being competent in presentations. Sometimes they never get a second chance. 

Presentation Courses

When I started my career, I used to facilitate two-day presentation courses. I received great training in how to deliver these courses by St Charles Corporate University that was the educational arm of what was in those days, Anderson Consulting and Arthur Andersen. I delivered over a hundred of these courses all over Europe to their staff and then designed my own version for my clients in Spain. 

We used to use video cameras to tape and play back the presentations and we worked on body language, voice, eye contact, visual aids, structure and audience management. I saw with my own eyes, again and again, how people who had no idea of how to speak in public and who were capable of putting you to sleep in one minute, could, after only two days, produce and deliver effective, dynamic and even entertaining presentations. I wouldn’t say that 100% of people could do this but 95% could produce pretty good presentations and maybe 75% outstanding presentations. It just requires knowledge and practice. 

I encourage all my coachees to get some training in making presentations and indeed most companies offer these courses to their people. For those who can’t, I try to help them with some pointers, a few exercises and some good processes. With this they improve a lot, in fact, it is amazing how much you can improve the use of your voice and your body with some good pointers and a bit of practice in front of a mirror or videoing yourself and watching the presentation with a colleague.

The importance of Structure

One area that most people overlook is structure.  A good structure makes it easier for the audience to follow you, helps you organise and manage your thoughts during the presentations and makes it much easier to highlight the key messages of your presentation. It is amazing how often you can adapt the classic sales presentation structure for most corporate presentations:

Presentation Structure

• Introduction (why are we here, what are we going to talk about and why should you listen to me).
• Describe the problem or need (from your audiences’ point of view.)
• Describe the solution or service or product (without too much detail).
• Outline the benefits to audience (this is often overlooked and yet it is what makes most people accept the proposal or buy the product).
• Action (Tell them clearly what you want them to do). 

This structure doesn’t work for every presentation but it works for most of them. The point is you must structure your presentation and practice summing up one section and then introducing your next section. For example, “So that is the problem we face, now let us look at what we can do about it”). This helps the audience know where they are and it helps you get more clarity.

Understanding your audience

All this works better if you have done some research on the people who you are going to present to: 

• What do they know?
• What don’t they know?
• What problems, concerns or fears do they have?
• What do they want to achieve?
• What do they value?
• What would benefit them? 

The more you know about these things the better job you will do. 

As I saw delivering presentation courses all those years ago, it isn’t rocket science. You just need a bit of know-how, an ounce of courage, and practice. What I do know is just how important it is. Anyone exercising leadership today really needs to be good at making presentations. It is an indispensable skill.