How CEOs and senior leaders in Australia must grasp the ongoing conversation
As the Australian corporate sector emerges from Half Year Results reporting season, the best leaders have recognised that they are part of an ongoing conversation with their people, shareholders, and the community.
The role of chief executive officer has become increasingly public, and effective communication is the key to being an effective CEO.
The public face of the modern Australian business no longer rests solely with the CEO. With the rise in profile of ESG considerations and a greater willingness for corporations to adopt a personality and openness, however, other senior leaders are being encouraged to represent their company, to demonstrate company values, and live the image of the brand.
Chief financial officers, leaders in operations, or chief customer officers, are realising they need additional skills to enable them to be compelling and to present to a variety of audiences with authenticity and conviction. These are important skills that should be developed and exercised.
Senior leaders speak to everyone – employees, investors, and the media – and communicating poorly or ineffectively affects brand reputation, value, and how staff identify with their company.
Leading the ongoing conversation
Business leaders must understand the primary concerns of stakeholders and create opportunities to keep them informed like never before.
That is because business decisions, financial results reporting, and transactions are no longer just covered by the financial or business media. A company’s impact on the community will be explored on the front pages of tabloid newspapers, on the floor of Parliament, and among millions of people on social media platforms. Sometimes all three all at once.
Carefully considering how a company expresses itself to its suite of audiences – its messaging and narrative – is vital to avoid being misunderstood and to help decisions and actions from being misinterpreted.
Presentations by senior leaders to investors and shareholders, interviews with the media, addresses to people and communities are all critical conduits to these important stakeholders.
They form important ‘tent pole moments’ in an organisation’s ongoing communication strategy and carry enormous weight. There is a lot at stake, and for CEOs and other senior leaders, these moments are both commercial and personal.
Presentation and media skills are a critical component of the leadership toolkit
Well-developed, rehearsed and delivered presentations are opportunities to promote a company’s value proposition and explain situations requiring their audience to understand the business’s actions, decisions, and opportunities.
Similarly, a confidently delivered media interview – or schedule of interviews around a milestone such as financial results, transaction, or major business decision – can enhance a company’s brand, boost a senior leader’s profile, and consolidate value for shareholders.
Confidently presenting to any audience and navigating a media interview well are both anchored in consistent and well-tested messaging and confident delivery techniques that are developed, rehearsed, and regularly tested.
Preparation and practice make perfect
In the past, presentation and media skills were sometimes seen as a once-over-easy requirement of the new communications manager. But better leaders now recognise that building, growing, and practicing effective communications skills are just as important as what they are communicating.
Attention to body language and non-verbal cues are an important component of successfully communicating your message. A well-structured and personalised training session helps participants to learn and explore how to approach presentations and interviews with confidence, how to use nervous energy to their advantage and build their own natural skills.
Though FTI Consulting works with many different clients across diverse sectors, we have found that there are three consistent building blocks to creating and delivering an effective presentation:
- Being sure of your message: what is the objective of the presentation or interview, what are the three key messages that you need to get across, and what are the facts and proof points that your messaging is based on?
- Preparing and practising: the best and most natural speakers work at it, they rehearse with a trusted colleague, and they practice in private. In an interview or question and answer session with stakeholders, it is important to practice delivering key messages and bridging to respond to the questions respectfully while articulating messages important to the business. It’s not a conversation, but it should sound like one. The art lies in carrying yourself in a natural and conversational manner as you navigate questions.
- Perception and how you come across: how you say something is sometimes more important than what you say, especially in a visual medium. Research has shown that people will make up their mind about a leader’s trustworthiness within seconds based on body language and how they are communicating, rather than what they are saying.[1] How you sound, how you appear, and how you behave in presentations and interviews is crucial in delivering your message effectively.
Building on this foundation will help you deliver impactful presentations and interviews. Seeking the right assistance, practicing privately, and rehearsing with your team brings it all together. Practice makes permanent.
Assistance from those who have been in your shoes
FTI Consulting delivers detailed, tailored, and practical training workshops to prepare clients for presentations and potential media interviews. The sessions focus on message development, presentation skills, and effective delivery, across a diverse and wide-ranging subjects and sectors.
Our team will help test messaging, provide the tools to deliver them, and equip leaders with the confidence and techniques to respond to questions to reinforce key themes and messages.
From financial communications to employee and community town halls, to media and stakeholder engagement around a range of situations – including crisis scenarios – the sessions include live run-throughs with senior FTI Consulting advisors who bring a unique combination of real presentation and media experience.
Our expert team of veteran journalists and former capital market participants provide realistic training that is based on realistic, detailed, and relevant situations, and sessions are recorded for real-time review and feedback.
FTI Consulting’s focus is helping leaders to become match-fit so that when engaging at key moments in this ongoing conversation with stakeholders, shareholders, and the media, they are ready, disciplined in delivery and consistent in messaging to help give their business the best chance of success.
References
[1] Elizabeth Blankespoor, Bradley E. Hendricks, and Gregory S. Miller, “Perceptions and Price: Evidence from CEO Presentations at IPO Roadshows,” Entrepreneurship & Finance eJournal (January 4, 2017), https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Perceptions-and-Price%3A-Evidence-from-CEO-at-IPO-Blankespoor-Hendricks/24563fdd0a6f9b8122d3b065a23a2d354ded5a58.
| The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of FTI Consulting, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals.
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