Executive Communication Coaching in Washington DC

Coaching in Washington DC

The disclosure first, because this market of all markets should get one: we are not based in the District, we hold no clearance, and nothing on this page should be read as a claim to have prepared anyone for testimony or for a regulatory proceeding. That is specialist work and other people do it. What we do is the underlying craft — being understood, being credible, and holding a room — for leaders whose working life happens to be conducted in front of audiences like these.

The characteristic problem in this city is a split audience. An association conference, a research briefing, a coalition meeting or an internal all-hands at a membership body will typically contain, at the same time, three people who know the subject better than the speaker and thirty who need the argument in a paragraph. Pitch to the specialists and you lose the room; pitch to the room and the specialists stop trusting you before the second slide. Almost every engagement here turns out to be about that trade, and the answer is structural rather than a matter of confidence.

The second feature is durability. Words said here have a way of outliving the meeting — into a newsletter, a member update, a transcript, a clip. Leaders who do well have usually stopped improvising the sentences that matter and started deciding them in advance, which sounds like a loss of spontaneity and in practice reads as authority.