Maureen was a senior executive in a corporate organisation and had recently been promoted to Deputy CEO. The new role required her to make presentations to the board and also to represent the organisation at functions where she was sometimes required to speak.

She was terrified to the point of not being able to sleep for days before an event or board meeting, and was throwing up in the hours before.

Previously she had managed to escape every situation where she was expected to make a presentation. On two occasions she feigned illness. As Deputy CEO however, the game was up. She could no longer avoid the thing she feared the most.

In her 25+ year career she had also managed to avoid attending the various training courses on public speaking. In her words, she had ‘escaped’. Maureen watched people more junior to her sail through their speaking presentations. Some had been offered jobs outside or been promoted within because of their speaking confidence.

There was no doubt Maureen knew her stuff. She was a personable, intelligent woman with a great deal of varied experience, except when faced with speaking to groups of people.

In private coaching sessions Maureen was confident, articulate, persuasive, even powerful. However, when it came time to present to the board – an intimidating audience – her confidence vanished. The next step to growing her confidence was via group coaching.

Terrified yet determined, after a few coaching sessions, Maureen wrote this:

“When David called me out to stand in front of all those people, I was terrified. I was so close to tears it was unbelievable.

I did not try to focus on the way I needed to stand or the faces of the people. Instead I focused on the back wall of the room. David asked me questions about something I was very passionate about, making it easy for me to respond. 

Nobody laughed at me like I thought they would. I recall David saying that it’s not about the content but the way you present. That day I learned how true this is.

David, thank you so much for giving my self-confidence such a boost.  I felt like I climbed Mount Everest.”

Maureen now presents regularly. She’s still yet to enjoy it, but she’s learnt how to present intelligently, eloquently and receives good feedback. She’s growing into it.

This is a great success story of which I’m very proud, especially as I found out later that Maureen was in an abusive relationship for many years. Her confidence in speaking has flowed over into her personal life and she is now out of that relationship and living a fulfilled life at work and at home.

I was engaged by the manager of a medium sized business to assist in reducing the number and time of their meetings.

The first step was to take a snapshot of the existing situation. This involved sitting in on several of their meetings as an observer. I call this a Meeting Diagnostic. It’s amazing what you see and here when you’re an observer and you don’t actually have skin in the game.

Then I met with some of the employees who attended the meeting and finally the manager. The employees “hated” the meetings and saw them as a complete waste of time. The Manager was surprised at what I had noticed because he had hardly observed any of it. He also did not realise how unpopular the meetings were.

We then implemented four strategies with the Manager’s agreement.

1. We halved the frequency of the meetings, changing them from weekly to every two weeks.
2. The duration was set at one hour maximum, regardless.
3. The agenda was completely restructured to be outcome oriented, forward looking and question based. Instead of reporting on what had happened, I recommended they look forward to what needed to happen, as well as answering questions that needed answers to move forward.
4. Finally, I chaired the next 2 meetings because the manager had never had any training, he did his best but didn’t know what he didn’t know.

The result? A complete  turnaround. The employees actually look forward to the meetings now because they’re shorter (45 minutes instead of 2 hours), and they focus on what actually has to be done. The meetings became productive as the team knew what needed to be done and their role.

I asked the manager after some time, if he could put a dollar figure on the changes. He worked on the average hourly rate of the people in the meeting and calculated that the annual saving was around $70,000. And that was just one meeting. He implemented the changes across the organisation and realised significant savings.

The unknown quantity was the increase in productivity and morale. By fixing their meetings they made a significant and positive impact on their profitability and productivity.

As an advisor I was engaged to assist a not-for-profit board to increase their effectiveness. I observed a few meetings and there were some processes and procedures which I identified would benefit with a different approach. The treasurer was opposed to me being brought in and was not co-operative in implementing these different processes.

In the course of the work, I noticed the treasurer was absent from a couple of meetings and did not send financial reports. This raised significant warning flags.

I approached the president and he contacted the treasurer and asked for the financial reports. He had to chase him up several times and eventually a summary report was received.

I’m not an accountant, but with the help of a board member who was, we went through the previous year’s reports and statements and found a huge discrepancy. Over $100,000 had been transferred from the main account to unknown accounts in odd amounts of between $2,000 and $5,000.

The eventual figure was over $130,000 which had disappeared.

When confronted, the treasurer said it was an accounting error and he would explain it all at the next meeting. He did not show up and so the board dismissed him immediately and froze him out of the accounts.

When the board looked back in hindsight, there were many signs of unusual activity and inadequate explanations, not to mention the failure to produce reports. The board had simply been too trusting and not diligent in dealing with the financial reporting.

The matter went to the police and eventually about two thirds of the funds were repaid. The police were flabbergasted that so much was recovered. In their experience, cases like these rarely ever recoup the embezzled funds.

Because he had paid back a sizable amount, the police chose not pursue the matter due to other priorities. Similar cases of similar amounts were reported at the time with one perpetrator going to prison for 8 years and another for 4 years for stealing from not-for-profit organisations.

The fact that the signs were all there for anyone to see made this a particularly difficult situation for the board to handle with their membership.

They now handle their finances quite differently.