In our coaching approach, your intention drives everything about your communication. It’s the engine, it’s the reason you are speaking.
Intention is the way you want to affect the person you are speaking to. Put another way, what do you want to change by speaking? what do you want to happen?
I’m bringing this up because intention can be really hard to get our minds around. With some of our clients, especially the ones who are working on presentations, “intention” becomes shorthand for “a summary of the main points I want to make.” That is not intention.
If you’re giving a presentation to senior leaders at your company about an innovation you’d like to introduce, your intention might be to inspire confidence in my leadership. That’s the bottom layer, the foundation of your message. You can’t sell them on the details of your idea until they trust you.
