Executive Presentation Training.

The work

Presenting at executive level is a different problem from public speaking generally. The audience is senior, sceptical, short of time, and often reading ahead. You are frequently interrupted. The decision may be made in the first two minutes and defended in the Q&A. I train for those conditions specifically.

What I cover

Opening in ninety seconds, because that is realistically what you get before a board decides how to listen to you. Narrative structure that survives being interrupted, so a question at slide four doesn’t derail slides five to twenty. Slides that support you instead of competing with you. Executive presence: stillness, eye contact, and the physical habits that read as authority rather than nerves. And Q&A, including how to handle the question you can’t answer without losing the room.

Who it’s for

C-suite and senior leaders presenting to boards, investment committees, investors and large internal audiences. Founders raising capital. Executives who present well to their own teams and badly to their board — a very common and entirely fixable split.

Working on live material

Most of this work is done on the actual deck you’re about to present. Bring it in whatever state it’s in. I’ll rebuild the structure, cut what isn’t earning its place, and rehearse it until the delivery is boring to you and compelling to them.

How it works

Typically four to six sessions before a specific presentation, with a final full rehearsal on camera in the format you’ll actually present in. Ongoing retainers are available for leaders with a standing board cycle.

Sessions run 60 minutes, one to one, online over video wherever you are. Every session is recorded and sent to you, which is the part that does most of the work: you can hear the pause you did not take, rather than take my word for it.

The structure half

A presentation that has no shape cannot be rescued by delivery, however good the delivery is.

For a board, the structure is nearly always a numbered framework, because it is the only one of the five that survives interruption. Cut off during point two, you answer the question and come back with “so that was the second thing, the third is…” and nothing is lost. A narrative structure broken in the middle cannot be resumed that cleanly, which is a poor thing to discover at slide nine.

For anything you need approved or funded, the shape is problem, agitate, solution, and the beat everyone skips is the middle one. A solution offered before the room feels the problem sounds like a product looking for a use.

There is more on the specifics of the room in how to present to a board, and on the moment most presentations are actually lost in how to answer a question you cannot answer.

The delivery half

Two habits do most of the damage at executive level, and both are invisible from the inside.

Rising intonation on statements turns a recommendation into a request for permission, which is the wrong register when asking for a budget. And trailing off across a sentence, so the end — where the point usually is — is the quietest part, which is breath rather than conviction.

Both are on the four dials: power, pause, pace and pitch. Four is few enough to hold in your head while a board is looking at you.

What it costs

£140 an hour for a single session. Four sessions £520, six £750, eight £960, which is £120 an hour at the longest block. The first thirty minutes are free, recorded, and end with a written list whether or not you book anything further.

Corporate and team work is quoted separately. This page is one-to-one coaching, which is the only way it is taught.

Try the material first

Nine lessons, free, no account required, in the presentation skills course: opening a deck in ninety seconds, slides that support rather than compete, presenting numbers without drowning, the Q&A and making the ask.

If you can do it from the written version, do. The people who book are usually the ones who found that knowing it and doing it under a board’s attention were different problems.