Coaching the nervous presenter

Coaching the nervous presenter
Many of the managers I train as coaches tell me they have a
'friend' who finds speaking in public and making
presentations difficult. 'How would I best go about
coaching them through the experience?' they ask.

I guess much depends on whether we're going to be working
with an individual over a period of time and develop them
into an accomplished presenter or whether we're working
with someone standing trembling in front of us like a
gibbering wreck with 5 minutes to go before they're due on
stage.

Let's deal with the latter situation first. Conventional
wisdom on developing presentation skills is going to be no
use to us here. We may well feel that our coachee's
Powerpoint is overly busy, their notes a mess and their
planned pyrotechnics to create a memorable ending doomed to
failure, but it's too late to do much about that now.

Followers of my articles on coaching will know I use the
following acronym to give coaches a useful questioning
framework:

A - Aims - What do you want
R - Reality - What's happening now?
R - Reflection - What do you want?
O - Options - What could you do?
W - Way Forward - What will you do?

This ARROW sequence will prove useful to guide to our
nervous presenter although we would not have the time to
coach to any depth.

I recommend concentrating on aims, or goals. Let's have our
presenter utterly clear on what success in this
presentation would be like. If it's winning business from a
sales proposition let's help them focus on that, if it's
creating a relationship with a group of people they're
going to be working with again and again let's help them
focus on that. Of course, if the aim is pure survival then
we can build an aim around that too! Two things are vitally
important in doing this. Firstly we need to make sure that
any aim or goal is within our coachee's control. 'My aim is
to have them sign the contract' is not but 'My aim is to
present a compelling argument' is. Secondly any aim should
be stated in the positive so 'My aim is to present a
compelling argument' is better than 'I don't want to
stammer and make a fool of myself'.

With just a few minutes to coach in advance of a
presentation creating a specific aim increases the chances
of success and gives our reluctant presenter something
useful to focus upon. It's certainly more useful than
criticizing their material or batting them away with a glib
'I'm sure you'll be fine'.

If our coaching intervention was over the longer term then
after each presentation we could be making good use of the
Reality stage by exploring what had happened, what had gone
well, what had gone less well and so on. We could also
employ the Options stage to really think through what
changes presenters could make to bring about a different
result.

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Matt Somers is a coaching practitioner of many years'
experience. He works with a host of clients in North East
England where his firm is based and throughout the UK and
Europe. Matt understands that people are working with their
true potential locked away. He shows how coaching provides
a simple yet elegant key to this lock. For a bumper load of
coaching tips and tricks - including FREE resources - visit
http://www.mattsomers.com