Overall, an interesting and relevant topic. Good interest and thoughtful questions from those who attended.
The session was very insightful. Although only around 14–16 people joined (including us), the participants were attentive and engaged. There were lots of thoughtful questions, showing genuine interest in the topic.
Personally, I (Astrid) found the topic very inspiring, the vertical development is one of those concepts that can feel abstract at first, but also very powerful once you understand it. People were clearly impressed, both by the concept itself and by how Laurent explained it. He made it accessible by using familiar analogies and examples, which really helped everyone grasp the idea more clearly
What went wrong?
Laurent had some issues presenting his slides in PowerPoint format, so he had to switch over to presenting a PDF version of his slides.
What to improve?
Better alignment between how we described the event in our promotional materials and what Laurent actually ended up presenting. I feel like we marketed this as a much more practical session that would provide concrete insights and tools for coaches, whereas it ended up being much more conceptual.
I'm not sure if this is because Laurent ended up shifting the focus of his session from what he originally shared with us or because we made assumptions about the content he would be sharing.
One way to reduce the risk of this for future events is to have the speaker review the event overview that we draft and confirm that how we have framed it matches their intentions for the event.
What is the next step?
Update our guest speaker guidelines and preparation process to incorporate the “What to improve?” suggestions above.
He appears to be very active as a lifelong learner, with lots of courses and certifications. He completed The Coaching Essentials Module 1 at NTUC LearningHub in April 2025.