A fast-track communication program that became a permanent fixture of TOTSA's high-potential leadership development architecture.
TOTSA Total Gas & Power is a leading energy trading company. Their high-potential leadership program is a rigorous, multi-month development journey designed to prepare their most promising talent for senior leadership roles. Communication — specifically the ability to convince, align, and present under pressure — was identified as a critical gap at the HiPo level.
The Impactful Speaking module was integrated into this program as a dedicated communication fast-track — and has been renewed every year since its first edition. Five years in, it is now a standard component of the architecture.
TOTSA's HiPo cohort is highly diverse — in seniority, function, nationality, and communication style. Some participants are already confident presenters; others have almost no experience presenting beyond their immediate team. The program needed to challenge everyone without leaving anyone behind — and produce measurable improvement within a condensed timeframe.
The additional constraint: participants are busy. Running demanding day jobs in a fast-moving trading environment, they couldn't commit to heavy pre-work or long-format sessions. The program had to be high-impact without demanding unreasonable time — tight, precise, and immediately applicable.
Each edition follows the same structure, continuously refined based on what the previous cohort taught us. The program has compounded — each new group benefits from everything learned before them.
Individual intake with each participant before the program begins. We map their communication profile — what they're currently strong at, where they're holding back, and what they're working on in their role. This ensures the group sessions address real needs, not hypothetical ones, and that every individual arrives with a clear personal focus.
A half-day group session on message architecture and structuring for impact. The core framework — the Pyramid Principle applied to energy trading scenarios, the single-sentence test, audience-first thinking — is introduced and immediately applied to real TOTSA business situations. Participants leave with a reusable structure they can apply the next day.
A second group session focused on presence, delivery, and handling Q&A under pressure. Participants are filmed, watched back, and given specific — not generic — feedback. We identify the three changes per person that will make the most difference. The group dynamic creates peer challenge that no individual coaching session can replicate.
One private session per participant. This is where the group work becomes personal — addressing each person's specific challenge, whether structural, delivery-related, or confidence-based. For some it's about authority under questioning; for others, it's about making complex ideas simple without losing precision. The individual session is where the real calibration happens.
Each team presents to a panel of senior TOTSA leaders — a real high-stakes context that puts everything learned into practice under conditions that matter. This is not a simulation. The panel is composed of decision-makers who the participants work with and report to. The pressure is real. The feedback is real. And the improvement is visible.
"The fact that they've renewed this program five times in a row says more than any testimonial. When something works — and people can feel it working — organisations keep it."
Now a standard component of TOTSA's HiPo program — not as a one-off training, but as a permanent fixture of their leadership development architecture, renewed every year since its first edition.
Consistently high satisfaction across cohorts — the combination of group work and individual coaching is cited by TOTSA's L&D team as the key differentiator. It challenges everyone at their own level, rather than calibrating to the middle of the group.
Alumni apply the framework in their daily work — in client communications, internal proposals, and leadership team presentations. The learning doesn't stay in the training room.
The program compounds — each edition is refined based on what the previous cohort taught us. Five iterations in, the methodology has become sharper, more precise, and more adapted to the specific communication context of energy trading.
Preparing frontline technical experts for the world's largest print trade show.
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