Getting experts to make powerful presentations to key decision makers
 

In your organization, do you have specialist managers or technical experts who need to make presentations to executive audiences -- whether in your own firm or to customers and clients?  And are those presentations not as effective as they should be?

For subject matter experts with modest or weak presentation skills, standing up in front of an audience of decision making executives can be a tremendous challenge -- and very intimidating. Time and again these knowledgeable but unpolished presenters get bogged down in technical detail or trapped in explaining their thought processes, leaving the audience confused and unclear.

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Our Executive-Ready Presentations workshop is designed to solve those problems.

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Two-day session covers both content and presentation

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Our Executive-Ready Presentations workshop is conducted over two successive days. Participants will bring a presentation they plan to deliver, as well as relevant supporting documentation. They will work on this presentation throughout the two days.

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The first day will focus primarily on content, though participants will make brief oral presentations during this first day to establish a baseline for their platform skills. By the end of the first day, participants will have re-thought their material, developing a powerful succinct message and tight story-line designed to persuade a non-familiar and non-expert senior leadership audience of the value and importance of their work.

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The second day will be devoted largely to learning the key principles behind effective oral delivery, including best practices in vocal quality, body language, and audience interaction. Participants will rehearse and practice presentations, which will be videotaped and critiqued.

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Day 1: Strategy, Message, Story, Organization

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The first day of the workshop will concentrate on four key elements of creating an Executive-Ready Presentation: Strategy, Message, Story, and Organization.   Participants will learn how to “frame a story” about their work by constructing a tight introduction to their presentation. They will also focus on creating representative anecdotes and analogies. Representative anecdotes are mini-stories that capture the essence of the scientific information; representative analogies are illustrative comparisons that shape abstruse scientific data and conclusions and link them to commonly understood phenomena. (e.g., the DNA double helix is like a “coiled, twisted ladder.”) They will also focus on identifying the compelling business implications of their material.

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Day 2: Stage Presence and Audience Interaction

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Day 1 will set the foundation for Day 2. Having re-worked content in Day 1 according to best practices, participants in the second day can concentrate on delivery. Here the focus will be on (1) establishing an authoritative and credible stage presence and (2) managing and controlling audience interaction.

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As a group, participants will learn and apply important techniques for oral presentation. Throughout the day, participants will have the opportunity to:

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• rehearse and practice presentations

• receive feedback from peers

• work one-on-one with an instructor

 

Bottom line?

Your specialist managers and technical experts will become more polished and effective presenters once they complete our Executive Ready Presentations workshop.

Contact us today to learn how Executive Ready Presentations can help your firm.