making room forThe audience.
Sara Best had the expertise and the experience. Through a one-on-one Presentation Sprint, she found a clearer way to shape both around the people in the room.
- Client
- Sara Best, Principal & Co-Founder, Real Good Ventures
- Program
- Presentation Sprint
- The moment
- Recurring talk for executive audiences
- The work
- Six one-on-one sessions with a GatherRound Guide
so much to say.What matters most?
Presentations are central to Sara’s work. Through workshops, keynotes and facilitated conversations, she shares ideas and tools with leaders, and she brings real energy and a genuine interest in people to every one.
With that much knowledge to draw from, the hard part was never finding something valuable to say. It was deciding what mattered most to the people listening. For her Sprint, Sara brought a talk she already gave on emotionally effective leadership. She wanted her audience to leave with something practical and a clear reason to act.
What we didstart with the listener,Not the deck.
Looking back, Sara saw how much of her preparation had centered on her slides.
“If the deck was polished and ready to go, I felt prepared.”Sara Best
The Sprint gave her a different place to begin. Stepping into the shoes of one of her own listeners, Sara answered questions about that person’s priorities, doubts and reasons for showing up, and saw her talk from the other side of the room. The light bulb: a listener could value the room and the people in it and still be skeptical of her subject. Her expertise was only half the equation. The other half was what would make it useful to that listener.
Then the work turned to her material: a way to see everything she knew at once, choose the one storyline that mattered to this audience and set the rest aside for another day.
Sara BestPrincipal & Co-Founder, Real Good Ventures
she teaches connection.Her slides didn’t.
Sara teaches leaders how emotions shape the way people work together. Yet her own talks had been built for efficiency: polished slides, delivered on schedule, with little room for the people in the room. Seeing that gap changed everything about how she prepares. Now she starts with what her listeners feel and need. In her words, she’s “designing an experience and a conversation.”
So, I don’t have to change who I am or what I know.
The Sprint didn’t ask Sara to become a different presenter. Her knowledge and her interest in people were already there. What she gained was a way to prepare that gives both a clearer purpose: understand the listeners, choose what will serve them and shape a conversation they can be part of.
Presentation Sprint
Six weeks of one-on-one guidance from a GatherRound Guide, built around one high-stakes presentation.
