One Of Your Most Vital Presentations

Usually when we hear the term “presentation”, we think of a public arena, a big crowd and a lot of formality.  These public occasions are important because this is your personal and professional brand on show to the world.  There are other presentations though, which are in the family bosom of the company, away from the bright lights and the fanfare.  This is when you are addressing the troops, people who see you day in and day out.  They know who you really are.

In these cases we may need to recognise people, perhaps hand out awards, celebrate a birthday or work anniversary. This is our crew but don’t take them for granted.  We can’t be laid back about it and think it is not as important as a public soiree.  We still have to prepare properly.  This is inside the family, so the temptation is to see the stakes as being lower. Actually, these types of speeches are the hardest ones to give and we need to be at our best.  Engagement and motivation are closely driven by how we make our people feel.  How much attention we give them and how we treat them, are critical elements of our authentic leadership.

Typically though, we don’t prepare, we just wing it and so end up with a pretty ordinary facsimile of a proper presentation.  Wrong thinking!  Well what we should we do?  Here is a simple four part formula for these occasions.  Firstly, explain why the award is being made.  It may be for dedicated service, high quality job performance, a major sales achievement, etc.  Probably everyone knows already, but we need to remind them and set the scene for the presentation.  For example, “Mary has won the sales over $500,000 medal” which is pretty boring. Compare it to, “Mary beat out hundreds of other salespeople to make it into the very exclusive half a million dollars club of outstanding salespeople”.  We need to set the context for the award at the start.

Secondly, talk about the team member’s role as part of the team.  We need to connect them with the group and how they contribute.  We might say, “Mary is a high performer and she is a fantastic team player.  Her willingness to help the team win, shows the mark of a true professional.  I know many of the people in this room today can attest to her openness and availability to assist wherever needed and share knowledge with others.

Thirdly, we talk about the award itself, why it is deserved and how we are all proud of the recognition this has given to our whole team effort in the organisation.  We say, “Mary has been a model of persistence. She has done all the steps of the sales process, consistently and professionally.  Her achievement today is also driven off the back of the number of referrals she got from clients which led to new business with other companies. We preach this referral idea and Mary is a model to remind us to make this succeed for all of us as well”.

Fourthly, we congratulate the recipient on behalf of everyone.  “Mary, I am very proud to make this sales award to you today. Congratulations from all of us, we want you to receive this recognition with our best wishes and hopes for even further success in the future”.

The danger of these presentations is to go too frugal or too exaggerated.  We do want to create some buzz around the award but at the same time, it has to be real.  Exaggerating the importance of the award or the winner’s achievements makes the whole thing sound like a parody, a fakery.  Telling the audience “Mary is genius personified, a true legend in the business.  She will stand in the hall of fame of salespeople in this organisation for time immemorial”, is obvious overkill and creates serious doubts about the integrity of everyone involved in this award ceremony. 

Japan is a country of institutionalised flattery so we have to tread carefully here.  If you have ever been on the receiving end, then you know how embarrassing these types of effervescent comments can be.  The remarks have to be sincere, true and tempered with reality.

 If we over praise one person in the group, the danger is the others will become jealous and shun them.  In some cases, it may be better to present this speech to Mary alone, without an audience.  A nice lunch with the boss and the award presentation one-on-one may be better than gathering everyone together.  Japanese people get nervous when they are singled out for too much recognition. They know the knives will be coming out straight afterwards.  In this sense, Japan is a bit tricky and you really have to know the person involved and the group itself, to decide which is the best plan.

The point is to treat this as a major speech, that directly hits the team’s motivation and commitment. When you think of it that way, then you give the talk the proper attention it warrants and you can make these occasions a great opportunity to engage the team even more successfully.

Firing Up An Audience

Whenever I am in the USA, I love watching the different television preachers in action.  I am not looking for salvation particularly, but I am looking for hints on how to work an audience.  Now obviously competing with their promises on how to get to heaven is going to be difficult, but we can see some things that work which we can use in business for ourselves. 

They are master storytellers, usually using Bible incidents to make a point in the here and now.  The parables in the Bible are all mini-episodes, which teach a point about success.  As speakers, we have a topic to address, a key message we want communicate and the platform to do so.  How can we add stories to our talk which will bolster the point we are making?  The best stories are the ones people can see in their mind’s eye.  It is a bit like reading a novel, after you have seen the video series or the movie based on the book.  You can easily picture the scenes, the situation, the characters, the backdrops, etc.

This is what we should be looking to create.  Short descriptions of incidents that inform a certain course of action.  There should be people involved, preferably people they know already.  We want locations they can imagine.  We weave our point into these stories and draw conclusions for the audience on what course they should take. 

For example, if we wanted people to think about the importance of keeping key staff, we could tell a story like this one: 

“The “top gun” sales guy gets the call from the big boss and is ushered into the plush Presidential office. There he encounters the spacious room’s dark paneled walls, the impressive hardbound books on the shelves, the massive mahogany desk, the expensive paintings, the carefully coiffed secretary - all the accoutrements of power and success.  Top gun had met his annual sales quota in just two weeks and was expecting the accolades deserving from such an achievement.  The discussion however was on lowering his commission rate, because he was making more money than the President.  Ross Perot left IBM and went on to create Electronic Data Systems and became a billionaire.  We want to make sure we create reward systems that keep our top talent and we as leaders need to take our egos out of the equation”.

Probably everyone has seen a movie scene with this type of décor or they could easily imagine it.  Now I could have just suggested the punch line – “throttle back on our egos, amply reward our stars and keep our top talent” but the lead up sets the scene for the audience and makes it more powerful. 

I could have ramped it up even more by engaging the audience with some showmanship by then saying, “Bosses in the room, if you don’t want to lose your top talent, say “no way”. Now I would say this, while cupping my hand to my ear, to draw out some responses. If it wasn’t energetic enough, I could continue by saying, “Ah, I didn’t catch that?” again, cupping my hand to my ear fishing for a response. After they answer “no way”, I could say, “That’s right! I am with you, I don’t want to lose any of my key people either! Now let me give you some ideas on how we can achieve that”,

So we put it all together: “The “top gun” sales guy gets the call from the big boss and is ushered into the plush Presidential office.  There he encounters the spacious room’s dark paneled walls, the impressive hardbound books on the shelves, the massive mahogany desk, the expensive paintings, the carefully coiffed secretary - all the accoutrements of power and success. Top gun had met his annual sales quota in just two weeks and was expecting the accolades deserving from such an achievement.  The discussion however was on lowering his commission rate, because he was making more money than the President.  Ross Perot left IBM and went on to create Electronic Data Systems and became a billionaire.  We want to make sure we create reward systems that keep our top talent and we as leaders need to take our egos out of the equation. Bosses in the room, if you don’t want to lose your top talent, say “no way”. Ah, I didn’t catch that?  That’s right! I am with you, I don’t want to lose any of my key people either! Now let me give you some ideas on how we can achieve that”.

This is a simple example of combining storytelling, with a bit of showmanship.  We need to use this in moderation though or it can quickly feel manipulative.  It will however lift the energy in the audience and grab their attention, as you download your key points.  Try adding some stories into your next presentation and see where you can add in some showmanship as well, to engage with the audience members.  Let’s become more memorable as presenters, but in a good way!!!

The Japan Gap Between Speaker And Audience Is Still Vast

Lawyers in Japan are an elite group.  Senior lawyers are the elite of the super elite.  When I landed in Tokyo on April 1st, 1979, Tokyo was completely different city than what it is today.  A low rise, rambling, conurbation maze of small streets and ugly grey buildings, long stained by air pollution.  Like the city itself, many things were a surprise back then, including Japanese lawyers. In those days, the pass rate of the Japan bar exam was 1.4 percent and the average time it took after University graduation, to pass the bar exam was seven years.  With the launch of many new law schools in Japan and changes to the system, the bar exam pass rate has now climbed to 29%.  So if you meet a senior Japanese lawyer, they will be part of the older cohort of the super, super elite.  I was expecting a lot from these super lawyers, yet in some respects I was severely disappointed.

I attended a legal symposium, involving these super elite Japanese lawyers and some invited international lawyers coming in from outside of Japan.  The whole affair was conducted in English, and the level spoken by the Japanese attendees was very high. It was impressive. These are very smart people, often playing a key role in resolving international disputes and enabling international commerce.   In the Japan group, all had their legal practices and also lectured at leading Japanese Universities, on different aspects of the law.

Yet, the communication skills on offer were incongruent with their elite educations and high societal status. I can never resolve how intelligent people can manage to stand up in front of an audience and position themselves such that they fully ignore one third of their audience.  We were seated in a theatre style arrangement with raised seating.  A fairly wide room, it obviously functions as one of the main lecture theatres.  As professional legal educators they are all are used to speaking to large groups of students and so could be expected to speak to the whole group, rather than just those seated to their right.  This is not a tricky skill, but there was obviously no self-awareness, so you have to conclude this is how it is every time they give a lecture, be it in English or Japanese. 

So here is a hint to ourselves. Whenever we are standing before an audience, always make sure we position our feet such that they are facing ninety degrees directly forward and just turn our necks and upper body, when we want to involve each side of the room in eye contact.

Actually there wasn’t any real eye contact underway either.  Speaking to everyone and nobody at the same time, is a common lack of professionalism in many speakers in Japan.  In normal everyday conversations, making continuous direct eye contact can be too confronting for the normal societal standards of human interaction here. From a young age, Japanese people are taught to look at the throat, chin, and forehead of their interlocutor, rather than their eyes. 

When we are speaking to an audience though, we are in a different role now and have different requirements.  Winning the audience over to us, getting them to listen carefully to what we are saying and drawing them in to our point of view, are all aided when we use eye contact. 

In the whole symposium, I don’t think I saw anyone using eye contact properly.  We don’t want to bore a hole in the eyes of our audience though. That is why we seek to hold eye contact for around six seconds, before we move our gaze and make eye contact with another member of the audience.  When we do this, we really engage our audience. Those on the receiving end of the eye contact feel as if we are talking directly to them, as if there was no one else in the room.  This is a powerful connector.

In typical Japanese fashion, the main speakers were allotted a table to sit behind, decorated with a microphone stand.  In this seated position, out came the sheets of the speech transcript to be read to us in a monotone voice.  Extremely painful and ineffective.  One guest speaker from overseas however was very modern, reading from his iPad.  He even used voice intonation when reading, to stress certain words.  The same scenario – same seat, same microphone, reading the speech, but what a difference this made.  By spotlighting key words in each sentence, the speech came alive.  We should be doing the same thing when it is our turn to speak.

Now as a native speaker of English and a truly senior international expert in the law, I wondered why this speaker had to read the speech at all?  He could have stood and delivered that speech, without notes and in a more professional manner, fully utilising all the tools at his disposal. We should be more brave. 

We must always keep in mind one key advantage we have over our audience.  Only we know what we are going to say.  If we forget something or if we deviate off topic slightly, well, only we know that.  So whenever possible we should stand and deliver, no safety net, in full gaze of the audience without notes and use our eye contact to draw everyone in to our message.

The last part of the day was devoted to panel discussions.  Notes don’t work in these situations and everyone did a splendid job of speaking about complex legal matters in English off the cuff.  A couple of things to keep in mind for ourselves, if ever we are engaged in a similar panel discussion.   Learn how to use the microphone correctly, so we can be heard clearly.  I notice, so many people don’t speak across the mesh of the microphone properly, so they are not getting completely picked up by the audio technology. 

Another thing to be careful of is eye contact.  The speakers on these panels religiously devoted their looking lines to the panel members, ignoring their audience completely, as they answered questions or offered comments.  No, no, no! When we receive the question or are asked to comment, we should be addressing the panel members as well as the audience.  We should be using our eye contact to convince the audience of what we are projecting, by appealing directly to them. 

What often happens though is the speaker will exclusively look back at the moderator who asked the question, instead of engaging as many people as possible in the room.  This applies to any opportunity we may have for doing the Q&A.  Look at the questioner initially for the first six seconds of the answer only. Then branch out and engage as many of the audience members as you can, with six seconds of eye contact, as you make your answer.

These are highly educated, super elite people in Japan and yet they make these fundamental presentation errors.  So it tells us that being well educated and being in a prestigious job, does not automatically anoint us with the magic fairy dust of successful public speaking professionalism we all need.  Remember, these are our personal and professional brands we are holding out there for all to see. To bolster your brand, get the training, because today is the age of persuasion power and we must master this skill if we want to be fully successful. Connecting with our audience is one of the key business skills we need to add to our repertoire when presenting.

If You Want Your Audience To Be Enthusiastic Act Enthusiastic Yourself

There is an old truism in sales, “sales is nothing more than the transfer of the enthusiasm of the seller for the product or service to the buyer”.  What are we doing when we are speaking?  We are selling!  “Hang on a minute there Greg.  I am a professional, I am not a car or vacuum cleaner salesman”, you might be saying to yourself.  That sort of self talk is dated and dangerous.  Make no mistake, we are all in sales, regardless of whether our business card has salesperson written on it or not.

When I speak with lawyers what are they complaining about?  How important and how hard it is for them to gain new clients.  They are out there selling themselves to clients to choose their firm rather than the rival company.  The same with accountants, doctors, dentists, architects, engineers, etc. All of the professions are facing the same hurdle.  How do they appeal to buyers and how do they differentiate themselves from everyone else, when they also have the same skill sets, experience and brainpower on offer.

So if we are up at the podium, out there on stage, standing up in the room to speak, we are selling. Firstly, we are selling our personal brand. Depending on how good a job we do, this will sell the company brand. We humans are a curious bunch really. If we hear a speaker and they are impressive, we carry that feeling across to the whole firm.  Likewise, if they are a dud, we conclude they are all duds down there.  So don’t miss it - personal and professional brands matter.

The next thing we are selling is our message, the conclusion we have reached, the insight we have gained. We have prepared our talk with some points we believe are true and important and we are there to share them with the audience.  One issue though is our level of commitment to the audience and the message. 

I was at a talk once being given by a senior guy who was very well known around town, a long-timer in Tokyo, a published author and an accepted authority in his field.  The expectation of something really great was in the mind of everyone in the audience.  The speaker did give his talk, in the allotted time, on the designated subject.  However he left his enthusiasm in a parcel on the bus seat by mistake.  He spoke with no passion about his subject, no enthusiasm for his area of expertise and no interest in the punters who had made the effort to hear him.  It was really shocking and I have totally doubted his supposed expertise ever since.

Of course, we have to a strong base in the subject matter.  In fact we should be subject matter experts if we are going to get up in front of people and talk.  There is another person I know here who is trying to develop a business as a coach, has a stylish stylist and is trying to get speaking spots on an area of certain expertise.  The only problem is that he is not an expert at all on the subject he has chosen to speak about.  This can only end in tears, however beautifully outfitted and coiffured he may be, but still tears, because there just isn’t enough expert  content there to back up what he is saying.

Given we have the expertise to speak on the subject and given that we realise we are selling ourselves, our company and our message to the audience, then we need to add the magic ingredient of enthusiasm.  The way to be enthusiastic is to speak on a subject or an aspect of a subject, which lights your inner fire.  Inside your profession there are bound to aspects which you feel very strongly about, so talk about those and your enthusiasm will naturally emerge.

Relive things that happened in your experience that has become a foundation of your belief in what you are telling the audience.  Tell the story of what happened to you and how it impacted your views.  Talk about the lessons, the trials, tribulations, the highs and the lows.  Your feeling for these stages of the tale will shine through and the audience will be right there beside you. When you relive the whole journey, the good, the bad, the mediocre, the inner passion you have for what happened, will burn forth and captivate your audience.

In the retelling use all the resources at your disposal to bring that belief to the fore.  Use your eye contact to engage the audience, voice modulation to add crescendos and lulls where appropriate, gestures to cut through audience distraction and grab their attention. 

By combining our belief in our message, with an enthusiastic delivery, we will carry the audience with us, along the journey of belief that we have trod already based on our real world, hard won experiences.  That combination is unbeatable.

Including Dialogue In Our Presentations

Normally when we give presentations, they tend to be pretty dry affairs.  We marshal the facts, relate what happened, tell stories perhaps but in a one dimensional way.  We are relating what happened, but are not making any attempt to bring it alive.  However, what do we seek when we are looking for entertainment or education – we are looking for dialogue.  Our television dramas, movies, novels, biographies are all using dialogue to good effect.  We should include snippets of dialogue in our talks too.

Now we are not writing a screenplay, which is mainly dialogue, but that doesn’t mean we can’t drip a little bit in here or there in our talk to illustrate a point and bring it to life.  We are taking the role of the narrator telling our audience what happened and then including the conversation we were hearing from the person we are featuring in the talk.  We do this in normal conversation when we say, “she said that ‘it was preposterous idea and I will never have it mentioned under my roof again for as long as I live’”. We may even be telling this incident mimicking the style of the speech of the main protagonist, especially if they speak a dialect or with a heavy accent.

Why not do the same thing in our talks, to make our key point stronger?  Let me give an example of something that happened to me in 2010 in Miami.  I was attending my first Dale Carnegie International Convention and hardly knew anyone there.  In the evenings there would be various parties to attend and on this particular occasion I had the honour of meeting Dale Carnegie’s daughter Donna Dale Carnegie and she introduced me to Mike. 

Now Mike stood out in that crowd of Dale Carnegie people, because he had a long ponytail and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt.  It turned out that Mike was the contractor who did all the stage audio sound etc., for the Convention and had been doing it for years. 

“I always finish my year with the Dale Carnegie convention because you hold it in early December”, he told me.  He also got me attention when he said,  “I really like your organisation”.  Being new to the Dale Carnegie world I was curious, so I asked him why he said that. He whispered to me in a conspiratorial fashion, “The things that people are saying out in front of stage and what they are doing behind the stage are the same”. 

I asked what he meant by that.  He continued, “Well I do a lot of these same types of events and we are all hooked up on the mics, so we can hear what is going on behind stage, as well as out on stage. There are plenty of folks who say one thing to the audience, but carry on quite the opposite off stage.  I found in years of dealing with Dale Carnegie people they are genuine and they live the principles they espouse and I like that”.

In this example I have just modeled here, I am reproducing a conversation I had in Miami in 2010 and am using the point to say Dale Carnegie is great and the things we do are great, etc. This story is being used as evidence to get the listener to agree that Dale Carnegie is indeed great.  I could say all of the same things and relate that story, just telling the details of what happened.  However, when I include the dialogue, it brings the whole thing to life.  People in the audience can picture a guy in a Hawaiian shirt, with a long ponytail, whispering this information to me.  I can even cup my ear, as if I was listening to him, when he told me that secret part. They can hear his voice as I relate the story, which makes it more credible.

This requires a bit more work to do in the planning but not that much.  After all, this is something that happened to you. It was an incident where you were told something by the main character in the story.  All you have to do is tell what happened in their voice, rather than your own voice.  If you do this you can take your storytelling to a much higher level. Let’s give it a go and add another string to our bow of storytelling expertise.