Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

Public Speaking and Presentation Skills is a five-day senior speaking course delivered by Mars Training Centre in London, Dubai, Paris, Barcelona and New York — designed for senior managers, directors and executives who present to boards, customers, conferences, regulators and the wider workforce.

Senior leaders are rarely judged on their slides. They are judged on the moments they speak — opening a town hall, taking a board through a strategy, handling a sharp question from a regulator, or representing the organisation at an industry event. A leader who speaks well multiplies the impact of everything else they do; a leader who speaks poorly limits the reach of even strong ideas. This programme is built for senior professionals who want their speaking to do justice to their work.

Across five focused days you will rehearse the disciplines that distinguish senior speaking — structuring a talk, opening and closing well, presence and voice, handling questions, presenting under pressure, and the small adjustments that turn a competent speaker into a credible one. The programme is heavily practical, with recorded practice, faculty feedback and one-to-one coaching across the week.

What You Will Learn

• Structure a talk so that a busy audience follows your argument from first to last sentence.
• Open and close a talk in ways that hold senior attention.
• Apply executive presence techniques — posture, voice, pace and eye contact.
• Handle questions, challenges and hostile rooms with composure.
• Deliver high-stakes presentations to boards, regulators and investors.
• Use slides as support rather than crutch.
• Adapt your style to small rooms, large halls and remote audiences.
• Manage your nerves and energy before and during a talk.
• Speak from a memo, from notes, or without any notes at all.
• Coach others on their own presentation work.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with the structures, techniques and confidence of a senior speaker who can hold a room of executives, together with a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain a leader whose presentations get the decision the business needs, whose town halls leave the workforce clearer than they were, and whose external speaking represents the organisation well.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for senior professionals, including senior managers and directors presenting to boards and executives; heads of function representing their area at executive forums; senior consultants and partners pitching client work; senior policy professionals presenting at parliamentary or regulator forums; senior commercial leaders presenting to customers and investors; senior public-sector executives speaking at industry events; family-business principals representing the business externally; and general managers and country managers who address their workforce. The seniority floor is senior manager or director level and above.

How the Week Unfolds

Day one strips speaking back to foundations — what senior audiences actually want, the relationship between speaker, message and audience, voice and breath, and a recorded baseline talk with faculty feedback. Day two builds the skeleton of a talk: the architecture of a senior presentation, opening lines that earn attention, closings that make a talk memorable, ruthless cutting, and the use of story and evidence. Day three works on physical and vocal delivery: executive presence, pitch, pace, projection and pause, eye contact and movement, managing nerves, and remote and hybrid delivery. Day four covers the hardest part — what happens when the talk ends: questions from senior audiences, hostile rooms and trick questions, bridging and reframing without misleading, and high-stakes presentations to boards, regulators and investors. Day five closes with coaching others, faculty feedback, a final recorded talk and a personal action plan.