Published: 7/21/2026

The team of analysts preparing to present to the media. The manager who runs her team’s weekly meetings. The professional who fields tough questions and gives performance feedback on the spot.

My most successful programs all reach the same conclusion even from wildly different starting points.

Everyone wants to communicate with confidence, clarity, and impact. And so every program is designed to produce this.

But design goes beyond a set package handed to the client once the training is booked. It means combining that goal with an assessment of where each person or team is, and getting a crystal clear picture of what they need to be successful.

Then, the plan is shaped around the people in the room instead of a generic curriculum. That’s the key to effective personalization, and it creates more than a decent workshop experience for a day.

It helps the analysts crush their presentations. It helps leaders bring out the best in their teams. It creates measurable, repeatable improvements in spontaneous speaking and evaluations.

“How Do You Get Ready for a Meeting?”

This is what I asked one of my corporate clients in a training session on creating a new regular meeting for the production team.

Sure, I had the Speak to Succeed Effective Meetings Playbook on hand and ready to walk through. But I had a hunch we might need to start with something different.

Suddenly, instead of prescribing my admittedly world-class techniques while this manager took notes, I got her talking about her team, her goals, and what an effective meeting looked like.

So we crafted the structure from scratch – timing, preparation, slots for updates and presentations, and follow up. In the end, it wasn’t far off the playbook, but it exactly matched her team needs and dynamics, which were less focused on decision making and more on knowledge sharing.

Before we started, she rated her confidence 1 out of 10. After we built the foundation, she was at 8.5. Now, almost a year later, she’s still running it the same way, and her team looks forward to these check-ins.

If I had gone in with a prescription, it never would have stuck this long. Instead, the personalized approach combined broad success principles with an understanding of her situation, and the results stayed after we finished working together.

“You’re Not Actually Going to Make Us Present, Are You?”

This one still makes me smile. One of my favorite programs required a bit of a dance to pull it off. We had heard going in that the team was a mix of fairly confident speakers and some who were petrified on stage.

And on the surface, if a client hires us for a presentation skills training and then says they don’t need to present, then personalization means following those wishes and cutting the finale…right?

Ha. Good one.

Delivering this training required an extra sharp read of the group’s needs and a personal touch to fulfill them.

We told them they certainly didn’t have to speak in front of everyone. We conducted the workshop as planned, and by the end…the fear had vanished, and everyone volunteered to present anyway.

Sometimes we do exactly what the client says, and sometimes we guide them toward a better method. Either way, we start by listening to their needs and letting that guide the program.

“What About Impromptu Speaking? Can’t We Do More of That?”

This one was almost a major mistake. After a successful foundational course with a client who wanted to improve his spontaneous speaking skills, I had grand visions of putting him on bigger stages with a spellbinding signature talk.

And while he will one day reach that point, when I initially suggested this, it fell flat. He had always wanted to be able to think on his feet – Q&A, impromptu presentations, on-the-spot feedback – before working on any prepared material.

So I tabled my plan and went back to his goals. We resumed the training and went far deeper in those areas, after which he noticed considerable improvement beyond the first segment of our program. Week after week, he reported success handling Q&A and giving feedback in meetings.

Then, with the phase on impromptu speaking completed, we started on prepared talks for bigger stages and new audiences. Sure, I had it all lined up for that months before. I just needed to meet his needs first instead of handing him my idea of what program he should be doing.

It’s Not Personal, It’s Just…

Ok it’s actually personal. And it’s business. You need both.

Every leader, professional, and team has their own goals and challenges, so I shape every program accordingly. Sometimes it looks a lot like what I’ve done before; sometimes it requires adjustments on the fly. I’ve learned more about how to do this from listening to clients – their fears, their obstacles, their goals – than I ever have from telling them what I think they ought to do.

That’s what personalization means: delivering the program to people, instead of squeezing them into a curriculum.