Case Study:
Preparing Ascential's Speakers for
their Annual Conference

Every year, Ascential PLC host an in-person conference where all their employees from across the world come together in London for a 5-day company showcase. Alex ran a 10-week programme to prepare 15 of the event's keynote speakers.

THE CHALLENGES

Putting on an event at this scale is challenging enough without having to worry about the quality of the keynotes, especially when employees are coming to London from 4 different continents. The speakers that Alex was asked to work with were considered future leaders of the organisation. Whilst many of them already deliver presentations regularly at work, for most of them this was their first time presenting at an event of this stature and his job was to ensure that the speakers:

  • crafted an impactful and relevant message for the audience
  • delivered that message with authority on the big stage and;
  • managed their nerves in the lead up to the high-pressure occasion.

HOW WE HELPED

12 employees were selected for the first cohort and were put through a 10-week programme that involved a mixture of weekly live workshops, 1-2-1 coaching calls that were supported by Alex's presentation analytics platform to measure their development.

The Modules:

Communicate Your Core Message with Clarity

Structure your Presentation for Persuasion

Become an Effective Storyteller

Hack Your Presence

Develop Performance Intelligence

Perform Under Pressure

The live workshops were delivered remotely and at the end of the programme, the presenting team came together in person to perform their talks in a high-pressure environment a few days before the annual conference.

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This programme is suitable for annual conferences, company all-hands and quarterly meetings.

Participant Testimonial

"While I deliver a lot of classroom-based training courses, I only present to large groups a few times a year so I thought this would be a great opportunity to take my public speaking skills to the next level and deliver a talk that could have a real impact at the conference and beyond. While the course was intense (particularly on top of my day job), it was a brilliant experience and has completely changed my approach to public speaking. I’ve learned about talk structure, built a bank of stories that I can use in future talks and my confidence to present has improved significantly.

Alex’s coaching was outstanding; he delivered his sessions with real credibility and warmth and the feedback I’ve had since delivering the talk has made the whole process very rewarding."

Nancy Parks, People Director, Ascential

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