The Reluctant Presenter: Conversation with Meghan Dotter

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    Meghan Dotter opened Portico PR to help companies improve presentations, meetings, and the behaviors around them. Portico PR offers on-site workshops to help organizations develop better presentations in less time, focusing on content, design, and delivery. Meghan has built her career around helping people simplify and convey their messages. Her experience includes public relations agencies (New York and Washington, D.C.), and in-house roles, leading external communications for a global Fortune 200 power company.

In this conversation, Meghan talks about her book, The Reluctant Presenter.

Geetesh: What is your new book, The Reluctant Presenter all about? What made you want to write a book like this, and what kind of person do you think would get the most value out of reading it?

Meghan: I’ve been training and coaching speakers for about a decade, and what struck me is that until someone sees the value of presenting, there’s no visual or story on earth that is going to carry them through a meeting or event. But once a speaker can get over their reluctance – whether from a lack of confidence or even feeling as if they don’t deserve or belong to be in the room – and have a mindset of helping their audience, they are quick to incorporate best practices, design ideas and everything else out there on presenting.

The book is a part mindset (overcoming reluctance) and part method (how to prepare), told with a combination of research and storytelling. I wrote the book as if I were writing a letter (one with a lot of academic citations) to a good friend – she’s brilliant, and works hard but is so overwhelmed by presenting that she can’t advocate for her work. Her career is stagnating a bit, and what I’ve observed her describe resonates a lot with many of the clients we’ve worked with – presenting takes too much time, there’s little to show for it, they want to do the work, and not have to talk about it. So anyone who feels as if they have to “get through” their next presentation or who sees little progress on using them to meet their work goals would benefit.

Geetesh: Meghan, what’s the most important message you want your readers to take away from your book?

Meghan: It is just as important to know how to communicate your work and connect with others as it is to do great work. And once you start showing up as the best version of yourself in these meetings and conversations – more thoughtful and charismatic- work becomes a lot better overall.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.