Yeah I heavily disliked most public speaking coaches at institutions precisely because of this.
FWIW, I mostly coach juniors at work who will brilliantly describe their current project to me at their desk but then fall apart in the conference room in front of peers and seniors. Mostly it's because they're trying to recite some prepared speech that doesn't sound like they normally talk (often desperately trying to impress the room). So I tell them their mastery of the material will impress the room and you sound plenty fine when explaining it to me at your desk. I don't have a full semester of instruction time to make them develop a style -- I have one hour the day before the meeting. So it doesn't produce great political orators. But it does help produce people who can walk through some deep technical work in front of their bosses.
>AND love the act of becoming a person you want to listen to.
And love that character too. That takes some self discovery, experimentation, and practice. Which is why I referred to it as a great effort.
Addendum: To give some credibility to my method, I often point out to them that they sound their best when speaking during data reviews. These are sessions where, following some kind of test, engineers gather to review sensor outputs. You have no time to prep a speech -- these are quickly assembled within hours of a test and are very much often just a loose collection of screenshots and quick annotations and the engineer in question usually spends that time copy pasting screenshots or driving back from a test site.
But once it's their turn to talk about some really obscure looking line graph, they will deliver some great, great public speaking. Why? They've spent the last 6 hours staring at this graph and know deeply how to interpret it.
By the way, this has given me reason to believe that Investment Banking decks largely are just to force junior associates to undergo the above process.
FWIW, I mostly coach juniors at work who will brilliantly describe their current project to me at their desk but then fall apart in the conference room in front of peers and seniors. Mostly it's because they're trying to recite some prepared speech that doesn't sound like they normally talk (often desperately trying to impress the room). So I tell them their mastery of the material will impress the room and you sound plenty fine when explaining it to me at your desk. I don't have a full semester of instruction time to make them develop a style -- I have one hour the day before the meeting. So it doesn't produce great political orators. But it does help produce people who can walk through some deep technical work in front of their bosses.
>AND love the act of becoming a person you want to listen to.
And love that character too. That takes some self discovery, experimentation, and practice. Which is why I referred to it as a great effort.
Addendum: To give some credibility to my method, I often point out to them that they sound their best when speaking during data reviews. These are sessions where, following some kind of test, engineers gather to review sensor outputs. You have no time to prep a speech -- these are quickly assembled within hours of a test and are very much often just a loose collection of screenshots and quick annotations and the engineer in question usually spends that time copy pasting screenshots or driving back from a test site.
But once it's their turn to talk about some really obscure looking line graph, they will deliver some great, great public speaking. Why? They've spent the last 6 hours staring at this graph and know deeply how to interpret it.
By the way, this has given me reason to believe that Investment Banking decks largely are just to force junior associates to undergo the above process.