I often get called in to help individuals improve their public speaking and presentation skills.

And often there is much work to be done with those individuals.

Through inexperience or lack of training, people — even highly-placed, successful professionals — need help:

• Developing a strategy that identifies their goal (what to accomplish in the time they have available with a particular audience) and ways of accomplishing it.
• Creating a compelling message that engages the audience’s hearts and minds and moves them to take action.
• Delivering that message with the right amount of drama to bring it alive.

But quite often the problem isn’t all the individual speaker’s fault.

Often individual speakers are set up to fail — to give a mediocre talk — by the organization, by its systems, culture, or processes.

Even proficient speakers have a hard time giving a winning presentation when:

• They’re given too little time to prepare.
• They’re told to present a PowerPoint slide deck that was developed by someone else, and that they don’t understand or — worse — agree with.
• They’re scheduled to speak to an audience they know nothing about.
• They’re notified of significant changes in the agenda — the topic to be addressed or the time they’re assigned to speak — at the last moment.
• They’re interrupted early and often by people in authority who have an agenda of their own, which they haven’t previously communicated.
• They’re expected to sell an idea, product, or service that is fundamentally flawed.

There are, of course, strategies and techniques that individuals can master in order to cope with such situations. (Which isn’t to say that every situation can be salvaged or that every presentation can be a winner.)

And, at the same time, there are systemic issues that organizations need to address.

How do you think organizations can help their people give better presentations?