This is the second of a three-part series on presenting to the executive team.

During the pandemic, I worked with mid-level executives across a variety of industries who had to navigate a particularly difficult form of communication in a new way:  presenting to the executive team via Zoom.  Now that the trend is clearly moving to being back in the office, at least a few days a week, those same executives have to get used to presenting in person again.

It’s surprisingly stressful.  Many of these mid-level folks found that they liked having their bosses on the other end of a computer screen.  In a way, the screen had a democratizing effect.  Reduced to a tiny two-dimensional square, the CEO suddenly seemed less intimidating.  And while presenting on Zoom certainly brought with it many challenges, everyone was in the same lockdown boat, and that had a unifying effect in many companies.

But now the managers are managing in person once again and when the CEO is also in town, that typically means tackling him or her face to face.  Many of these mid-level folks report feeling newly uncomfortable, having gotten out of practice for face-to-face meetings. Following is the second of a three-part primer on how to present to the executive team in person once again.  In the first part, I talked about the issue of reading body language.  In this second part, I’ll discuss how to keep the executives’ attention.  And in the third, how to show up with oodles of executive presence.

After the fear of public speaking itself, probably the most common fear presenters have is keeping the audience’s attention.  We’re all aware of the moment-to-moment demands on our brain space, we’re all distracted by a myriad of inputs, and we all feel keenly the effort of keeping up with our information flow.  We imagine the audience in the same mental circus and are ready to jump through verbal hoops to keep them listening.  With the executive team, the stakes are often particularly high.  Your funding may be on the line, or the go-no-go decision on a project you’re passionate about.  The worst possible fate then might be losing the executives’ attention.  So how do we keep the focus sharp and glued on our presentation?

The first problem you’ll often face is that you’ve already been warned that the executives are pressed for time.  You may have been given a time limit in advance – “you’ve got 10 minutes!” – or (even more stressful) you may have been told to “just give them the executive summary.” And when your moment actually comes, you may often hear the dreaded words “they are running late; you’ve only got 5 minutes.”

What do you do?

You focus on the problem your program or team intends to solve.  This approach is counter-intuitive, and what’s more it goes against what the Chief of Staff or whoever is organizing the day will tell you: “Just hit the high points of your program, what it does, what it costs.”  They’ll ask for an executive summary if they haven’t already.  It sounds sensible but think about it a moment from the harried CEO’s point of view.  He or she has got a vision and a strategy to implement that vision.  Things come up that threaten to derail that vision and strategy.  Those bogeymen are what keep the chief executive up at night.  You need to show that you understand one or more of these problems in order for the CEO to believe that you’ve got a grasp of the business essentials. Without that, you sound just like yet another person asking for money.  “Give me $50 million” is not a convincing opening gambit.  So, despite the limited time, start with an issue that the organization needs to solve.  Watch the executives in the room manage to squeeze out a little more time for you and your pitch once you get them nodding and saying, “He/She understands!”

You keep the presentation pared down to the key points.  Everyone’s own baby is a beauty; everyone else’s is a pile of diapers waiting to be changed.  Make sure you are giving only the essential details, none of the extra, beautiful information that you see in the program or the team. Make time to test your presentation with someone who isn’t deeply familiar with your program or team, to see if there are just enough of the right data to make sense. Ask yourself, is the information in this presentation necessary or can I eliminate any of it?  And further ask, is the information sufficient for the CEO to make an informed decision.  And finally, have I made the information as simple as possible, but no simpler?

Don’t forget to mention something along the lines of, “I’m summarizing a complex set of assumptions, here,” or, “I’m passing over a lot of history,” or even, “To cut to the chase.”  That helps give your CEO the sense that you’re thinking about the CEO’s time and not wasting it.

You avoid chronological order.  We experience our lives and our workdays in chronological order, but it’s rarely the most interesting way to tell a gripping story.  Start with the climax, when you are hanging by your fingernails (or the company is) about to slip off into oblivion.  That will hook their interest and keep their attention.  Any back story you need to add you can put in subsequent slides.

Keep these points in mind to hold onto the executives’ attention spans.  And good luck. Information overload is real, but your program is important.  Present it properly and you’ll get the attention you need.