How do you tell a person? (they need help)

I recently had a chat with a middle manager, during my work with one of my sales presentation clients. The manager relayed that she had just come from an off-site meeting where a senior manager in the organisation delivered a presentation.

The senior manager (the next level up from the middle manager) was reading the entire presentation and was ineffective in the delivery of the presentation. In addition, all the other senior managers presenting on the day did not read their presentation, and were markedly better that the senior manager.

The middle manager asked for my advice on how she might broach this lack of effective presentation skill with the senior person. We agreed it would be a difficult task – due to the senior position the person held, and to the high regard the person commanded within the organisation.

I suggested one way to handle this situation was to enlist a peer of the senior manager, to sensitively ask, if the manger was open to feedback on the person’s presentation and delivery of spoken messages.

I’d love to get your ideas/feedback on your experience with a similar situation(s) to this one, and on how the situation was handled.