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Presenting With Passion
With Rich Watts, Public Speaking Consultant and Trainer
Interview by Melanie Bell
Rich Watts is a public speaking consultant and trainer, a double winner of the U.K. Business Speaker of the Year, and, in his own words, “an all-round presentation skills geek.”
Mindtools content editor and writer Melanie Bell spoke to him about inspiring others, battling distractions, and developing a growth mindset.
Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work?
I work with organizations across the U.K. designing and delivering unique presentation skills training sessions that help their people to achieve their public speaking goals.
I was fortunate enough to win the U.K. Business Speaker of the Year competition in 2012 and then wanted to use my geeky public speaking knowledge for good. I started coaching and training others and quickly found my passion. I love using lessons and techniques from the greatest speakers in history to help others to achieve their goals when presenting.
Prior to starting Rich Public Speaking, my “real” job (as my mum likes to call it) was as a Marketing Director, so I have always been focused on excellent communication.
You work with organizations that have challenges with presentation skills. Do you find that leadership and management challenges relate to these challenges in communication? If so, how?
The techniques that I share within my courses are all linked to inspiring, persuading and motivating others: a key component of leadership and management. I often find that the teams that I work with use the techniques that they discover not just when presenting to large groups, but in one-to-one interactions too, making them useful for all kinds of management and leadership conversations that they might be having.
The most common challenges that many leaders and managers face when speaking are:
- A lack of audience focus. They tell the team what they want them to hear, not what they need to know.
- Being concise. They talk a lot but say little. This is often due to lack of confidence or poor understanding of the topic.
- Keeping it engaging. Many managers speak regularly with their teams. The best communicators keep their presentations and delivery fresh, to help hold their audience’s attention.
What key communication skills do you focus on in your training?
Every client that I work with has a really unique challenge that can’t be usefully addressed by an “off-the-shelf" or open public training course. I relish creating unique sessions and so last year alone I have designed and delivered solutions that:
- Support engineers to explain technical concepts clearly and concisely.
- Allow professors from a well-known university to deliver compelling after-dinner lectures.
- Enable entrepreneurs to pitch ideas in a truly compelling way (this was a fun mix of psychology, public speaking history, and practical examples!).
My favorite clients are those that are investing in continued professional development for their people. Yes, those organizations are going to have highly trained individuals as a result of this investment, but more than that, the organization benefits from creating a culture that really highlights and values professional development.
By doing this it is fostering a natural growth mindset within the business, which I think is one of the most valuable cultural assets a company can have. It means that its people are ready to tackle any and all challenges.
How, if at all, do necessary presentation skills differ between in-person and virtual environments?
In virtual environments, and the wider world in general, we are fighting with more distractions than ever before. Everyone and everything are trying to get our attention. It is unlikely that any of the readers of this article can claim to have never been distracted by a phone, the postman, or a pet coming into the room during a virtual presentation.
As such, our content, format and delivery need to be twice as engaging than if we were presenting in person. Increase interactivity (every ten minutes at least online), vary your delivery and intonation, and write your script carefully to ensure that the benefits and key messages are really clear.
All of these techniques (and there are many more too) are required for online speaking success.
Any final thoughts?
Everyone has the power to change the world, if they speak up. If you are not confident speaking, I would urge you to seek out a learning solution that suits you and helps you to develop your skills. Sharing your ideas could change your world, your team’s world, and the world around you.
If you are a confident speaker already, then you know the benefit of being able to present confidently. Look around you for wonderful, expert people that are not so confident and share your public speaking knowledge. Help them to change the world too.
What’s Next?
Giving presentations is a pain point for many people, but it’s an important skill to master if you’re a manager or want to be. So why not take the anxiety out of it by checking out a few of our resources?
Find out where your presentation skills are right now with our self-assessment, How Good Are Your Presentation Skills? If you think you need a 101, there’s our article How to Deliver Great Presentations. Or maybe you think you're ready for a deeper dive: take a look at our Skillbooks, Great Presentations and Even Better Presentations. And if the very thought of presenting to an audience fills you with horror, check out our article Managing Presentation Nerves.
Tip of the Week
Communicating Change Clearly
By Simon Bell, Mindtools Content Writer and Editor
A new year brings new opportunities – and new challenges. Let’s say you’ve taken on a new team. You may be keen to make changes to the way it works. Change can often be unsettling for team members, particularly if they don’t know your intentions, or how the change will affect them.
So, communicate transparently with your team members if you plan to make changes. Explain the reasons for the changes and the likely impact they’ll have on the team. And give your team members the opportunity to ask you questions and give honest feedback: transparent communication is a two-way street.
Depending on the nature of the change, you may wish to do this as part of a team meeting, or in one-to-one conversations with individual team members.
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News Roundup
This Week's Global Workplace Insights
Workplace Wellbeing: Rethinking Required?
Unimpressed by your organization’s new yoga class? You’re not alone. Workplace wellbeing remains a key focus for businesses, but traditional wellness perks aren’t cutting it, according to experts at the recent Behavioral Health Tech conference.
Organizations have invested in all sorts of initiatives: meditation apps, employee assistance programs (EAPs), and mental health resources. But across a range of workplaces, satisfaction and engagement remain low. Only 21 percent of employees feel their employers genuinely care about their wellbeing, according to a Gallup survey.
Panelists emphasized that meaningful change needs to address the basics: fair pay, respectful treatment, and effective leadership. Leaders play a pivotal role, with poor management often cited as a primary driver of workplace stress. Tailored approaches, such as financial wellness programs, show promise by addressing diverse employee needs.
Peer support programs and gamified wellness initiatives also emerged as effective, low-cost strategies to build community and improve mental health. And the experts agree: the future of workplace wellbeing lies in holistic, people-centered approaches rather than one-size-fits-all perks.
"Conscious Unbossing": Hype or Happening?
Another year, another buzz phrase. We’ve had “Quiet Quitting” and "Lazy Girl Jobs.” “The Great Resignation” gave way to “The Big Stay.” Now brace yourself for “conscious unbossing”: a trend which, we hear, challenges traditional managerial roles.
Employees, especially Gen Z, are opting for purpose-driven, collaborative environments over hierarchical positions. Research by recruiters Robert Walters found that more than half of Gen Z workers surveyed didn’t want to take on traditional middle manager roles. This shift reflects a broader cultural movement prioritizing values and work–life balance over climbing the corporate ladder.
The organizations responding to the shift are redefining leadership through flatter structures, flexible career paths, and mentorship-focused models. These strategies are intended to foster innovation and engagement. Take a look at Novartis’s “Unbossed Leadership Experience,” for example.
The argument goes that to thrive, businesses must align leadership roles with modern values and build empathetic cultures. Proponents say organizations can harness unbossing as a powerful tool for growth, innovation and leadership continuity. Skeptics wonder about role ambiguity, the danger of employee burnout, and adapting unbossing to industries that need strict oversight.
Either way, it’s a trend to watch.
See you next week for more member-exclusive content and insight from the Mindtools team!
