Here's how you can enhance your confidence in presenting data governance strategies to clients.

As the Data Governance itself is a strategic solution, an in-depth knowledge is required on the business of the client and data governance focus areas. Knowing the stuff increases the credibility of the recommendations. As part of the strategic solutions, there can be many questions from stakeholders. Convincing answers need to be provided, that happens only if we know the stuff.

First do your home work thoroughly (You can do due diligence or workshops) and understand the clients organisation data flow end to end. Understand their requirements, pain points, challenges and priorities. Map them with DG frame work/ policies, tools etc. Make sure your presentation is addressing those pain points/challenges .You can bring in examples/success story of similar industry/pain points. Clearly demonstrate the DG benefits , KPI and the metrics used to track the DG program. Always use the customer vocabulary and make it more interactive. Be confident and passionate in demonstrating your experience.Practise and make sure you are covering all the slides in given time . Be prepared for questions and address it appropriately.

When I dive into data, at first I am tinkering. Many folks will tell you that you should use industry standards only and focus on getting things handled efficiently, but I find that noodling around a little with the data in Excel or PowerBI first can help me to get to know it better. Through this process I have found many interesting metrics that have become my calling card when working with data. You won't get just the basics with me. Insights can come from anywhere and with practice and experience your intuition gets refined and you know what you can test to see if there is any correlation that might be interesting to your audience. Even if they don't need it - you now know more about that data than anyone else.

Get better at quick relationships between numbers. This helps you not only when practicing to remember things better, but also when relating to other analytically minded people. This also helps you to determine how you want to emphasize your phrasing when you are delivering because the number has more meaning when you can relate it to other numbers or itself as a percentage or looking at the change over time. This can be very manual at first, don't be afraid to keep a notecard, but once you gain proficiency, you won't stop making those relationships, even when you aren't the presenter. This will help you ask better questions when others are presenting and be prepared to field questions that come your way during the presentation.

The "best" visual is in the eyes of the beholder. Knowing your audience makes this much easier, but when you can't know ahead of time, do the best you can and ask for their feedback instead of fielding it on your heels. What you think is straightforward, they might think was not clear enough, and that's okay. It's an art form to visualize data well and takes practice. This is a great place to put some of the relationships between the data that you practiced to be able to deliver as well. If there is a 20% change from the last meeting, make sure you find a way to show that visually, especially if it is a positive change ;-) Most importantly, make sure that you are leaving no ambiguity in your visuals - you draw the conclusions that way.

Engaging with your audience doesn't have to be scary. If you put them in the hot seat earlier in the presentation, you get to be the one listening while they process their answers. (I like to send my questions ahead of time when possible to accommodate the neurodivergent in the crowd and ensure folks are prepared to discuss meaningfully). Putting polls into your presentation can be tricky if the outcome changes the way you present, but it is a good tool when you have a meaningful poll like question. Don't engage just for the sake of it though, people can feel it when you are being inauthentic.

I find that most people confuse excitement for anxiety because of the fragility of joy. Hang with me. You are excited, and know that you will feel pride when finished if things go well. But that joy is fragile and fleeting and it only takes one rough moment to steal that away, so instead we end up nervous that we won't be perfect and we won't have that "speakers high" (is that in a textbook somewhere?) afterwards. Dare to do it anyway and find ways to be proud no matter what. Reflect on the other side of your presentation and list out at least 3 things that went well and one that you did better than the last time. This can help you navigate nerves by inoculating you against them next time. Also, try not to catastrophize, it's not helpful.