Your company spent $20,000 on a presentation skills training. Participants came back satisfied, NPS 7/10, the trainer got great reviews. Three months later, the same chaotic slides appear in the boardroom – and people still can't communicate a clear message to save their lives.
If this sounds familiar, it's because this scenario repeats itself in many companies that invest in presentation training. Not because participants are lazy or the trainer was bad. The reason is different and usually comes down to the agenda being completely mismatched to how communication actually works in that company.
What gets trained versus what should be trained
Most trainers focus on what looks good on stage: eye contact, confidence, voice modulation. Useful skills when you're speaking at a conference for 300 people. But 90% of business presentations happen in a meeting room, for five people, on a laptop. In hybrid mode. With a shared screen and a built-in microphone.
That's a completely different context – and trainers who design their workshops for the stage simply don't address it.
Here's the core problem that rarely gets said out loud: most presentation training available on the market is actually public speaking training. How to stand, how to gesture, how to handle nerves in front of a large audience. But a manager in a global corporation doesn't need to deliver a TEDx talk. They need to walk into a boardroom and present a recommendation in 10 minutes that leads to a decision. That's a completely different skill set – clear thinking, logical structure, slides that work on a small Teams screen, not on a hotel conference room projector.
We measure satisfaction, not change
There's another problem: right after the training, the L&D team doesn't really know whether it was effective. They only know whether people liked it or not. And those are two completely different things.
Because this is usually how it goes: surveys go out after the training. Participants rate it 4/5. The trainer gets a good score. The L&D team reports success.
But nobody compares presentations from before and after the training. Nobody checks whether decision-making meetings are getting shorter. Nobody measures whether client proposals are becoming clearer. Kirkpatrick defined four levels of training evaluation back in 1959 – most companies stop at level one, participant satisfaction. Yet it's level four, business impact, that the board asks about three months after the training. And that's exactly when L&D has nothing to show except attendance numbers and happy surveys.
So before you even start looking for a trainer, define what change looks like. Collect "before" material: record a presentation, take screenshots of slides, time a typical decision-making meeting. Without a reference point, you can't measure progress. And without measurement, the L&D team has no answer when leadership asks what actually changed.
Training doesn't change habits if the environment stays the same
Even a well-designed training won't change habits if the company returns to the same routines it had before. The participant's manager has no idea what was covered or what to expect from their team now. The slide template is the same. The meeting culture is the same. In that environment, new skills simply have nowhere to take root. And L&D is left with a great NPS and no real change to show for it.
It's worth thinking about a follow-up session between the trainer and participants, or providing participants with ongoing mentoring support. Our standard after every training – whether it's presentation skills, storytelling, or business communication – is that each participant can reach out to the trainer by email at any time. The trainer or their team then advises the participant on how to handle a difficult presentation situation, how to improve their slides, or how to better prepare for an upcoming talk.
Three concrete steps to fix this
Start with a diagnosis, not an agenda. Before you commission any training, answer one question: where exactly does communication block decisions in your company? Do status meetings run too long? Do board presentations fail to reach conclusions? Are client proposals unclear? Each of these contexts requires a different agenda, different exercises – and above all, a trainer who actually understands business communication, not conference speaking.
Then define your success metrics before the training starts, as I described above.
And take care of the environment after the training. The participant's manager should know what was covered and how to support it in day-to-day work
Why this matters right now
Generative AI has increased the volume of slides and reports in companies. It's shortened production time but hasn't improved the quality of thinking or communication structure. Boards today have more presentations than ever and less time to make decisions. In this context, a presentation training that teaches people how to speak on stage instead of how to communicate in business is simply wasted money. No NPS score changes that.
If you want to see what our training looks like, go HERE and take a look at our presentation skills programs.
Piotr Garlej
