CASE STUDY: Megan McCracken’s Transformative Talk for 1000 people

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 for the 2016 WIMWA Summit, 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.

Megan was invited back to take the stage at the 2025 WIMWA Summit. Since her first presentation, the summit has become a major industry event with an audience of over 1000 that I have been speaker coaching for 12 years, and Megan wanted to do something different. She approached me for Strategic Speaker Coaching.

Megan’s 3 public speaking challenges

Megan wanted to speak about AI and what it means to feel human. As an executive coach, she had been asking her clients: “What would you bring back to your life that has been streamlined out of it?” Megan told me that every time she asked this, the person would get really animated. “I needed an hour to hear them out”, she said. She felt strongly that the WIMWA Summit was the perfect place for this topic, and the timing was right.

Megan had three key challenges for her speaking engagement:

1. Incorporate physical theatre, including an outfit change. Stage props and movement can enhance your keynote, as long as you use them to enhance your message rather than detract.
2. Communicate a complex topic that is still being formulated. 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. Less time is doable – but you have to invest the time.

Speaker coaching moments

1. Deep Landscape Scan

I begin the Strategic Speaker Coaching process with my Deep Landscape Scan. This a strategic, multi-perspective analysis of your talk and topic. It makes the process of developing a keynote faster, more expansive and provides a richer experience for speaker and audience. Some examples of what this looked like for Megan:

• Uncovering – and feeling – her intent for this presentation. When your talk purpose is felt in your body, you can find the right words and deliver far more easily than if you have a “key message” that is more of an abstract concept in your mind.
• What this talk meant for Megan within her evolution as a coach. We found that Megan wasn’t just bringing a new topic to the stage, the talk marked a shift in her professional approach to executive coaching.
• Megan’s fears about her talk. The shift to let audiences into her evolution as a coach was an exciting one, expanding what Megan could offer future clients. However, she was concerned for existing clients in the audience. Might they be confused if the Megan they saw on stage was not the Megan they were used to? 

2. Undercurrent

Another key element to my Strategic Speaker Coaching process is detecting The Undercurrent to your talk. This is something an audience senses, although it may not be named explicitly by you the speaker. (In the language of narrative strategy, it can occasionally be the same as meta-narrative.) Megan held some tensions around her topic and intention, so I proposed she take her audience on two journeys: the first being the topic narrative, and the second her Undercurrent. Megan’s topic narrative was the story of AI and humanness and her Undercurrent would be her growth and development as an executive coach.

3. Embodiment

In Strategic Speaker Coaching, physical and “embodied” elements help narratives land with (i.e. make sense to) listeners. Here are a few embodiment practices I guided Megan to explore:

• Noticing different parts of Megan that appeared throughout her talk. This included Familiar Coach Megan, Emerging Coach Megan, and a Frazzled Technology Part that was core to her topic. Giving all these parts clear stage time, made for a really dynamic and energising audience journey.
• The ways different parts move, think and relate to the audience. Paying attention to feelings and movements gave Megan the tools to bring her subtle but distinct characters to life over her 15 minutes on stage. This added richness and reality for the audience. 
• How Megan’s use of props, movement and costume change could enhance her stage presence. I showed Megan how different postures and objects – even where she placed her notes – could signpost her stage personas and add to her message, rather than distract.

4. Responding to the room

Embodiment also helped Megan to notice a tendency to shift into “convincing” mode. When an idea is new or uncertain, speakers can fall into the habit of talking “at” an audience. While keynote speakers are generally the only person in the room talking, their speeches are more effective if they are listening and responding to the room. 

Megan’s impact as a speaker

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. Audience members 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 (and costume change). What I loved most was that, by putting in the hard yards to pull off something she hadn’t done before, Megan was incredibly engaging AND shared an important, emerging part of her professional expertise with a whole new 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.