That Stupid Question Kendra was focused on job interviews. She dedicated a good portion of every coaching session to developing the skills she would need to land a position at her level. We composed emails together. We discussed managing recruiters. We analyzed conversations she’d had. We strategized about the background information she discovered. Then she
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Hard To Listen To Stephanie was concerned about commanding a room. In particular, she worried her voice wasn’t up to the task. I asked what specifically she worried about. “I’m monotone,” she said. “People tune me out when I talk.”
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Thrown off script Nigel had been hired as a member of the CEO’s executive team. To date, he’d made two presentations to the Board of Directors. Mandeep, the CEO, felt both could have been better. Mandeep felt that Nigel’s skills were good overall, but to succeed with this Board, Nigel would need to stretch in
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Tell a Better Story Nigel was a Brit who loved language. He took pride in being well-spoken. So when Mandeep, his CEO, told him his first presentations to the Board of Directors hadn’t been up to par, he was a bit stung. He’d had a flash of anger when Mandeep suggested he work with me.
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“I hate watching myself!” Analina was very specific about the help she wanted from me. A long-time listener of my podcast, Analina wanted me to review some tapes of her presenting, then meet and share my notes with her.
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Body issues Caroline, in London, wanted to know what to do with her body. Caroline was one of eight division heads who would speak at the company’s annual global management meeting. The CEO told them they each would talk for eighteen minutes – just like a TED Talk. And, she said, she wanted each talk
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Committing time Dorothy was two years into her role as CEO of a global business services company. She wanted this year’s global management meeting to be engaging and lively. She told her division heads they all needed to talk about their divisions as if they were giving TED Talks. Each person’s eighteen minutes needed to
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Changing your broadcast channel Kevin was proud of having been an engineer. Now that he was a corporate vice-president, he saw his technical background as a major asset. His colleagues disagreed. “Shut him up!” someone wrote in the feedback report I’d created for him. While that was the bluntest comment in the report, it was
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One big idea Kurt was a little freaked out. “I don’t mind talking in front of groups,” he told me during our coaching session. “I actually enjoy presenting at these annual global meetings. But I don’t know what she means when she says she wants us to talk about our groups as if we were
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Desmond was competing for a senior executive position. We had spent the first several coaching sessions mapping his political landscape. Now we turned our attention to the interview.
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