Webinar report: The face of your work presenting and delivery

It was a highly interactive event, exploring skills for boosting organisation-wide exposure.

Joanna’s background in marketing and consultancy with large corporates has given her a deep understanding of the importance of communication skills in business. Having founded Inside Out Image in 2011, Joanna now helps organisations and individuals build great workplace relationships through skills rarely taught in formal settings. Her clients include HSBC, RPC, Mastercard, Irwin Mitchell, Ashurst and Willis Towers Watson.

Doing great work for your internal clients may seem obvious and easy but could you be improving it further? Not just in the ‘what’ but the ‘how’? Could you be building stronger and more positive relationships which would make work easier and more pleasurable? Could your great work be helping you to raise your visibility and improve your career prospects?

Define the goals of your work

Clearly, your client’s strategic or legal objectives will be the stated goals of the projects you take on. But are they, for you, the only ones? As well as striving for a delighted client think too about broader goals such as:

• Your personal fulfillment – from producing something valuable;
• Strengthened relationships – that make future work with the client easier; and
• Increased visibility – that enhances both yours and legal’s standing across the wider organisation. PIE theory determines that:
  • Performance accounts for 10% of career success;
  • Image accounts for 30%; and 
  • Exposure accounts for 60%.

Get going

You can’t overestimate the importance of getting off on the right foot with an internal client. It may mean asking for more of their time than they originally planned to give, however it will help you avert problems later. Full alignment and understanding at the outset will enable you to be clear about outcomes and flag up anything you feel is unachievable. From here:

• Set expectations - what will you deliver and when? How will you deliver it? Give the client an outcome they can visualise and factor into their plans;
• Identify key stakeholders – as well as your direct client, are there other decision-makers or influencers whose input you’ll need to be aware of?
• Create a communication framework – how will you keep the client updated? What’s the process for raising and responding to queries?

While planning these steps, keep in mind the importance of trust-building. Seeking clarity from the client and being honest about questions you don’t have answers to (but will commit to find) will pay dividends here. Listening well is a vital skill that many don’t do well all of the time. However, it’s essential to make sure there is clarity and alignment, as well as the client feeling heard and valued which contributes positively to the relationship.

Build momentum

With the project underway, it’s time to focus on tangible specifics. Stay focused on the agreed outcomes by revisiting the objectives regularly and collating the information you need. Seeking out easy wins at an early stage is a good way to build momentum in your work. Another is to ensure accuracy and attention to detail in all you do as this reinforces trust among your clients and other stakeholders. 

Remember, trust is the total of credibility, reliability and intimacy. It is undermined by excessive self-orientation. So:

Build credibility through good preparation, humility, the power of ‘I don’t know but will find out’ and raising issues as necessary.
Develop reliability by doing what you say you’ll do, meeting the expectations you lay down, being comprehensive and keeping to your communication framework.
Enhance intimacy by being human, adapting your working and communications styles to suit those of others and remembering what people say.
Avoid self-orientation by asking about – and exploring – other people’s objectives and expectations while keeping your own in mind.

Present your work back to the client

The moment you present your work back to your client is a golden opportunity to maximise your visibility. Seize it by explaining what you’ve achieved in a way that leaves no room for misinterpretation. Relate the outcomes to the original goals. Speak – and write – in plain English so you’ll be understood by the widest possible audience.

You’ll already have set the expectation of how you’ll deliver your work in the earlier steps above. Now plan this in more detail. If you’re hosting a meeting, who will be coming? Should the meeting be in person or a conference call? Formal presentation with slides or informal walk-through of the key points? Maybe a staged approach with separate meetings with different stakeholders and subsequent sessions for questions? Whatever format you opt for, it’s a dual opportunity to deliver for the client and increase your exposure.

Think about how you’ll keep everyone in the handover meeting engaged. Grab their attention early with a hard-hitting headline or statistic, show your enthusiasm through your voice and body language and, if appropriate, bring other colleagues to the meeting to vary the presentation style.

Keep optimising the exposure opportunity

Always assess your client’s satisfaction with your work, both in the immediate aftermath and the medium to longer term. This is a good way to continue the relationship-building process and deepen your understanding of their ongoing needs. At the same time, look for ways to promote the work you’ve done and win the trust of other clients across your organisation.

Further reading

You’ll find more relationship-building tips and insights from Joanna in her book, Getting On: Making work work, signed copies are currently discounted to £12.50 for CLL delegates via her website (usual print price £14.99) using code CLL244 until Friday 6th December 2024.  

See you next year!
We’ll be back with a new series of webinars with Joanna in 2025. The first of these, which looks at Your personal brand and impact, will be on 25 February. Register here.