Case Study: Megan McCracken’s Transformative Talk

Rachael, I have a wild idea for my next talk. Do you think I’m mad?

A client I first worked with a decade ago came to me with an exciting request. “Rachael, I have a wild idea for my next talk. Can you help me?”

Over the ten years since I first coached Megan McCracken, she has become a respected, warm and informed public speaker. Megan speaks at conferences, run workshops and in conversations with authors, at bookshops and writers festivals.

For her next talk at WIMWA 2025, a major industry event with an audience of over 1000, Megan wanted to do something different. She approached me for Strategic Speaker Coaching.

How Megan challenged herself as a speaker

Megan was writing a piece about AI and what it means to feel human. As an executive coach, Megan had been asking her clients a question: “What would you bring back to your life that has been streamlined out of it?”

She told me that every single time, “the person would get really animated. I needed an hour to hear them out”.

The topic was a perfect fit for the summit theme and Megan felt a strong sense that the time was right, but timing was tight.

Megan brought three key challenges to our work together:

1. Incorporate physical theatre, including an outfit change. Physical theatre, including props and movement can enhance a keynote when used seamlessly. Make sure it supports your message rather than distracting.
2. Communicate a complex topic that she was still formulating. Hearing a speaker’s new ideas can energise and excite an audience, as long as it doesn’t feel like you are processing the idea in front of them.
3. Prepare it all in just two weeks. I usually recommend 6-12 weeks to prepare a significant talk. However, a tight timeline can help focus – if you have the time to give.

Key speaker coaching moments

I began the speaker coaching process with a Landscape Scan. The Landscape Scan can speed up the process of developing a keynote. This is because we consider many angles and perspectives before writing begins.

The Landscape Scan included supporting Megan to uncover – and feel – her intent for this presentation. 

It also revealed where Megan was in her evolution as a coach. This meant that her talk didn’t just represent a new topic for her keynotes, it marked a shift in Megan’s professional approach to Executive Coaching.

The shift was an exciting one, expanding what Megan could offer future clients. However, she was concerned that existing clients in the audience might be confused if the Megan they saw on stage was not the “familiar” Megan they were used to. 

To help Megan craft a coherent narrative, I proposed she take her audience on two journeys.

The first narrative would be the story of her topic, AI and humanness.

The second journey would be what I call an Undercurrent. The Undercurrent is something an audience senses, but not always named specifically by the speaker. In Megan’s case, this was her growth and development as an executive coach.

Embodiment as a public speaker

As we moved into looking at Megan’s delivery, I worked with Megan on the physical and “embodied” elements that would help her narratives land with listeners.

I guided Megan to notice the different parts of her that appeared throughout her talk. These parts included Familiar Coach Megan, Emerging Coach Megan, and a Frazzled Technology Part that was core to the topic. We looked at the ways those parts move, think and relate to the audience.

Embodiment work, paying attention to feelings and movements, offered tools for Megan to bring these subtle but distinct characters to life over her 15 minutes on stage. This led to a rich and interesting journey for her audience. 

Embodiment work also helped Megan to notice when she would shift into “convincing” mode. It’s not uncommon for speakers, particularly when an idea is new or uncertain, to speak “at” an audience. Although the speaker obviously does all the talking, your speech will be more effective if you are able to continuously listen and respond to the room. 

Megan’s use of props, movement and costume change was a great opportunity to challenge her stage presence. Rather than using them simply for theatre, I showed Megan how different postures and objects could signpost her stage personas.

I recommended different places to position Megan’s notes, so that they naturally enhanced her stage presence, so that they did more than remind her what to say. 

Megan’s impact as a speaker

Megan’s intentional work developing her talk for the WIMWA summit paid off. She nailed it. Megan was already a skilled speaker, but by challenging her approach to include physical theatre and a still forming, complex topic, she was able to bring something new to the stage. The audience said Megan made them think about their relationship with themselves and with tech. They laughed; some got teary. The audience was with Megan for every word. Importantly, Megan started a conversation. This type of delivery – connected, co-created, curious – is generative over time, propelling the speaker, their idea and their audience.

“You helped me to craft this for the stage, and to build in creative and physical elements in a way that added to, rather than detracted from, my message. You challenged me as a public speaker and I felt really supported in that”.

(Megan McCracken, 2025)

Rachael West has been a Strategic Speaker Coach for over 15 years. She draws on a rich background in innovation and strategy, plus training in physical theatre, Body Mind Centering and other movement and performance practices to help speakers of all levels deliver great talks that make their ideas ripple. Contact Rachael to discuss how her speaker coaching can transform your next talk.