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Executive coaching and presentation training enable smaller companies to create a better impression with investors, customers and other stakeholders. Isabel Bass considers the benefits. If Minnie Minor makes a mound of money, where's the mound of money Minnie Minor makes? Four years ago, you might hear executives maneuvering that mouthful to deliver a trouble-free presentation. Back then, presentation training was slowly being considered as a way to get the corporate message across, and a growing army of actors, TV presenters and former political lobbyists were hustling their wares. The height of business chic was to have your own presentation trainer.
Fashions change and this one did too. Falling stock markets and squeezed profits upped the stakes for pulling off a successful investor roadshow, corporate beauty contest, presentation or media interview. Smaller company investors scouted for good management, and "management, management, management" became their mantra.
But keeping in touch with stakeholders is time-intensive and small and medium-sized companies do not have large investor relations departments. It is up to the chairman, the chief executive and polished heads of divisions. No wonder then that people began to realise that their careers, not just the company, were often held back by the way they spoke and were perceived. They saw they could do something about it - on company money. Enter not just a presentation trainer but also your own executive coach - or even a life coach.
These specialists say they can help identify your practical, professional and, in some cases, emotional problems, and then assist you in achieving your professional potential - and a happier life - all in the space of a few hours' chat a week or a month.
So what is coaching? In the case of executive coaches, it is one-on-one guidance and extended support for personal and professional growth and change. It is not training. It is not consulting. And it is definitely not therapy.
Rather, coaching clients receive just-in-time professional development using bespoke strategies that help them achieve specific business and personal goals. The work is ongoing and intensive over several months or more, and is designed to ensure lasting change and promote continuous growth. Anything professional can be worked on - a specific management problem, negotiating skills and techniques, developing strategic thinking, or even upping your personal leadership style and credibility.
Life coaches offer a more holistic service. There are now more than 2,000 practicing in the UK, according to Saga magazine, and the number is rocketing. Usually they are in contact with clients by phone or online rather than in person. Organisations such as the International Coach Federation put some order into the profession, and universities such as Newcastle College provide certificate and diploma courses in life coaching. But life coaching is still, arguably, a profession in which anyone with self-confidence and perhaps a can of snake oil could set up a shingle.
There are other attempts to put life coaching on a sound footing. Its roots are based in cognitive psychology, a branch of psychology created by maverick US psychiatrist Albert Ellis, among others, in the 1950s and which focuses on outcomes, not the individual's past. A business spin-off is neurolinguistic programming (NLP), a set of models of how communication impacts people, which was developed in the 1970s at the University of California at Santa Cruz by Professor John Grinder and information scientist Richard Bandler. They were interested in how people influence one another and in duplicating the behaviour, and therefore effectiveness, of highly influential people.
What made their search special was their use of technology from linguistics and information science, combined with insights from behavioral psychology and general systems theory, to unlock the secrets of effective communication.
Presentation trainers are still in force, though, and they focus more on making you skilled in general business presentations. These can be shareholder meetings, analyst meetings or boardroom meetings. Their target is bettering how you manage yourself on the spot, your material and your audience. Their tips can range from the self-evident (breathe from the diaphragm, not the throat, don't wear tight belts, slow down when speaking) to specialised advice (allow the voice to inflect naturally, think visually when telling a story, focus on the audience). Their mantra is: what people need is credibility. When you stand up and speak, do you look as if you're having a good time? It's all about self-awareness. Some people are unaware that when they're saying red it's actually coming out blue.
Do these advisers deliver the goods? Yes, according to anecdotal evidence. Alan Brown, Investment Head at Schroders, cites a fixed-income pitch he was fighting for when he was Group Chief Investment Officer at State Street Global Advisors. He was up against 14 finalists and had 20 minutes to do the trick. His presentation-training consultant advised him to tighten his presentation, say next to nothing about fixed-income and nearly everything about buying a Saab to convey that he did not want to sell the client anything they did not want. His company won the mandate.
Another example is the asset manager who is a brilliant thinker, supremely self-confident in his subject, rather funny and with a mind that works at supersonic speed. His audiences rated him impatient and arrogant. The problem, he was told: "You steam ahead of your audience and that makes you anxious, hence irritable." He was advised to put more "air" in his presentation, pause at the podium for the start of his speech, say nothing for a second or two, pause between sections of a talk and at transitions in paragraphs. The result: high marks for presentation and content, a lasting impression of a clear, authoritative professional and of an approachable company.
But shareholders and investors deserve a more formal measurement process, considering the executive time and costs involved - from £500 to £3,500 a day. A meaningful measurement process is becoming possible to construct. It starts with a clear definition of the goals for a coaching assignment, a presentation-training course, or a workshop, including business and return on investment goals.
In the case of individuals, it is pretty straightforward to calibrate. Were there any increases of knowledge, did on-the-job behaviour change? Did executives plug the gaps in their management and people skills? Have sales professionals developed the listening and service skills they need to reach a higher level of performance? Do coached staff have greater confidence to make effective presentations with more personal composure, a greater communications skills set, a well-practiced talk, which can be implemented immediately? More specifically, do they better handle an audience, silence, the rhetorical question or the open-ended question, or the heckling comment?
Measuring the 'soft' impact on the company is also straightforward. You can develop the business metrics that measure the effects of corporate design, the annual report, advertising. One overriding result should be clearer corporate branding: a corporate style should emerge from executive coaching and presentation training efforts. Also, the company should be getting a library of high-profile presentations that hit the spot almost every time. These might detail its specialty, or contain sections on general topics such as risk in the 21st Century, or the role of small companies in the alternative asset-allocation mix. These can serve as building blocks for future presentations and be used for pitches, selling and marketing.
The company should have a better bonhonmie, too, because presentation-training workshops can be good team-building exercises. Often delegates come prepared with a three-minute talk, which forms part of a pitch or presentation they perform in the course of their work. Each person also brings a list of two personally-perceived presentation problems or shortcomings which worry them and two presentation goals they want to achieve. The short speeches are videoed and colleagues are guided to offer gentle comments on these in terms of the individual's expressed hopes and fears.
When it comes to measuring return on investment, things get more challenging. This is never easy and is not an exact science, even for tangible undertakings. A good way forward is for a diverse group of stakeholders to review the findings in terms of original goals and to agree on the impact. The findings should include multiple data sources, some combination of observation, surveys, interviews and data sources not dependent on self-reporting. Participants can be asked a number of questions including providing a specific example of something they did as a result of the training, or a list of quantifiable benefits to the company, cost savings or increased revenue.
Anyone required to give business presentations at any level does not need a small army of advisers to get started. Just put a toe in the water by raising your level of observations - identifying how others speak (effectively or ineffectively). Ask yourself who keeps you spellbound and why? Consider exactly what you do, think and feel when speaking to others and when listening to others. That is for starters. If the water feels cold, there are lots of lifeguards around. BiographyIsabel Bass is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared regularly in Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Institutional Investor. She is a director of Bass Associates, a London-based financial communications and investor relations consultancy whose clients include Time Warner, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Euromoney.
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