Short List Interview Coaching: Why I don’t focus on individual speaker delivery

I’m a bit different than the standard presentation coach in that I don’t focus a great deal on how speakers hold their hands, articulate words, or stand in the room. Not only are these elements of presentations not particularly interesting to me, I don’t really think they matter all that much to selectors.  I believe that most selectors are more interested in the speaker’s approach to the project and how his/her experience indicates future performance. So, unless someone’s delivery is seriously getting in the way of the message, I tend to leave delivery issues alone. In my world as a coach, content rules the day; delivery is just the vehicle to get the content communicated.

This does not mean that I don’t care about delivery. I do. I just care more about team delivery than I do about individual performance. Teams that come across as collaborative and supportive, and that work together well, will always win over teams with excellent, polished speakers who aren’t well connected.  And, the coach can’t create a connected team by picking on individual speakers.

Everything I know about presentation skills in particular and communication in general, is that they are learned behaviors. This is good news for all of us who make our living coaching presentations – and it should be good news for presenters:  it means that anyone can learn effective presentation skills, no matter the skill level at which they start. However, the bad news is that speakers come to us with 20-30-40 years of learned behavior, which needs to be unlearned in order to make some delivery skills more effective. To think we can “fix” a speaker in a short period of time just doesn’t make sense.

The worst time to try and correct someone’s deep-seeded delivery issues is when the team is days or hours away from an interview. As a result, I’ve decided that delivery coaching right before an interview requires the coach to carefully choose her battles, and not mix training and coaching. In training, we try to help a speaker slowly improve his/her skills through repeated practice and trying new techniques. In coaching, we try to help a presenter give his/her best performance in a very short period of time. This means carefully selecting the minor corrections we can make in delivery and “ignoring” behaviors that we might otherwise comment on in a training context. For example, I coached a recent winning team where one of the key team members has a habit of loudly clearing his throat before beginning to speak. He does this repeatedly at the start of the presentation and at key pause points in his delivery. But, otherwise, his delivery is friendly, his content is well-organized, and his message is solid. I decided to let it go. The quality of the presentation was otherwise strong and I believed that trying to change this habit would have made him much more nervous, perhaps resulting in negative outcomes for his presentation overall. In other words, I chose my battles and decided to focus on the overall goal, which was a confident speaker with strong content.

I also believe in coaching with kindness, using humor when appropriate to get the best speaking behavior possible from each presenter. When a speaker feels picked on or ridiculed, it doesn’t help his/her ability to present with confidence. I try to tell speakers what I like about their delivery, helping them build upon those strengths versus continually pointing out and correcting deficiencies. I’ll adjust the presentation parameters to help a weak speaker be successful. For example, if a speaker is more comfortable speaking from his chair, I’ll try to accommodate that to make him more comfortable. And, if another speaker wants or feels she needs to use notes, I’ll find a way to help her use notes most effectively.

When I’ve got a delivery “train wreck,” and there have been a few, I always take the person aside and provide some one-on-one coaching, again choosing my battles to help the speaker be as confident as possible. There are always options for speakers with a great attitude, even when they have limited skills. These options include limiting time, having the team present in a conversational back-and-forth manner, using visuals as notes, and even creating directed response with a team leader. In only the rarest of occasions have I recommended someone be removed from a presentation team; in those cases, the problem was less about the speaker’s delivery and more about his/her negative attitude combined with extremely poor delivery. And, if that person is the project manager, project executive/principal, or lead designer, your options are much more limited.

As I get older, I’m more comfortable with the “quirks” speakers bring to teams –and I think that makes presentations more interesting. I’ve been professionally speaking for more than 25 years. I’m pretty good at it, but I know that I’m not ever going to make speakers deliver just like me, nor would I want to. Speaker differences make for more engaging and interesting presentations. My goal as a coach is to help each speaker give his/her best performance in the limited time we have to get a team ready. Ultimately, in short-list interviews, we want to be compelling, interesting, and memorable. But content still trumps delivery and real people speaking with passion about the details of the project always trumps scripted or overly polished presenters speaking in generalities.

Creating Memorable Short-List Presentations

As I coach more presentations, I’m convinced that it takes more to win in the interview beyond the requisite experience, team members, and technical competence. Winning a presentation in this competitive environment requires that teams be memorable. In fact, in most short-list situations, all of the teams can usually be considered qualified and able to succeed on the project. As a result, being memorable in the presentation makes a real difference in close competitions. Teams can be memorable through compelling content, eye-catching visuals, and well-choreographed delivery.

Being memorable by itself isn’t the goal – particularly if the memory isn’t a good one. Pulling my skirt off in an interview was certainly memorable, but not in a good way (no, I did not do this on purpose, and no, we did not win the job). Teams want to be positively memorable for the right reasons – reasons that drive the client to select them for the work.  Fortunately, there are numerous opportunities to be memorable in the three main elements of a presentation:  content, visuals, and delivery.

Content that is focused on the client and organized into clear “packages” is more memorable. Speakers who package their content and emphasize the differentiator in each of the packages tend to be more memorable. And, if the content packages are organized into a logical structure, selectors can more easily recall both the differentiators and the sequence of arguments. There are a variety of reasons why this strategy results in more memorable content:  Organizing content into a logical sequence fits the way the human brain selects, organizes, and interprets data. When listeners can understand the logic of an argument, they listen better and may be able to better internalize key messages (like differentiators). And, using a logical structure of content “packages” lends itself to creative repetition of content throughout the presentation. Finally, if speakers “signpost” content as it flows through a logical structure as in “First, I’m going to cover X, then Y, then Z”, listeners are able to “relax” into the content and really absorb the main messages.

From a visuals standpoint, teams should move beyond PowerPoint to truly be memorable. Sometimes this means low tech solutions; sometimes it means raising the bar on presentation technology.  In the past month, I’ve seen both utilized to create very effective team presentations. One team used presentation banners and sat on stools to create a more conversational environment with their audience. Another used a writeable site plan to interact with selectors. One more team used the largest touch screen I’ve ever seen to interact with their system during the presentation. In none of these interviews did speakers rely on flashy photography with superimposed bullets on PowerPoint. In all of these interviews, speakers used visuals as “frosting” to their presentations vs. letting the visuals take over the presentation. These days, creative teams are pulling out the crayons and white board markers. They’re making models out of non-traditional materials. And, they’re using technology in innovative ways – pushing the limits of what we thought we could do within limited time and space parameters.  From my perspective, this has been fun and engaging; it seems visuals are finally working for my teams in ways I always hoped they could.

Team delivery can also be memorable in how individual speakers speak, how transitions are made between speakers, and how groups of team members move around the space. Memorable presentations are well choreographed without being overly staged. In the most recent presentations, I’ve had a large number of speakers cycle through eight chairs, individual speakers speaking from stools, and project managers acting as emcees for their teams. All of these teams understood the value of rehearsal and took the time to get each other comfortable with movement and sound before the interview. Each team was able to anticipate visuals, handle the unexpected, and assist struggling team members because they’d worked through choreography and rehearsal together. Crafting memorable delivery is actually quite simple – come up with a good idea and then rehearse it until it becomes second nature.

Finally, I think the most memorable interviews have been the most fun. Team members were so comfortable with each other that they supported one another throughout all stages of the presentation and they laughed together when things didn’t work out as expected. At the end of memorable interviews, team members come away knowing they gave their absolutely best performance, leaving nothing back.

The Benefits of In-House Training on Tight Budgets

(Re-post from June 2010)

With ever shrinking budgets, how do we continue to do training in our organizations? And, how do firms even find the time to train the professionals who so desperately need training? These are questions those of us in the training profession must address if we hope to stay relevant in this chaotic marketplace. While some firms are still purchasing aggressive programs designed to develop their next generation of leaders, most firms have minimized training budgets and/or cut their commitment to staff development.

Some organizations are finding that though they value training, their limited staff don’t have time to take two days away to attend a training program. So, what do we do?  One thing is clear: Firms should never walk away from a commitment to training. I say this not as someone who sells training but, as a leader of a staff who believes the more time I spend educating my team, the more productive and stable they’ll be, and the more relevant my company will remain.

I believe there are some tangible solutions to correct the current training vacuum. Training can take a variety of forms. Rather than investing in the two-day offsite training that costs thousands of dollars, firms should consider shorter, more targeted programs to address specific needs. They should consider using in-house training resources particularly for repeated courses. Nothing hones a professional’s skills better than having to teach a class.

We’re finding that as demand for packaged training programs has waned, design services that enable clients to bring in-house training to employees have increased. We have also found, with our own training video, that the best value we can deliver to customers is to provide an accompanying training guide so firms can use the video as part of an in-house training program. In fact, we think this model of training is so effective that technical firms ought to consider designing their own in-house training programs with linked instructor and participant guides.

Designing specific in-house training can be both extremely cost-effective and can maintain consistency across learners. The cost of creating a credible in-house training video has gone way down in the last several years.  Creating a training video is now more accessible even to moderately sized firms in our industry. Once created, the training program can be used again and again within the company. We just completed a video for one of our clients at a 5^thof the cost that a similar video would have cost several years ago.

Quite simply, making employee training a priority makes companies better. With effective training and information, employees perform better and customers ultimately receive better products and better service. Firms across the nation need to evaluate how training is currently being done and take steps to streamline and prioritize their in-house programs.