Presenting to Leaders - MAC056

The past few weeks, several of us at my job have been working on a slide deck that will be presented to an executive that is a few levels above mine.  The final deck is just three slides, but it took a lot of time to get those three slides nailed down to the ideal content.  Most of the time was spent on simplifying the content to only the information that the executive would actually care about and refining the slide design to be more visually focused.

For a deck to only be three slides but for it to take a few weeks to put together might seem like a really long time, but when you are communicating with your leaders, regardless of whether it's your immediate manager or the CEO of the company, it's important to get the message right.  Leaders are responsible for teams of people usually spread across several different projects.  The higher in the organization, the more teams and the more projects that the leader is responsible for.  They usually don't have the attention for nor the time for minutiae.

What this means for you, is that you should focus on providing just enough context for the leader to know the situation and then provide a lens into the most relevant information for them to provide the solution or to make the decision you need them to make.  Besides guiding your leader to the topic at hand, a well-crafted presentation will make you seem smart and aware and "leaderly" in the mind of your leader; all aspects that can put you on the fast track to advancement.

Peeling back the layers a little more, what actually makes a well-crafted presentation?  It begins with the right structure.  Since your leader has limited time, it's important to get to the point quickly.  A good structure that maximizes focus with minimal content is  the Goal / Problem / Solution structure.  This is basically the structure we took with our three slide presentation that we've been working on.

The Goal should set the context of the meeting.  Why is this meeting on your leader's calendar -- as opposed to being an email or being a meeting with one of their direct reports?  What is the outcome that you are trying to achieve?  Ideally, this message can be condensed to a single slide.

The Problem should be where you drive their attention to the specific area that you need assistance with.  This is an area that I struggle with because I'm in an analytical field where accuracy and completeness are important.  But, when dealing with an executive, too much detail just becomes noise.  If you feel that you really must include everything, move it to a back-up slide that isn't part of the core presentation.  If there are details that your leader needs that you haven't provided, you can share the content from the backup slide or speak to it directly.

The last area should propose a Solution to your problem.  Tell your leader what answer you want them to give you.  If you've done all of the leg work and justified your case, your leader will likely agree and send you on your way.  If they have insights that you aren't privy to or if your case isn't strong, they may send you back to do more research into possible solutions or they may tell you "no".

I mentioned that one of the other things we spent time on was making the presentation more visual.  There's that old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, and the same applies in a presentation.  If you've spent a lot of time simplifying the message, particularly such that the problem is boiled down to just the information relevant to the decision you need the executive to make, using a more visual representation instead of just a dump of text allows you to hint to all of the information that was culled.  It leads the audience to the fact that there is more there if they need it.

Beyond just making a good presentation and stating your case, there are some other things you can do to increase your chances of a successful request.  The first is practice your presentation.  The easiest way to combat nervousness -- either from just presenting in general or from addressing senior leadership -- is to just be so comfortable with your content that you can fall back to that to settle your nerves.

The second thing you can do is get people on your side.  If you prepare others who will be in room, especially if they have the trust of the leader you will be presenting to, and convince them that your solution is the ideal choice, they will be able to support you during the presentation and provide additional context when the leader asks questions.  They can also offer insights into the quality of your presentation before you actually present it.

Regardless of whether you are making a request of your direct manager or the head of the company or anywhere in between, making a clear, concise presentation not only has a higher chance of getting the result that you are going for, but it gives you an opportunity to stand out and be memorable.  When you are brought up as a promotion candidate, being remembered -- especially positively -- will make your managers case much easier leading to faster promotions.

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