Foreign companies often want to appoint a Japanese person to be the head of their Japan operation.  This is done on the basis that they will know what is best for the business.  This proclivity has made many washed up, tremendously mediocre Japanese Presidents a lot of money and substantially extended their careers.  At some point the shareholders, or the Board, start to ask why there are no results in the Japan operation. 

The local chief usually manages to fend off these “rude” enquiries for a few years until the jig is up.  In comes the shiny new President from headquarters who has been despatched to “fix” the Japan operation and turn it around.  This typically leads to another array of problems, but that is another podcast.  The idea is that the Japanese way of doing things is the best for Japan – “when in Tokyo do it the Tokyo way” kind of thing. 

I remember trying to sell our High Impact Presentations Course to a foreign financial firm.  The Japanese lady I was speaking with told me she wanted the “Japanese way” of presentations instead of the Dale Carnegie global best practice way.  It is an interesting question, isn’t it.  How far do we go to accommodate the Japanese culture and way of doing things, while still getting the maximum benefit from doing things at the highest possible level?

We do meet foreigners here who have been here for a long time and have quietly gone troppo.  They are trying so hard to assimilate they are out Japanesing the Japanese.  What should we do about how we present in business?  Should we go troppo too and do it the Japanese “way”?  What is the Japanese “way”?  Here is your handy dandy guide to going troppo when presenting in Japan and how to blend in with the locals.

1.        Monotone

Speak in a complete monotone voice and forget about using any voice modulation, pauses or hitting of keywords and phrases.  Some people will say this is just how it is because the Japanese language is a monotone language and so there is no chance for vocal variation, as we have with foreign languages.  That is almost true, except even Japanese speakers can use two mighty levers to elevate their presenting world.

Speed and strength will produce the variety needed.  Slowing words down for emphasis or speeding them up both work well.  Taking the strength down to speak in a conspiratorial whisper is good and so is using power to hit keywords.

2.        Be Seated

Invariably, when I am invited to speak in Japanese the layout will feature a desk with my name written on paper either draping over the desk or sitting upright on a paper tent.  The microphone will be on a low stand. This is to make it clear that I am humble and I am not standing above the audience, making myself out to be better than everyone else.  It also means I lose my access to my body language and most of my gestures.

3.        No Eye Contact

Looking a superior in the eye in samurai times would get your head cut off for insolence.  The culture ensures that we don’t make direct eye contact with people when we speak and so Japanese presenters have migrated this into their presentations.  They never look into the eyes of their audience members.

It also means that they haven’t realised that normal conversation and giving presentations are two different things and different rules can apply.  The engagement of the audience members through six seconds of individual eye contact are foregone in order to keep your head on your shoulders.

4.        Weak Voice

Speaking softly is a cultural preference and so why not keep that going when presenting?  The speaker is under-powering their presentation, so often, it is hard to hear what they are saying and there is certainly no passion involved as demonstrated through voice projection.  This guarantees the speaker has almost zero presence in the room.

5.        Few Gestures

Holding the hands in front of the groin, behind the back or together at waist level are all favourites.  Each position locks up the hands and cancels out using any gestures to emphasise the message being delivered. 

6.        Casual Posture

Having the weight displacement 70/30 is common and usually it results in one hip being kicked out to the side.  Swaying around is also popular as they speak. These are all distractions from the message, but no one is conscious of that, so they keep doing it.

7.        One packed slide

Cramming everything on to one slide, with five tiny different fonts and six colours, is definitely a typical effort by Japanese presenters.  The rule that we have to be able to understand the point of the message on the slide in two seconds has been tossed overboard in favour of a full noisy baroque effort.

Good luck with out Japanesing the Japanese when it comes to the Japanese “way” of presenting.

The Lord Mayor of London covers the whole con-urban spread of greater London and the Lord Mayor of the City of London covers 1.12 square kilometres of the financial district with a population of nearly 11,000 people, so it is a bit confusing.  Alderman Lord Mayor Professor Michael Mainelli gave a speech to the British Chamber of Commerce recently.  I didn’t know anything about him, but sitting there listening to him, I immediately noticed how smooth his delivery was.  He had good pacing, good voice strength, some appropriate humour and an engaging manner.

He is well educated at Harvard University, Trinity College Dublin and the London School of Economics.  We all know that being well educated and teaching at University are no guarantees of public speaking ability and prowess.  In the Lord Mayor’s case, he has had a very successful business career as a founder. He is a chartered certified accountant, computer specialist, securities professional and management consultant. His talk was an amalgamation of capabilities built up across a broad spectrum career.

Being highly successful in your career is a great contributor to exuding quiet confidence as a speaker.  Often, when we are making our careers, we may be trying to be a bit too strong, a bit too strident, too loud, too forceful because we are in a hurry.  Bringing these attributes into the speaking world is not a great idea.  Professor Mainelli’s demeanor was that of a person with good levels of self-awareness and an unhurried manner.  That unhurried manner was very convincing.  He didn’t come across as trying to be persuasive, but was persuasive. 

I was thinking about that for myself.  I am a very high-powered presenter, well that is always the feedback I get after my presentations, so I take it at face value.  However, can I learn something here and take a leaf out of his book?  Obviously, throughout his career, Professor Mainelli has had numerous opportunities to speak in public, and it shows.  What we see today is the accumulation of all of those years of speaking, and it is a very polished example of how to be persuasive. 

Was he like that at the beginning?  I doubt it because this is a finite skill we develop, not something we are born with.  We all benefit from substantial practice of any art.  Perhaps speaking opportunities were thrust upon him and he learnt how to become better.  I should have asked him, shouldn’t I, when I was chatting with him after the talk.  I will remember that for the next time I meet someone who is so highly skilled.

What can we take away from his example?  Firstly, study the art or do as much speaking as possible and keep adjusting your techniques on the basis of your evolution as a speaker or even better – do both.  This sounds simple, except I ran away from every speaking opportunity until my early thirties.  I was terrified of public speaking and would have been one of those people ranking it in surveys ahead of death!  You may also be an avoider like I was.  If you want to become competent as a speaker, you have to give talks.  It is like trying to teach someone to swim on the deck of the pool.  It is a great theory, but nothing happens until you dive into the water and get wet and start swimming around.

Grab the slightest chance of speaking in public.  Yes, it is terrifying at the start, but it gets less so as your frequency mounts up.  Tony Robbins, in one of his books, talks about how he purposely decided to speak as much as possible.  He realised that most speakers only get a few chances a year and he could match their annual total experience in just weeks, if he got enough speaking spots.  He went for it and has turned that speaking facility into a career, business and massive wealth. Being nine feet tall probably helped too.

Getting proper coaching is also the quickest way to get much better.  I have done some public speaking training with different organisations, but nothing has matched the High Impact Presentations course that we teach. I don’t say that to sell training, but as an objective statement based on my experiences.  My broader point is to go get the training.  I lost a decade of potential experience and career advancement because I let fear rule me. I didn’t engage my brain and say, “the way to overcome the fear I have is to get proper training”.  I was too stupid for that logical consequence of having a problem and needing to fix it.  Don’t be like Greg!

I still look for any chance I can get to speak, because I know this will help me to keep pushing myself and keep improving. My records tell me I have delivered 558 public speeches so far.  Am I satisfied with that?  No, I am certain that I can still improve and get a lot better. All I need is the chance to keep polishing and keep improving.  I now aim to achieve the zen like “mind of no mind” effortlessness that the Lord Mayor of the City of London displayed in his remarks.  What about you?  What are you going to do to become competent and comfortable as a speaker, someone highly persuasive and influential with those around you?

“Will It Blend” was a genius idea from Blendtec, kicked off with a $50 budget in 2006. The campaign saw Tom Dickson’s videos go viral and take a boring blender manufacturer into the pantheon of marketing presentations.  They have 187 videos on YouTube and 845,000 subscribers to their channel. So far, their YouTube channel has had 294 million views. Not bad for a blender maker duking it out in a red ocean of blender suppliers. 

I suggested to a client of mine that they take a leaf out of Blendtec’s playbook and do the same for their boring drill bits.  Being my client, I actually never used the word “boring”, but at least floated the idea for them.  “Will It Drill” I thought could be a goer for them, however they never went for it.  Instead, they keep doing the same old promotions using catalogues of products with potential buyers. 

Another client of mine is an equipment manufacturer, and I came up with a suggestion for them.  They get a lot of calls to their call centre for help with running the equipment.  These calls often come from part-time staff in the stores who can’t understand how to use the machinery or fix simple issues.  They are not well trained and with the difficulty of recruiting staff only likely to get worse, the chances of them getting better trained are fairly remote.

I suggested that they create a series of “reality TV” style tutorial videos for the 20% of the problems which make up 80% of the calls to the call centre.  This would relieve the call centre staff of boring, repetitious work. It must be extremely hard to tell someone over the phone how to fix machinery. 

You make the videos once and so the investment is able to be amortised over many years, because the machines don’t change that much and the issues are probably the same all the time.

This means no scripts and low production values.  Initially I thought to get a real technician in the company’s technician uniform, to go through the 12 steps or 7 steps or 5 steps or whatever, to fix the problem.  Edit the video well, to make it easy to follow and put this up on YouTube and on their website.  When people call in with these typical issues, the call centre staff can just direct them to the videos and say “call us back if you have any further problems”. The chances of that will be very low I would guess.  This was an elegant solution, I thought.

Then I had a further thought and a more radical consideration. I wondered about going a completely different direction from reality TV to Hollywood.  Given the people in the stores are not technical people, why not get someone who is also not technical to walk them through the steps, so it is more accessible?  There is a local foreign businesswoman here I know, who does a lot of MC work for luxury products.  She is really beautiful, really blonde and speaks excellent Japanese.  That would be a killer combo for this job in Japan.  I would also dress her up in an evening gown, with her hair done perfectly, to accentuate the tinsel town glamour.  Get her to point out what needs to be done step by step.  It is a counterintuitive approach and may even go viral like Blendtec.

This got me thinking about how we present what we do.  Are there some areas where we can think in a differentiated way about how we present our solutions to potential clients?  What about for your business?  What are you doing now and what could you do if you really considered something innovative and differentiated?  We all get into a rut of the same old, same old about how we present our brand and our solutions. Year after year, we do the same thing and probably basically the same approaches as our competitors.

Blendtec has shown how to take a very dull, utilitarian solution and make it sexy.  My “Will It Drill” client never took any action when it wasn’t so difficult. For whatever reason, inertia took over, and he is still working hard to sell drill bits in a crowded market. He can only differentiate on price, which is not something any of us want to do.

I don’t know if my client will go for the glamourous blonde Hollywood bombshell solution to fixing common requests for help from clients, but I hope he does.  I am also thinking now about how do I take my own advice and what can I do with my training business?  How about you?  Has this article stimulated any would be Blendtec marketing innovations for you?

We are usually asked to speak at events by some hosting organisation and these can be breakfast, lunches or evening occasions.  Each has its challenges.  Not that many people seem to be great in the early mornings and the energy level of the audience can be very low, as they are still sleepy.  This sleepiness is definitely a problem for after lunch presentations too.  Many are ready for a nap after hoeing down a big meal in the middle of the day.  In the evenings, people can be tired after a hard day’s work and their concentration spans can be limited.

As the speaker, we may suffer the same issues, but the adrenalin kicks in and we become sufficiently energised to complete the presentation.  There are issues around how much information an audience can absorb when attending our talk.  We, of course, are sold on the topic or subject because we have prepared a presentation on it.   We have gone to a lot of trouble and have been highly motivated to give the talk.  We may let that enthusiasm blind us to the reality of what it is like on the receiving end.

This is where presentation technique become very important.  I see so many speakers who ignore half their audience when they present, by simply not getting the feet placed at the correct angle – ninety degrees to the audience.  These speakers get their feet angle at forty-five degrees and without releasing it, they are now only talking to one side of the room and are deleting the remainder from their view and attention.  Don’t do that.

Another issue is they lose sight of their audience.  They are looking over the heads of everyone or looking at the screen or looking down and not making any eye contact with the attendees.  This is a massive mistake.  We have to make sure we are watching our people like a hawk.  If we see they are losing interest or their energy is flagging, we can take remedial actions to fix the problem.  By looking at members of our audience for six seconds each, we can make sure we not only engage the listeners, but we can always gauge their interest levels in what we are saying.

If the energy goes down, we may need to get them physically involved by raising their hand to a question.  This question should be designed so that basically everyone has to raise their hand.  This way we get the maximum involvement and this helps to wake up those who are drifting off into slumber, with their eyes open. As we say “the lights are on, but nobody is home”.

Another method is to pause and stop speaking for about ten seconds. Actually, ten seconds can feel quite long, as we are used to continuous palaver from speakers. 

This is called a “pattern interrupt” because we provide a consistent audio rhythm when we are speaking. When we turn it off, the sleepy attendees wake up because something has changed. They become alert again, springing from a deeply rooted and basic survival tactic.

If we have been going hard with our delivery, we can wear some audience members out.  We are hitting them with so much energy, it is thrashing them. 

This is something I have to be careful about, because I am a very high energy presenter.  If I see I am wiping people out with my overpowering energy, I need to bring in more lows and reduce the crescendos.  This is not that easy, because as the speaker, we get into a rhythm too with our pacing.  We are up and away and it is hard to rein yourself in, especially when you are enjoying yourself.

One of the unnecessary pressures we place on ourselves can be too much content for the time available and we rush.  This gets very ugly, very fast.  The audience realise immediately that the speaker has screwed up the time allocation for their delivery and now panic is setting in, as the presenter races through their slides.  It looks very unprofessional, and as it comes at the end, it poisons our final key impression with the crowd. 

We may have been doing very well and everyone is enjoying the talk and getting a lot of value.  We suddenly go crazy and start rushing.  Effectively, we delete all that good will we have built up during the presentation and we replace it with a negative recollection of ourselves.

Rehearsal is the cure for the time control problem.  However, if you cannot do a rehearsal and you realise during the delivery that you have to stop, don’t rush through the slides.  When you do that, the jig is up and everyone is on to you.

Instead, just stop on the slide you are on, wrap it up and call for any questions they may have. Remember, only you know what is in the slide deck. When you race through and show them what they missed out on, the unhappiness is increased. It is better to not reveal the gap.

When doing the Q&A, don’t forget to repeat the question, so that everyone can hear it, as long as it isn’t a hostile question.  Never repeat or amplify an incoming unfriendly missile.  With that situation, we always paraphrase to take the heat out of the question. 

Don’t just look at the questioner either.  Give them some eye contact and then share your answer with the rest of the audience as well. 

Finally, close it all out by repeating your main message and take your bow, enjoy the applause and finish on the mark.  Everyone will be very happy you respected their time and they will regard you as a professional.