The system behind the coaching
The Presence26© System
Twenty-six communication competencies in five groups — the checklist Laurie Schloff built over thirty years of coaching leaders, and the thing your program is actually built from.
It is not a personality test and not a philosophy. Each item is a specific, observable behavior that can be practiced, coached and measured.
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Messaging
What you say and the order you say it in. Most presentations that fail were lost here, before anyone opened their mouth.
Item 01: PLAN for strategizing and listener analysis
Who is in the room, what they already care about, and what you want to be different afterwards.
Item 02: Conveying Complex Information / controlling detail
Deciding what to leave out — the hardest skill for an expert to learn.
Item 03: Three Methods of Persuasion
Item 04: Slide Rules: ISHE and Synchronization
Item 05: Three P's: Pacing, Prioritizing, Packaging
Item 06: Four W's for organization
A structure for updates when the situation is still moving.
Item 07: Four E's for holding interest
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Oral Presence
How you sound. The part most people believe is fixed at birth, and the part that changes fastest with coaching.
Item 08: Speed Control: 1-2 technique
Item 09: Vocal Variety: Sounding Interesting
Pitch, volume and length used deliberately, so the important words stand out.
Item 10: Speech Clarity: What the pros learn
Item 11: Vocalized Pauses: Eliminating Ums and Ahs
Replacing the filler with silence, which listeners hear as confidence.
Item 12: Your Sound: Finding your Best Voice
Item 13: Breathing to relax
The physical route into a steady voice when the stakes are high.
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Nonverbal Presence
What the room reads before you finish your first sentence — and what to do with your hands.
Item 14: Four Levels of Gestures
Item 15: Face it: Facial expression and contact
Eye contact in a room, camera contact on a call.
Item 16: The Three S's: Space, Symmetry, Stability
Item 17: Move: Why, When and How
Item 18: Note it: Using Notes effectively
How to hold notes without reading from them.
Item 19: Motivational Talk Recipe
Item 20: Creating Interactive Moments
Item 21: Eight Catchy Openers
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Interactive Strategies
Communication with other people in it — meetings, questions, disagreement, and the way you come across while it happens.
Item 22: Style Words — How you come across
The adjectives colleagues would use about you, and which ones you can change.
Item 23: SHARE Model for leading meetings
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Information to Inspiration
The distance between being understood and being followed. This is the executive-level work.
Item 24: Creative techniques for meeting engagement
Item 25: Speaking to the executive level
Conciseness, priority and knowing what a senior audience is actually listening for.
Item 26: Customized for you
The twenty-sixth competency is whichever one you actually need. No two engagements are built the same way.
How it's taught
Nobody works through twenty-six items in order. An assessment picks the handful that are costing you the most, and the program is built around those.
One to one
Ten to twenty sessions built around the items your assessment surfaces, with video feedback and preparation before the dates that matter.
Coaching services →In a group
Three to six ninety-minute sessions for a team, so a shared vocabulary comes out of it as well as individual skill.
How an engagement runs →By your own people
The certificate program trains your trainers to coach the System themselves — which is how it scales past the people we can see personally.
The certificate program →
Which of the twenty-six is costing you most?
That’s the first question on the complimentary call, and usually the most useful thirty minutes of the whole engagement.
Laurie reads every inquiry personally and generally replies within one business day.