Carnegie: Sharp presentations in the bank's internal academy

The challenge

Carnegie's staff give expert presentations to managers, colleagues, clients and partners – often on complex financial topics. The bank wanted to focus on strong spoken presentations and make them a permanent part of its internal development program, Carnegie Professional Development.

Our approach

A tailored course in spoken presentation skills built on our 'cookbook' for persuasive presentations. Participants learnt to:

• capture the audience from the first sentence
• choose the most important messages and cut the rest
• structure presentations efficiently – both faster and better
• deliver with personal power and impact
• handle nerves and unexpected situations

Groups were small and the course moved constantly between theory and practice using the participants' own presentations. The trainers have experience of teaching and advising in the financial sector.

The result

Presentation skills became a permanent part of the bank's internal course offering, and over several years the collaboration grew to include courses in communicating expertise, effective emails and punctuation, a feedback workshop and individual sparring for staff and managers.