Influential Conversation

For the past 18 years, I have been working with CEOs, executives and senior leadership teams in Australia, Asia, the UK and the US. What I've found is that most people don't understand the brain, they don't know how to influence it and they especially don't know how to influence it under pressure. This means they're having meeting after meeting, often those meetings are to remind themselves on what they decided upon in the previous meeting, sometimes it goes off track, or worse, sometimes decisions are put back on the table to be discussed. At best it's a waste of time. At worst, projects are delayed, budgets blow out, morale disintegrates and top talent leaves and clients follow suit.

Preparation

Most meetings suffer because typically only one person arrives (somewhat) prepared. Everyone else is reacting spontaneously to what's discussed, rather than contributing thoughtfully.

Decision Making

Without proper preparation, decision-making quality suffers, conversations drag on, and critical issues remain unresolved—often postponed to future meetings. Productivity declines as valuable time is lost in prolonged discussions rather than decisive action.

Time

Leaders often say, “I'm in back-to-back meetings—I don’t have time to prepare!” But the real issue isn't lack of time; it's that most leaders haven't learned an effective way to prepare quickly and thoroughly.

Process

When leaders have a clear process to follow, they can consistently and easily craft presentations that influence their audience.

Structure

When leaders use structures based on
the psychology of influence, they are able to confidently lead the audience from resistance
to approval.

Delivery

When leaders can speak with charisma, read
the room and respond in the moment, they become master presenters.

Arabella Macpherson

Influence Expert

With 18 years of experience, Arabella has worked globally with CEOs and senior leadership teams across diverse sectors, including Telstra, AstraZeneca, eBay, LinkedIn, Deloitte, and AMEX. She has spoken on over 500 stages internationally on influence, communication, negotiation and leadership. Her practical training equips executives with actionable skills that deliver tangible results. 

With a background in stage performance, Arabella is an energising facilitator and captivating storyteller who tailors strategies to each workplace. Her workshop participants say they could listen to her for days, and that content is relatable and relevant to what they need.

Arabella is the co-author of the communication section of Macquarie University’s Global Online MBA (66k+ enrollments). Outside of work, Arabella enjoys walking her border collie Byron and taking quick beach dips between virtual meetings.

The best session I’ve done across my media

career. The skills I learnt will help me succeed and go from strength to strength in my new role. Thank you Arabella, you are incredible.

Our participants love her – she is a brilliant facilitator and storyteller. As a result Arabella's sessions always reach capacity. In addition, Arabella is very easy to work with and a pleasure to deal with.

Arabella's delivery style, engagement and training methods are exceptional. With her involvement, over 500 participants have significantly increased their confidence, enabling them to speak up, influence and actively participate.

Arabella is my go-to communications coach. She is always well prepared, thinks carefully and creatively about how best to reach the desired outcome and, most importantly, achieves truly transformational outcomes.

Working with Arabella has been extremely impactful. I've made a big leap forward by investing in Arabella's face-to-face and online learning modules. I honestly can't recommend her highly enough.

Arabella is simply the best presentation coach I have ever had the pleasure of learning from!