Claire Barrett and I sat together to talk about something that trips up even very experienced consultants: turning a presentation into actual persuasion when your audience is a senior leader with ten minutes, a context switch behind them and another one coming up.
We worked through a number of typical challenges:
Over-prepared, evidence-heavy decks that don’t land.
The shift from “show your working” reasoning, which most of us were trained into at school and university, to the judgement-led style senior audiences actually want.
The hedging trap, where you cover yourself so thoroughly that nobody can extract a decision from what you said.
On the practical side, we spent a fair bit of time on Barbara Minto’s pyramid principle and the SCQA structure, plus the MECE habit of making sure your arguments don’t overlap or leave gaps. These are well-known frameworks, but are genuinely hard to apply in the room, which is why we wanted to talk through how things plays out rather than just describe high-level principles.
You can read our full article on these subjects below:
And we recommend you take a look at Claire’s article on what happens when meetings or discussions are hijacked:
One small confession before you press play: Substack ate my audio for a stretch in the middle, so Claire carried the conversation on her own. Don’t get discouraged by the tech issues, and make sure you keep watching: she shares her thinking on stories versus data, and on why people at the top of the mountain see a different view from the one you have at base camp.
In the coming weeks, Claire and I will be working on another piece on who gets the floor in meeting, and on why same advice on communication works differently for different people. Stay tuned!
