Background
Baker Hughes is one of the world’s largest oilfield services companies, with over 53,000 employees in over 90 countries providing the oil and gas industry with products and services for drilling, formation evaluation, completion, production and reservoir consulting. As with many large international companies with a staff that is highly diverse and far-flung, communications can sometimes be a challenge.
Problem
As part of a wider corporate initiative to strengthen the abilities of their senior management, Baker Hughes wanted to teach and coach their business leaders to make solid business presentations to internal stakeholders on solutions to real problems and leveraging of existing opportunities.
To help with this communications training challenge, GuruMaker was invited by Duke University’s corporate education arm, Duke Corporate Education, to join them as part of a larger leadership development program conducted for Baker Hughes senior executives.
Solution
GuruMaker custom-designed an intensive group workshop that also included team-coaching sessions with five coaches working with teams of six Baker Hughes leaders each.
In the first-day workshop session, we worked with the teams on ways to effectively organize and structure ideas and arguments to create powerful and persuasive stories designed to create clarity and overcome objections. Participants learned and practiced techniques to deliver and present proposals concisely, with conviction and passion.
They received coaching in the pressure cooker situation of tough Q&A sessions so they could communicate with confidence and substance. They came away with techniques to overcome anxiety and distracting habits, and learned how to apply best practices to pitching business ventures.
Results
Participants had to present their business cases to Baker Hughes’ top leadership who reported that the executives did an excellent job in presenting well-constructed business cases and handled themselves well in high-pressure Q&A sessions following the presentations.
The success of the participants has led to further engagement of the GuruMaker team in providing workshops and coaching with Baker Hughes over the last several years.