One of the hardest times to make your ideas clear for any technical presenter is when you’re in front of an audience of executives. You probably have an audience composed mostly of people who came up through sales, marketing, or customer service. There’s probably also a finance geek as well. With luck, there will be at least one person with a technical background, but don’t count on it! Even if there is someone with technical experience, it’s probably out of date. So what can you do?

As part of a book I’m writing on making your ideas clear, I drafted a sample chapter about speaking to senior audiences where I’ve collected all of the stuff I’ve found useful. It starts with knowing just what your audience is REALLY interested in. For most executives, the most important things are

• Money - the bottom line for most executives is are they making money?
• Strategy - much of what you do they would consider to be ‘tactical’. If you want to get their attention, tie what you’re talking about to their strategic concerns.

Executives also tend to be VERY direct communicators who think in bullet points. They don’t like long explanations and couldn’t care less about the background. In order to get your point across, you need to focus your presentation and reduce it to bullet points. A book I’ve found useful for insight is by Linda McAllister called “I wish I’d said that!”

If you read the book, you’ll probably recognize most executives you know as ‘Noble’ communicators (communicate in bullet points) and many technical presenters you know as ‘Socratic’ communicators (like to explain things). I’m Socratic myself. The book has specific suggestions on how a person from one type should talk to a person of another type. I recommend the book.

You should also understand that no one makes it to the executive level without being a politician (unless they started the company and it’s still small). In any large organization (100 people or over), politics will be under the surface of almost everything. You need to keep out of it yourself, but you need to be aware of it and know where you might be stepping on political toes.

To read more about presenting to Senior Executives, read my write-up called ‘Presenting to Senior Audiences‘.

Categories: Practical Applications