On 12 May Caroline Stockmann was joined ‘In conversation with…’ our President, Agnes Favillier, to discuss some top tips and golden rules for presenting. The session was packed with ideas, from how to reach different personality types effectively to how to reduce those nerves which can be helpful in small measure, but if they get out of hand they can undermine us and sabotage our presentation. We had some great questions from our audience too. Read the blog on the event here.
As the session came to a close after 60 minutes, there was still lots more to say, so our Chief Executive picked up with Agnes to discuss a few more relevant points, as follows:
Caroline: Agnes, what do you think are the particular challenges for treasurers in terms of presentation skills?
Agnes: Well, treasury topics can be quite dry, for a start, and that can already be a blocker for non-finance people. I find that if you want to make an impression that sticks, and a positive one of course, then telling a story is a great approach. It can be a challenge, but spending some time to craft a narrative around your topic is a good investment of time. It’s not always possible, but I think you can have ‘personal book-ends’, and ways to relate to the audience during the presentation. Perhaps by sharing something personal, that can help you connect to the audience? Your audience is ‘just people’ after all, so why not try to share something about you, why you care about being in the room, or why you’re personally excited to be speaking? It’s important also to bear in mind that you need more than facts and figures for other people to want to take action, or to make a decision. The ACT’s annual research The Business of Treasury again tells us this year that treasurers feel that strategic influencing skills (communication, relationship-building) are the areas which limit their career progression most, but we still seem always to focus on the technical matters first. Business and behavioural skills maybe need a bit more priority, especially in the context of presenting well. I think we need to look at this in a conscious way, and as you said in the Art of Speaking session, Caroline, we need to treat our upskilling here like a serious project.
Caroline: Can you perhaps share an example of something that went really well for you, Agnes, and also something that really impressed you about someone else’s presentation, and say why it worked?
Agnes: Something I’m not necessarily sure that went well, but was certainly memorable, was a presentation I made shortly after starting in my first job. I was working for the Dutch subsidiary of a large UK multi-national, and we had a Dragon’s Den-style pitch to make to the Board of the business. My idea was to advertise in another language than Dutch, to appeal to non-Dutch speakers. To do that, I wanted the Board to get a feel for what it’s like to be advertised to in a foreign language, and so I spent half my pitch speaking to them in French! Some people loved it and understood my point, others really hated it! I loved it, it was quite freeing to be a bit bold, have fun and try to make an impact in a different way.
Then if I look to others, Christine Lagarde is a very impressive speaker – I would highly recommend watching her speeches, especially the Richard Dimbleby lecture in 2014: she’s personable, tells stories to help her audience visualise the past and the future, and uses multiple analogies in very powerful ways. She doesn’t read her script word for word, so is very conversational, using pauses and different tones and pace to great effect.
Caroline Can you also share an example of something that really did not work, and what you learnt from it?
I’ve done plenty of work presentations where I had planned my entire presentation very well, but had no space for flexibility. I was so focused on wanting to know my topic and presentation inside out that I forgot about what else was going on in the world! I ended up completely stuck when my audience wanted to go down a different track. I just didn’t have an open mind, and had not consulted enough beforehand to see what was on the margins of my presentation that was important to my audience.
Caroline: Yes, that’s a really good point – getting those external perspectives thought through, and imagining what the audience’s motivation might be. I also find sometimes we want to control things, and are afraid that something might happen that could take that ‘control’ away from us so we try to hang on to it. Yet in that very act we make things more difficult for ourselves, and if we sometimes grab the fear by the horns, and open ourselves up to others’ inputs and a potential change of direction, then we actually reach a much more positive outcome.
Thank you again, Agnes, for taking the time to share those insights. I’m sure other treasurers out there will find them very useful, and I’m going to go and listen to Christine Lagarde right now!
