How to Make A Magnificent Acceptance Speech
You want to promote your business or organisation, so that you can be more successful. A genius idea pops up amongst the brain trust over a few drinks after work – why don’t we enter the Business Awards? Someone has to win don’t they, so the odds are fair. Anyway, there is no downside is there? True but there can be, if you don’t fully think this through. I don’t mean the requirement for polishing the application or assembling the data in support of the claims being made. I am talking about seizing defeat from the jaws of victory on the winner’s dais.
When you win, you are invited up on to stage. The cameras are rolling, the lights are flooding the arena and the music is pumping. You are pumping too baby. It quickly occurs to you that hammering the booze on the table to instill some bonhomie amongst the troops was a good idea at the time, but now you need to pull yourself together. Back slapping, hand shakes, high fives propel you to the stage, as you make your way through the labyrinth of round tables.
Before you know it, you and the team have assembled on stage to receive the ovation from the crowd. In a moment, the MC announces you are about to be handed the cool looking trophy from the key VIP guest of the evening. The crowd goes quiet as you draw up to the stand microphone of the stage grasping the prize in your hand. A thousand eyes are fixed on you, awaiting your acceptance speech. You fluff it.
A ragged series of ums and ahs are punctuated by disoriented rambling highlighting no cohesion of thoughts, concepts or ideas. You are now sweating bullets. Multiple beads of perspiration start to run down your face, your pulse is surging, you realize this is a disaster and mentally start looking for the exit. The tuxedoed dandies have had their Colosseum bread and circuses moment. Having seen the lions dispose of their victims, they return to their table chatter. You are not forgotten though. You are now publically outed as an incompetent, who can’t string three words together. Your reputation is shredded and the trophy somehow feels less magnificent in your grasp.
You recall have seen this before haven’t you. Underprepared speakers making a complete hash of it. Don’t try and wing it. Think ahead and be properly tooled up. Under no circumstances mention you are nervous, even if you worry you are about to faint. Fall flat on your face out cold, but don’t apologise for your lack of preparation for this speech or your totally bereft skill set in giving speeches. Don’t make jokes to release the tension of the moment, you are not funny.
Begin where you need to. Thank the chief VIP, the Chamber or Business Association and the judges for awarding you this magnificent trophy and great honour. Congratulate your vanquished opponents with great generosity extolling their virtues and achievements. Next take this opportunity to promote your company or organisation. That is why you applied in the first place isn’t it? Give them your thoroughly rehearsed and well constructed elevator pitch on why what you do is vital to mankind and the future of the universe. This needs to be tight, taut, with no fluff.
When you thank the people who have made this happen in the team, make a short personal remark about each. Taro who stayed late so many nights, catching the last train home to get the project completed on time. Megumi for her total dedication to the care of the clients. Daisuke for his rousing leadership of the sales team when things looked grim. Mari and her team of angels in the back office who somehow managed to hold the whole thing together through thick and thin.
Finally, thank your family and friends who have supported you. If you become emotional at this point, don’t worry, whip out your hanky wipe your eyes and just keep going. We will love you for it.
Wrap it all up with a rousing call to action for the crowd. Encourage them to play a bigger game and maximise their potential here in this wonderful, exciting special country of Japan. Thank the organisers again, wave the trophy and move away from the microphone stand, to signal you have finished. Now quietly call the team together to join you and the VIP, as you all pose for the photographers with the trophy. Then get off the stage, you are done!
Think through the award component of the evening, prepare thoroughly what you want to say, rehearse it many times, time it to make sure it isn’t too long and stay off the booze until you actually win. Good luck!
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Do Your Homework
I was at a speech recently, given by a very prominent person, an extremely experienced speaker, to a very prestigious audience. It should have been a triumph, but it was a fizzer. There were two particular problems with the speech. One was it was set for 25 minutes but the speaker finished in 8 minutes. The second problem was that the most interesting part of the speech was not readily accessible for the audience. Both issues stemmed from a lack of homework before giving the speech. Given the experience of the speaker, I found this rather surprising, but it highlights that no matter how comfortable you are or how experienced you are, always do your homework before giving the talk.
Japan is a very formal country. If a speech is scheduled for 25 minutes, it has to last that long or otherwise it upsets the timetable. It creates a gap and organisers here in Japan are not renown for their flexibility and capacity to ad lib. It also sends a subtle negative message to the audience, that they are not worth preparing a 25 minute speech for. It comes off as being disrespectful and flippant.
I was sitting in audience the listening to the proceedings audience and was surprised to hear the speaker wrapping things up. Looking at my watch, I realised we were barely out of the blocks. Another audience member caught my eye, as we both realised this was coming to an abrupt and rather shocking end. He gave me a quizzical look that said “is this speaker serious?”. It certainly didn’t leave the right impression with the audience. They felt cheated and that they had not being respected enough, given how self important they are. This was the right crowd to win over too, so a real opportunity gone begging.
I have often been asked to speak to Japanese groups from 4.00-6.00pm. It is late in the day, when people are already tired from the morning and early afternoon sessions. The length of a two hour speech is taxing for an audience to stay connected with the subject and with the speaker. I wondered why they would want to put the audience through that ordeal? I asked, “Can’t we just make it an hour, tops?”. I was told, “Oh no, Dr. Story, it has to be two hours”. Listening to a foreigner speaking Japanese for such a long period is also tiring because of the extra concentration needed.
After doing a number of these long speeches, I eventually realised that I was the filler, between the end of their own programme and the party. The food and drinks were ready for a 6.00pm start and I needed to keep tap dancing until that time. If I had quit after an hour, the organisers would lose face, because people would be lost with what to do for that single unscheduled hour. If they were Aussies, they would just start the party earlier!
So before you speak, carefully check on how long they want you to occupy this part of the programme. The organisers usually have very little interest in the quality end of the experience. They just need the slot filled and you need to understand that is your role sunshine. Knowing this will help you in your preparation. You can structure the presentation to make it interesting over a two hour period. One way to do that is by employing visuals. I don’t mean detailed, heavy duty graphs and tables of statistics, like a lot of Japanese presenters seem to love. I mean photos with no words on them, which you then proceed to talk about.
Now our big name speaker in my example, actually had some really intriguing photos with him, but he hadn’t thought to put them on slides and show them to everyone. He just waved them in the air effortlessly and ineffectively.
It is not hard to ask the organisers if there is an opportunity to use a screen and a projector. Most venues in Japan have these types of equipment. Why that relatively simple task wasn’t checked on before the speech was a complete mystery to me. He could have really wowed his audience because the content of the photos was really dynamite. Waving the actual photos around from the podium isn’t quite as exciting, as projecting them up on a huge screen and then telling everyone the back story.
The point here is do your homework in Japan before you speak. Check on the logistics, the reasoning behind the schedule, the equipment availability at that venue for what you need. Who will be in my audience, what are they interested in, what is their knowledge of the subject, how can I impress them, will there be consecutive or simultaneous translation going on if you are doing it in English? No one prepares to fail, but we do fail to prepare, don’t we.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Nerves Are Not Needed
Speaking in front of others makes many people tongue tied and nervous. They struggle to get through a simple presentation, internally, in front of their colleagues. A public audience is something they would flee from, screaming and waving their hands in the air. Why is that? We all learn how to talk. The presentation is just a talk, so what is the big deal? Yet, it is a barrier to many people who have to navigate this impediment to move up through their careers. If you are in front of the big bosses and you can’t make a competent presentation, kiss your career aspirations goodbye baby. There is very little chance they are going to put you in charge of others. So, if you like what you are doing today, that will be just fine, because you will stay where you are right now for a long, long time.
If it is just talking, why do we have such tremor at the prospect. Most of us can talk to our friends, family and colleagues without any problem. In a presentation though the stakes are raised. We are on show, we are singled out for attention, scrutiny and investigation. We become very internally focused. We are oblivious to our audience because all of our attention is on ourselves. All of the pressure is on us too and it is coming from within ourselves. Our self-talk is bad. Our self-regard goes negative. We become plagued with self-doubt, memories of failures, shortcomings, inadequacies and derision.
Our playbook is drawing on our failures from the past, not from our potential or even small successes we have had. We go to scale immediately on the negative and obliterate the good bits from our memory. We recall that school play when we forgot our lines and everyone laughed at us. The time at University when our class presentation of our research paper was scoffed at and belittled by some of our classmates. That time in the results meeting, when the big boss berated us for our presentation skill deficit.
We are operating from a sense of scarcity of ability, rather than an abundance of opportunity. We have to switch these ideas around. “Fine buddy boy, but if I could do that, I would have done it already”. That is too true and the reason you haven’t done anything better to date is because you don’t have any worthwhile information on what you can an should be doing. When we don’t know how to do something we tend to shy away from it. We do this to protect our public image and our ego.
So we have placed ourselves in an internal contradiction where our fear drives our behaviour to never end the fear. We need to recognise that cycle and to determine to break it. The brilliant thing today is that we are awash with so much information on how to give presentations. Shelves groan under the weight of worthy tomes on the subject. YouTube is bursting to seams with instructional videoes. Podcasts aplenty provide hints and tips. TED talks are readily available to see what others are doing and at a high level. Once upon a time, you had to be in the room or specially connected to see the best in action, but today you are a few clicks away from free access.
Start by studying. Learn the basics by attending entry level presentation courses. Switch your thinking about how to prepare for talks, by focusing on your rehearsal and not just your materials preparation. Leave you ego at the door and volunteer at every opportunity to present. Repetition is needed and after doing just five presentations, you will feel a lot more comfortable than you did for the first. After twenty, you will be relaxed. After fifty, you will be enjoying it.
When you know how to properly structure your talk, you can relax and just help us navigate through it. You will have the slides to support you, which are visual markers as to what comes next. Don’t try to memorise the content or you will blow yourself up.
I saw this with a speaker visiting from the USA. She had a grand resume and was going quite well, but she made the fatal error of trying to remember what she wanted to say for each slide, rather than just talking us through what was the point of the slide. She lost control of her breathing because of her mounting, self imposed pressure and actually had to stop the presentation. She eventually completed the task, but she was a mess at the end.
Fear of public speaking is often a product of ignorance of what to do, fuelled by wishful thinking that you don’t need to do anything special, like studying the subject. When you get good information and apply it, then the fear fades and with practice comes skill. I avoided speaking for decades because of fear. I finished my first public speech in 1983 in 8 minutes. Unfortunately it was supposed to go for 25 minutes! Today, I have delivered over 500 public speeches and now teach people how to give presentations. The difference came about because I decided to study about how to do it, volunteered to give talks at every chance, got proper training from experts and put myself out there and had a go.
The nerves piece disappeared once I slipped my attention from myself, to my audience.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Let’s Be Clear
Most talks and presentations we hear, we cannot recall. Why is that? We were there presumably because we had an interest. The presenter no doubt made an effort to share something of value with us. They probably spent hours on their presentation slides and were perhaps somewhat anxious about giving the presentation. So a lot of nervous energy was expended in the exercise, but with a zero result. If we can’t remember the content or the speaker, then it is hard to say it was a success, wouldn’t you say?
Part of the problem is the way people present their information in the first place. The slides are too dense and confusing. The delivery is done in a lethargic manner, devoid of passion, with zero body language backing up the key points. Sitting there listening, we catch that disease from the speaker very swiftly and suddenly we don’t have any passion for the exercise either. We hear a monotone voice droning on and on, like the humming white noise from your electrical appliances. The speaker may also be speaking too fast because they are nervous or may just be a serial mumbler, who is hard to catch.
The design of the talk may not flow well, so it is hard to make the mental move from understanding one point to understanding the next. The speaker may decide to improvise and sweep us all off on to a tangent, that has little to do with the main menu. We rarely make it back, because we have now lost interest in what they are saying and we are playing with our phone instead.
A recent presentation had elements of this. The speaker was quite a smart person, having built their business up from zero and is now winning large contracts from big players in Japan. The slides outlining the details of how the software worked were dismal. It was complex and disconnected. It was assaulted by numerous tangents of tangents, totally wrapped up in diversions. The delivery was lifeless and humdrum. There were no crescendos, no light and dark elements – no contrasts. It consisted mainly of a composite of calms and no storms and so didn’t spark as much interest as it should have.
If we want to elevate our good name above the rabble, we had better do a splendid job of being clear when presenting. Our slides should be in the ratio of one slide to one idea. The less on the screen the better. Let’s lead the charge for minimalism on screens. Let’s bring out our inner zen of nothingness. The screen and the slides are competitors with our face. We want people looking at us and glancing at the screen, not the other way around.
We want to use numbers. There are seven elements or five elements or three element of our main thesis, for example, and so we attach numbers to each. This is a simple, tried and true guidepost system to navigate the audience through the content. Don’t make the punters work hard to follow where we are going with this talk.
We should speak with passion, belief, commitment and enthusiasm about our subject. If you can’t do that, then please remain in the audience and don’t get up on a podium and try to talk to crowds. All you are doing is killing your personal brand and bringing no value to humanity. We want your energy, but we want it harnessed – it has to be controlled. We want some words being hit hard and some introduced gently – both are powerful mechanisms for emphasis. We want the energy, but we don’t want chaos, where all the words are jumbled together.
I was coaching an Indian businessman here on public speaking and in his initial speech, he spoke at breakneck speed for three minutes, with nary a pause nor a break and with a very heavy subcontinent accent. In fact, it was one massively long sentence, strung together without compunction or mercy and fully incomprehensible and forgettable. Introducing some concepts like having a clearer structure, slowing down, adding in pauses and highlighting some words over others for effect, had a miraculous impact on his final version. It was night and day.
Don’t mumble. Record yourself in rehearsal and be prepared for a shock. Yes that tinny, reedy, nasal, mumbling voice is really you. The lack of a rehearsal is the big error to catching problems, before you destroy your public reputation. Rehearse. Listen to how you sound before anyone else has to. Rehearse.
Speak to your key points and don’t read us the manuscript please. We all have email by the way, so you can send it to us, rather than read it to us. When you run through it numerous times before you are unleashed on your audience, you discover the right cadence of how to express the ideas best,
One run through though is a joke. You need to be doing this preparation multiple times, so that all the vocal bugs and defects are completely eliminated before the curtain goes up. By the way, regardless of how your voice sounds to you, don’t worry about it. All those born with television announcer voices are on television or radio and the rest of us are out in the real world, shaking it up, as best we can. If what you say is being delivered in a way that we can easily understand and if the content is interesting and valuable, then we will forgive your total lack of a superstar bass DJ voice.
Being clear when speaking is not such a big deal. People worry about it, but don’t do any work on it before having to speak. They then wonder why the whole thing fell in a heap. A few simple measures will make it perfectly clear to the audience. They will hear you and then the quality of the content will either resonate with them or not. Your chance of being remembered will go right up, if you just do a few things before you unleash yourself on your audience.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
How To Rehearse Your Presentation
Every performance is better when practiced beforehand and presenting is no different. We don’t do it for a multitude of “good” reasons, none of which abrogate the need to make the time and put in the effort. We have the time, we just need to allocate it. We are putting ourselves out there when we present, so don’t miss it, there is a lot on the line. We need to ensure we are a triumph rather than a joke. The way to do that is to practice beforehand. How do we do that, what are some best practices to help us?
We cannot start with the slides, which is what most people do when putting their presentation together. Instead, we need to design the whole presentation first. We need to start with the close. Yes, we need to plan how will we finish the talk. What is the one key message we want to get across to our listeners.
Getting the whole thing down to one key point is no easy task, but the mental effort to do so will pay big rewards when it comes to ensuring clarity and getting the talk’s structure correct. When we distill that one point, it becomes the beacon on the hill around which to arrange the preparation of the data and the flow of the talk.
We now design the sections of the talk. What are the key points we will make and what is the evidence we will marshal to sustain the argument in the time allotted to us. These should flow together nicely, like in a good novel. Each part leads seamlessly into the next.
We are also going to be introducing personal stories of our successes and failures and those from highly regarded experts, to flesh out the points we want to make. Stories are easy to understand and remember, so don’t make our audience work hard, give them the information in story form for maximum effect. So each section has some key point, supporting data, told in a story format.
Finally, we design the opening – how can we break through all the competition for the mind space of our audience. How can we grab their complete attention? How to get them away from those addictive mobile devices, hidden under the table? We need to design how we will us our voice at the start in particular. How much volume will we need to gain control of the room?
We should avoid reading the presentation. We are going to be aiming at talking to points on the slides or in bullets format in our text or recalled from memory. This is free form folks, no harness and no safety net, so it needs practice. What may sound great as text, can sound a bit stilted when spoken out loud. This is important, we must “voice” the presentation. We can’t just mentally run it through our mind, as a personal exercise.
Using a mirror, video camera or a coach are good ideas, to get feedback on how we are coming cross both visually and verbally. The coach may be a colleague, family member or a professional. If a colleague or a family member only ask for two pieces of feedback – “what am I doing that is good?” and “what can I do to make it better?”. Untrained coaches are quick to tell you everything that is wrong – in great mind numbing detail. They will kill your confidence early, so don’t allow that to happen, give them some guidance.
Every five minutes we need a change of tempo to keep our audience interested. We need to switch our energy or speed up or down. We need to hit or soften key words. These crescendos and lulls are not left to random chance, this is all preplanned for maximum effect. We need to hear it out aloud to understand how it will sound to our audience.
We can’t be too strong all the time or we will wear down our audience and lose them. Alternatively, if we are too soft, they are lured away by the internet and are soon gone from us.
There is no one there, but we must involve eye contact with all in our imaginary audience. We practice looking to the left, center or right, also close and far. We also need to practice the congruency of our gestures with our words. Match a powerful gesture with a point you want to drive home, to give it strength.
Expect to do a number of rehearsals, not just one. We need to a full rehearsal from start to finish, at least three times. Now if it is a thirty minute talk, the time soon adds up, so we have to plan for that. Separately, we also need to work particularly hard on just the opening and close. The first impression and last impression decide our impact.
Don’t forget to practice the Q&A. Remember, the audience can ask us anything, no matter how rude, off topic, irrelevant or impertinent, so we have to be ready to go. We can go from hero to zero quick smart, if we don’t practice answering difficult questions before we go live.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Pizazz Baby, We Need More Pizazz When Presenting
Pizazz is one of those unusual words, that sounds kind of cool, but is a bit vague. In presenting terms, we are really looking at being more interesting and engaging and doing that in a sparky, non-anticipatory way. Droning on when presenting is a pretty strong norm for many people. They talk at us, not with us. They are lifeless and low energy. This may be fine for having a cup of tea with your friends, but if you want to present, then you have to switch it up.
A workman like, by the numbers, presentation is fundamentally boring. A recent presenter did a painting by numbers job with his effort. The talk had completed the exercise in the allotted time and he had spoken about a number of key points. The delivery was wooden though, the voice tone was flat, the whole thing was a lifeless shambles really. The snapper though is that the speaker represents his organization to the world at large and he did a poor job when up on the podium.
When you are in a high profile role, like being the CEO, then you simply have to perform. Never forget we judge your whole organisation on you. If you are mediocre, we assume everyone is the same. We don’t say, well that guy or gal was the exception. The rest of the crew are all dynamite. Nope, we say they are all duds down there.
So engaging your audience is a requirement. This is easy to say, but not so easy to do. Energy is a key component of this process. Somehow we all know that enthusiasm is contagious, but miraculously manage to forget this, when we start speaking in front of groups. The low energy insult became a trademark of President Trump when disparaging his political opponent Jeb Bush.
It is cutting, because it implies you don’t have what it takes to be a leader. Whether you agree with Trump or not, the point is valid. If the leader is low energy, we somehow doubt they can do the job properly. We don’t get to meet that many CEOs or politicians in person, so we draw our conclusions from seeing them on television, in videos or at public presentations. Remember we are all on show when presenting.
The podium is one area of difficulty, but with the prevalence of YouTube videos and business social media, presenters are starting to really branch out. This was brought back to me not so long ago, when I saw a video on LinkedIn of someone I know and the delivery was fundamentally funereal. The whole atmosphere was dark, bleak, lifeless. This guy is a smart guy and if we read the transcript we would think what he had to say was valuable. The voice however was a monotone, the energy was totally insignificant and the exercise was absolutely dreary, not motivational.
Sadly, the message while actually pretty good, was just destroyed, totally killed by the poor delivery. Now if you are going to put yourself out there, especially in the crowded alleyways of the YouTube video world and broadcast through social media, then you have to step it up. There are so many windows to the world now and everyone can see us. Once upon a time, you could be fairly hopeless and only a few poor souls would know. Not anymore. This is where the pizazz idea comes in.
If you want your message to cut through the white noise of a squillion other presenters, then you need to have an attitude that says, “I want to stand out and be heard”. Casey Neistat did that with video blogging. There were plenty of other well established video bloggers out there, but he brought a movie style approach to his vlogging. He would set the camera up, so that it recorded him entering the room, for example. A simple but very effective idea. All the other vloggers were one dimensional – they were pointing the camera at themselves, as they held it at arms length. He made a small change that set him apart. He brought some movie making style pizazz to the exercise and the rest of us are happy he did that. Now it is much more interesting for us the viewer.
Gary Vaynerchuk did that with his Daily Vee vlog. He combined reality television style presentation, with motivation and information. Nobody had done that before. He created some pizazz and is getting close to a million subscribers for his show. He gets a lot of work speaking, sells his books and gets business for his digital agency off the back of his notoriety. All he did was make a small innovation in a crowded space, so he could stand out and he has been incredibly successful doing that.
This then has to be the mantra. Set yourself apart when presenting. If you want to move into video, then you really need to compete. This is not just you presenting while being recorded. Yes, you can do that, but if you are going to blast yourself around the world via video on social media, then add pizazz to the mix and make it interesting. Be that little bit unexpected, have something that differentiates you from the pack.
You don’t have to be handsome, beautiful, deep bass DJ voiced or tall. You just have to be interesting, engaging and relevant. Use voice modulation, tell stories, speak with, not at your audience and bring your full energy to the task.
Okay, let’s all go back to the drawing board. Let’s stop doing what we have always done and think about how we could add some pizazz to our presentations and start experimenting, to find what works best for each of us.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Own The Space And Work The Room
Getting up in front of people is confronting for a lot of speakers. Beady eyes are boring into you, a sea of serious faces is scary, the lights are painfully bright and the pressure feels intense. You start to doubt your preparation was sufficient for the occasion. You throw up the laptop lid and then try to mount the podium such that it provides a safety barrier between you and the great unwashed. You studiously avoid confronting eye contact, by staring down at your laptop screen or your notes. Or to leaven things up, you read the screen to the audience, presenting a nice view of the top of your head. If you have a partly bald pate, like some medieval monk, then that makes it all the more gripping. It doesn’t have to be so pathetic. In fact, you can “own the space and work the room”.
By properly designing your presentation in the first place, you can release yourself from the laptop. The main screen will be composed of little text and mainly images. These are images designed with the object of conveying the key points in two seconds. This means you are replacing text on a screen, with oral word pictures delivered by you. This is so much more powerful. The slide advancer technology is pretty good these days and this frees you from having to be physically chained to the laptop.
Now you can move to the audience. Depending on the size of the occasion, the approach will be different. Let’s assume a 30 person plus venue. You divide your audience space into six sectors, like a baseball diamond. Left, Middle, Right Field. You then cut it in half, so you have an Inner Field and an Outer Field. If the audience is smaller than 30 people, then you probably have just left, right, front and back to work with.
The point is to “work the room” by engaging with your entire audience. Make around six to eight seconds of eye contact with each individual, in all of those sectors. Do it randomly, unpredictably, to maintain interest. If you do it a predetermined order, the audience will leave you, because they are able to anticipate where your attention is focused. Once they know, they switch off and are easy prey to distractions, like their phone and the internet.
In a larger audience, one individual seated toward the back receives your eye contact but the twenty people sitting around them, all think you are making direct eye contact with them. In this way, you can continuously engage the entire group.
Don’t pace across the stage while talking. You see nervous speakers doing this and it becomes highly annoying, as they keep traipsing across the stage from left to right, left to right, left to right. Don’t do that. Here is Dr. Story’s Iron Rule: “Don’t talk and walk. Move in silence, land on a spot and then speak”.
Certainly move to the extremes of right and left of the stage. Make sure you engage with those seated on the side of the venue. From the center, walk across to the left and use your eye contact to connect with these audience members. Move back to the center and do the same with the center group, then repeat the process for those on the right. Then back to the center. I think you get the idea.
The key is pause speaking, move to a new position and then start speaking from there. Having a pause is a good thing in a speech. This gives you time to take up your new position and it allows the audience to digest what you just got through telling them.
There are also six speaking positions we should be using:
One, is the middle part of the stage, separated equally from the screen and the stage apron.
Two, in this center location, our chin should be held up at a ninety degree angle to the floor. This is the neutral position of having no particular emphasis attached to that location.
Three, if we want to make a macro point then back away from the audience, toward the rear of the stage, where you can be seen most widely.
Four, in this back of the stage location, hold your chin up at a slightly higher angle than ninety degrees.
Five, if you want to make a point of emphasis, then move to the front of the stage apron, as close as you can get to the audience.
Six, in this front of stage location, drop the angle of your chin down slightly to be less than ninety degrees.
By the way, be careful about going to the edge of the stage so you don’t fall off. Don’t laugh. I have almost done this a couple of times in my enthusiasm to get close to my audience, while trying to drive home a particular point. Falling off the stage will make you a memorable speaker, but it is not advisable.
If the stage area is smaller and the screen occupies a good portion of the real estate, then don’t walk in front of the screen, if there is a projector involved. In very short order, you become the screen and that is totally distracting for an audience. Now you would think this was such an obvious point. However, we have all seen speakers do it. They are not aware of the projector in front of them and they have lost the attention of their audience.
In this case, stand on the audience left side of the projector. We read from left to right, so we want people to look at our face first and then look at the screen. I would say that 80% of the time the room is set up for the speaker to stand on the opposite, the audience right side, so it is best to let the organizers know in advance where you want to stand.
We can still use our middle, back and front distances on the audience left side of the stage but we can’t use the audience right. That is unless you hit the “B” key on the laptop and black out the screen. In this case, you won’t be in the way of the light beam from the projector and you can move around freely. By the way, to bring the screen back up again, just press “W”.
Take control of your speaking environment. Do not rely on clueless people to set it up for you. Get it properly organized beforehand. The speaking spot is a physical environment. We don’t want to just turn up there like a spectator, we want to dominate it. Make sure you “own the space and work the room”. If you do, your audience will buy your message and they will remember you as a powerful and confident presenter – someone they would like to hear from again in the future. Remember, this is how you build your personal brand.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Hard and Soft When Presenting
It is so easy to become “Johnny One Note” when presenting. We get locked into a modality of voice and body language power. We just keep hammering away with that mode throughout the whole talk. That might be fine for us, but for our audience it is killing them. If we are all massive power and bravado, after about five minutes, people want a break. If your “aura” is too strong they worry about radiation. If on the other hand, you are a mouse at the microphone, then they feel all their energy being drained from their body, as they shrink into the chair.
If we have a lot of energy, are excited about our topic and eager to share the goodies with our audience, then we can easily find ourselves to talking to our audience, rather than talking with them. The best presentations feel tremendously personal. The speaker has hit on a theme or topic that really resonates with us. The way they deliver it, feels like they are speaking only to us in the room. When we are at full power, it can feel like those cartoons where the audience member’s hair is being blow waved back off their head from the full force of the assault. Not a good idea. They quickly tire and lose interest in our message.
If we are very quietly spoken, modest, perhaps shy and by some supreme misfortune, find ourselves in front of an audience, we struggle to get through the content. We make no attempt to engage with the audience. We are scared of them and want this over as quickly as possible. Our voice whimpers low confidence, we deny our vocal chords the necessary air to project our voice and our body language is in shut down mode. The audience doesn’t feel we are sold on what we are saying and rapidly conclude they are not sold either.
It is easy to get locked into one mode and difficult to break out of it, to inject some vocal and body language variety. We need that variety to keep our audience engaged and also to cover all the bases with the variety of people sitting in front of us. Some will be rambunctious and love the loud. Others will be timid and prefer the low threat environment of the softly spoken presenter. Being in one mode only means we lose a part of our audience. We don’t want to lose anyone when we are speaking.
I found this myself in Kobe. I was speaking in English to a group of departing American University exchange students. I gave a General Patton style power play of motivation about how they should take all the things they had learned in Japan, go back home and really shoot the lights out.
Man, I was powerful, energized, committed, on a complete roll. I was also one single stop on the volume control - loud. It was a twenty minute speech and it was full on, from start to finish. There was no dialing the power up and down. I was pretty happy with it. I thought I had been so wonderfully motivating, giving these young people the full benefit of my many years in Japan and my broad and deep perspectives on life and success. A true tour de force, or so I imagined.
Immediately after me was a Korean Professor, who was teaching at that host University. When he spoke, it was clear, but a little bit soft. I found I had to lean in to hear him and had to concentrate on what he was saying. I had to work a bit to get the message. Now the interesting thing was the complete contrast to the full force gale these students had been subjected to by me. Here we all were, really concentrating on what the good Prof was saying.
I was sitting there thinking to myself, “ah, so soft can also work when presenting”. As I got more experience and knowledge, it became clear that our talks need to mix it up. Now that sounds easy to say, but when you are confident in one mode, it is not so easy to just switch gears and go to the opposite mode.
The secret is in the planning and the rehearsal. Here we hit two major stumbling blocks. Most people do zero planning about the delivery component. They spend all their time putting together the power point visuals. They score another big zero too when it comes to rehearsing. They practice their speech live, for the first time, on their audience. Uh oh!
When we are planning, we need to look for which parts of the speech we are going to accentuate with power – including voice, facial expression and body language. We also look at where we are going to drop the energy and voice, to draw our audience into us.
The telling of stories in speeches is very powerful. They lend themselves well to harmonizing the ups and downs of the delivery, with the flow of the story. Break the speech into 4-5 minute blocks and see where the tempo needs raising or lowering. Make sure you practice to make the switch, otherwise you will find yourself on one power control point throughout.
The result is we can keep the attention of everyone in the audience and get our message across to all.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations.
Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Boris Johnson’s Lessons On Public Speaking
As the Foreign Secretary for Britain, Boris Johnson gets a lot of practice giving speeches and fielding tough questions. There is the temptation to say, “Well of course he is a good public speaker, he is a politician after all, isn’t he”. That is true, except that very few politicians are any good at public speaking and amongst those who are good, he is certainly up there with the best. Being an Aussie, I have no well informed views on Boris as a politician. I use him as an example, because I want to draw out some lessons for all of us, on how to become better public speakers. If you do or don’t like him as a politician, then fine, but let’s limit our discussion to his speaking abilities.
At the British Chamber event he spoke at, he gave a short address and then took previously submitted questions from the audience. We talk about some people being larger than life and that is the feeling we get when we see him in action. He radiates energy and confidence. He grew up in a wealthy family, had an excellent education at Eton and Oxford and then worked as a high profile journalist. We may have none of these things in common with him, but we can take heed of the power of projecting energy and confidence.
Even if we are not particularly confident, we can raise our energy levels and this will make us appear more confident to the audience. For various emotional reasons, some speakers wish to share the information with us that they are not feeling confident, that they are poor at public speaking and that they are scared of the occasion. They do this in the belief that this will elicit a certain amount of sympathy and understanding from the audience and we will go easy on them.
This is a false dawn of hope, because that is not what the audience is thinking at all. The audience is already totally distracted by the time we get up to speak and what they are expecting is to be entertained and informed. They see our role as to provide that. If we kick things off with this confessional approach, we will have large swaths of the crowd quickly whipping out their hand held device and escaping to the internet.
Boris has enough confidence to derive humour at his own expense. He is comfortable to talk about his inadequacies, because he knows people have trouble identifying with Mr. or Ms. Perfect. We can’t feel close to people like that, because they are so alien from our experience. He also knows that his ability to connect with the audience will balance those self-confessed failings out. This is different from telling us you are hopeless as a speaker.
What he is doing is finding ways to connect with the audience and not come across as a smarty pants type we won’t like. With his intellect and elite education, he could quite easily display his mental acuity, but that won’t connect him with his audience. He has a good capacity to seem like the “common man”, albeit one educated at the best academic institutions the UK can provide. Now we might be an expert or an authority in our own field and it is quite easy to slip into the mode of Professor teaching the great unwashed. Not taking yourself too seriously requires confidence but it worth adding in some examples of this here and there. Don’t overdo it though, because it can come across as totally manufactured.
He has a style of speech which is full of connectors. He incites us to feel part of his crowd. He had a very good understanding of who was in his audience that day and encouraged us to feel he was making some remarks to family. Know your audience before you speak is a golden rule in presenting. Research who will be in the room, so you know how best to connect with them. This inclusive style of speaking is very effective. It is the feeling of being let in on a secret, of being brought into the fold, of being one of the in-crowd, we are all in this together, etc.
He does this with words, but also physically. He leans in, he makes constant eye contact with his audience, he projects his energy toward us. He also cleverly relieves the tension or any complexity, by playing around with that unruly mop of blond hair sitting above his cranium. We may lack the coif, but we can lean in, we can look individuals in the eye for around six seconds and encourage each person to feel we are speaking directly with them alone.
He is very good at making us all feel that, despite any differences, we are all on the same side. He does this by looking for points with which it is easy for us to agree. This is something we should be planning for our talks. How can we phrase ideas in such a way that it is very easy for the audience to support that construct. This is not dumb luck or random chance. This is a result of careful planning at the speech design stage. We look for common outcomes, which we will all feel are beneficial and we relate what we are saying to provide that context. Design “Buy In” and your chances of getting connectivity go up dramatically. Most speakers spare not a second for this in the planning and wonder why they can’t connect with their audience.
At the very end, he restated his key points, so that the last thing we remembered was what he wanted us to recall. We should always make it our habit to do the same with our audiences. Also, when he finished, he finished. He didn’t dilute the key messages by trying adding anything or take us off on a tangent. He said what he wanted to say and left the podium. We should do the same. Resist the urge to add too much. It only detracts from the core content we want to get across.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Knowledge + Skill + Attitude
Highly knowledgeable people are often at a big disadvantage in business. They have expertise and experience. Their opinion is sought after, they have high personal levels of credibility. They often went to prestigious schools, elite universities, completing challenging degrees. They have paid their dues and have worked they way up the greasy pole to the upper reaches. Yet, they have feet of clay when it comes to representing their section, division, department, company or industry. They are a dud when presenting.
There is a skill to presenting. We talk about “born salesmen”, “born leaders”, “born presenters”. What we are doing is acknowledging that the roots of their skills have been long in the making. They showed some capability at a young age around being confident when talking in front of others, or persuading others to follow their lead or selling their suggestions successfully to their peer group.
Success breeds success and so as they grew up, these attributes became more and more refined and polished. By the time we meet them they seem the complete package. The idea that you had to be born with these skills becomes entrenched in the popular mind. Usually, it is an excuse for the observer’s own shortcomings. They haven’t done the work, so they misname the condition as wrong genes rather than wrong attitude.
The education of the highly specialized person means many years of diving deep into the nitty gritty of their area of expertise. This is done at the expense of developing other skills. The reason we have an MBA or Master Degree in Business Administration is because engineers were so hopeless at everything other than engineering. At school, they were avoiding English classes in favour of science and mathematics. They never bothered with fluffy soft subjects like debating or philosophy or history or the social sciences. They were hard science types. Then they got promoted.
Now they were having to do tasks way outside the engineering realm for which they were woefully undereducated, so they had to be sent back to university for some remedial education. This became the MBA and as the professional consulting firms started hiring them, the degree became a brand and a road to higher pay and positions in companies. Now with so many mediocre folk running around with MBAs, the playing field has been leveled again and people are being judged on their ability and not the degree brand.
So here we have high knowledge/low skill/low attitude constructs for some leaders who find they need to present. The low attitude, in this example, doesn’t refer to their commitment, dedication, engagement or enthusiasm for their work. It refers to their dismissal of the importance of presenting, as part of the total professional’s toolbox. They see it as froth on beer, fluff, smoke and mirrors, style with no substance.
It is hard to master presenting when this is your starting point. So, they bludgeon their audiences with boring, heavy, data laden talks, devoid of stories, delivered with a stern face and a serious air. These days, within seconds, they have lost their audience. First impressions are the basis of our decision to continue to listen to the speaker or to escape to the internet, secured in our hand, hidden under the desk. We know that audience distraction is at a level never been experienced before by human kind. We had better have a killer opening to the talk, because we have between 3 and 30 seconds to capture the attention of our audience. We can deliver facts without emotion or we can deliver them with passion and belief.
“Knowledge is all I need” speakers with this mantra don’t get it. It is not enough anymore. We need to be able to communicate with people across all levels of understanding of the subject, with various interests and biases. We need to be memorable, to be building our personal and professional brands. People won’t recall all the detail of the talk but they will walk away with either a positive, negative or non residual impression of our talk. Conviction and confidence sell our messages, build credibility for our argument and convince others of our point of view.
In a world awash with information, alternative facts and fake news, being remembered as trustworthy, knowledgeable and reliable is more important than in the past. The trustworthy and reliable bits come from our ability to marshal our knowledge and deliver it in such a way that the audience is attracted to our key messages and to us as speakers. These soft skills are required more than ever. It is time to switch attitudes, add skills and become the complete package as a presenter. This means being knowledgeable, skillful in delivery and having the right attitude toward wanting to win the audience over.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
The Power Of Passion When Speaking
Formulistic presentations tick the boxes, but don’t ignite much enthusiasm in the audience. Yes, the key points were covered, the time was consumed, people heard the presentation about the topic previously promulgated but so what? When we attend a mediocre or even bad presentation, we are reminded that a great opportunity has gone begging. When we stand in front of an audience, we are representing our personal brand and our firm’s brand. People will evaluate our whole company on how we perform. So why not perform well and really build fans for our business and ourselves?
The things that go missing are often passion and commitment about the topic. Additionally, it may be an already low energy, flat delivery is being further hindered by a poor structure. We enter a room full of pre-occupied people, with microscopically short attention spans, basically entirely distracted before we even start. We need to grab their attention away from whatever it was they were doing before we get up to the podium.
Our opening needs to be well planned and excellent. It must be a battering ram to break through the walls of disinterest, preoccupation and skepticism. It must have a powerful hook to keep everyone’s attention. This is how we in the audience are trained. The opening stanzas of newspaper and magazine articles, books, talk shows, the nightly news programming, television dramas, movies, etc., are all carefully designed to grab and keep our attention. This is what we speakers are competing with – a professional class of well paid, attention monopolizing experts.
So our opening has to instantly grab attention and then we need to lead the flock through the wilderness of our topic, so that they can keep up and understand where we are going. If we have some key points, then let’s number them because we can follow number sequences more easily – just don’t go crazy and make it too many numbers! The 33 key points of any topic delivered in a thirty minute speech are a nightmare the audience doesn’t need.
Wrapping it up is a critical component, because this is the final impression for the speaker with the audience. Often, the final words of the talk just fade out as the voice drops away, instead of rising to a crescendo of a powerful hypnotic, embracing call to action to metaphorically storm the barricades.
From that fade out, the ineffective speaker just bumbles their way into Q&A. They don’t have any strategy to control the flow of Q&A and so they allow the final question to determine the final impression of the talk with the audience. Don’t do that! We need two closes – one for the end of our speech and one for the end of Q&A.
Passion for the topic or for the audience is a requirement. This is not an optional extra, a useful add on we can include or not at will. If we don’t feel something for our topic or our audience then we come across as flat. The audience leaves the venue. The speaker, topic and organisation are immediately forgotten. What was the point? The vague impression left over was that the time wasn’t well maximised, that no great value was imparted and that if that speaker is up again in the future, it is not anything special to look forward to or greatly anticipate.
You may not have great technique, structure, openings or control of Q&A, but at a minimum, you should communicate your passion. You really want to share this vital information with others. You really want to help those in the audience who have given up their precious time to hear you out. Enthusiasm is contagious and we will forgive a lot of presentation faults, if we feel your energy for the topic. Just talk to the key points, rather than read it all out from your perfectly prepared notes.
Yes, your written speech is grammatically perfect, vocabulary rich, but it is often boring because of the flat way in which it is delivered. The reading cadence doesn’t suit the live speaking situation. Have you ever noticed that a flat, boring speech can be followed by a very engaging Q&A session by the speaker?
This is because they are now freed from their self-imposed limitations of the speech draft. They start telling us stories of people to illustrate their points. They pepper us with useful information and data that gives us insights. We see some passion in what they are telling us. We all need to be like this in the main body of the speaking time, not just the Q&A.
Be passionate, enthusiastic, well organised, well structured when you speak. If you do, then your audience will recall both you and your firm with positive regard and credibility as professionals. Now, isn’t that what we all want in business?
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Clueless Smart People
Japan is an interesting place. So many things here are ultra modern, high tech, totally nuanced and sophisticated. You take it for granted that your refrigerator door opens from either side and is deathly quiet, that your vacuum cleaner is very light weight and efficient, that your toilet has more control options than most aircraft. So when you hit something out of character you really notice the difference. Presenting skills is the outlier.
We were brought in to consult for and train a very large company’s CEO for a key speech he will be making. We looked at the last year’s speech by the previous CEO. All attempts to humanise the speech had been deleted by that President and it was boiled down to boiled cabbage. An amorphous lump with no life, passion, energy or interest. The explanation was that the audience was made of Presidents of related companies and boiled cabbage was all they could take. Anything else might be considered too radical. In the banking world, it is acceptable to fail, as long as you fail conventionally. Presenting in Japan would seem to be the same case.
When it comes to communication and persuasion when presenting, this is a big blocker to progress in Japan,. The level is so low here, that the audience has been trained to expect boiled cabbage and if they don’t get it, they are unhappy. This sucks even smart people into the vortex of underperformance and even stupidity in some cases.
Watching a very, very innovative, well educated scientist and entrepreneur destroy his presentation really brought home to me the professional gap around presenting in Japan. He is obviously very smart, has become a legend in Japan for innovation and is rightly lauded for the pioneering work he is doing.
His content was very, very good but the delivery was very, very bad. The full message was lost because of the way he presented it. He could have been so much more effective by doing one ridiculously simple thing. Presenters in Japan - don’t put everything on the one slide, in multi-colours, creating a screaming screen nightmare.
The slide he had up was a massive jumble of ideas that stole from the key point he wanted to get across. Slides are free. We can have as many as we want these days, so why try to cram all on to one screen? Because it is all up there at once, he had to use differentiating colours to try and help us navigate through the psychedelic fog. You might have thought this wasn’t a bad idea and maybe you should do that yourself at the next opportunity? In fact, it makes things a lot worse because the audience now has too much visually to absorb on screen. It is all competing and canabalising against itself.
He is a very smart guy, so why doesn’t he get such a simple thing right. The issue is that awareness in Japan of how it should be done is so low. There are so few role models here, so everyone winds up copying all the dud examples of presenting duds. This becomes the stock standard approach and everyone fails, but fails conventionally, so no problem. Well perhaps no problem, as long as you only present in Japan and only to Japanese people.
We can all become too screen reliant in a lot of cases. Do we really need to visually support what we are saying with slides? Sometimes, one slide is enough. I saw the Starbuck’s head Howard Schultz give a speech in Japan, using one slide with only their logo on it. The talk was very effective, because we had to concentrate on the words. In other cases when the content is complex, then properly ordered and prepared slides help to sort and clarify the information we are receiving.
If we decide to use slides, then the platinum rule is one idea per slide. That is pretty simple isn’t it. It doesn’t mean we can’t use many slides though. If we are clicking through slides every few seconds, we can actually whip through large numbers of slides in a 30 minute speech. There is no legitimate link between the number of slides and the length of the talk. It very much revolves around your objective.
A different slide every couple of seconds may be appropriate, if the idea is we want to reinforce images of the company or the business or tell a story visually. A very limited number of slides may be better, if we want to go very deep into the subject matter. By restricting the number, we force the audience to concentrate on the limited ideas we want to register with them.
When we have one idea per slide, we can dispense with the “coat of many colours” approach. Sometimes a single image on screen, which we use as a backdrop to what we are going to say, works well. It might have the image and a single word and we elaborate on that word and image. I saw a presentation recently where that was the method used. It was one of the highest quality presentations I have seen in a long time. The content was complex, the ideas were mind numbingly large, but the delivery was excellent. The simple image and single word meant that we very quickly understanding the visual point and could open our minds up the ideas in the complex message.
Smart people in Japan, stop doing unnecessary, clueless things with your presentations please.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Lawyers Need To Be Good Presenters, But Don’t Know It
Lawyers are smart people, but sometimes do self-defeating things. They are discovering that unlike the “good old days”, there are many service alternatives today facing prospective clients. Business development is a common term in most industries, but it has a certain unpleasant cache in the legal fraternity. They are only slowly coming to grips with this is new reality. They know they have to work harder to get and keep clients, but somehow this irks their sense of self-importance. Being very good in the law should be enough, they think. “We are experts and that is all we need to do, as far as attracting clients goes”. Wrong.
In any competitive environment standing out amongst a crowded field of competitors is always a challenge. How can you differentiate yourself amongst rivals, especially when there are so many restrictions on how you can promote your legal services? Referrals are the lifeblood of lawyers. This however is a tremendously passive and time consuming approach, more based around luck than good planning. A satisfied client will tell others, but only if they are asked. They are unlikely to go around pro-actively promoting a law firm, even if they were deliriously happy with the service. No, they only react when one of their contacts asks for advice.
Sitting round waiting for the phone to ring or for someone to wander by, doesn’t pay the bills. The other method is to publish and display brainpower and expertise. Are potential clients going to read it or even know it has been published? Again, a bit of a hit and miss approach. Giving seminars is another method of advertising expertise, which sits comfortably within the rules of promotion. Sadly, a tremendous wasted opportunity in most cases.
I previously published an article on LinkedIn about how “Lawyers can’t sell, but need to”. This is another aspect of the same issue. A seminar is a fantastic opportunity to sell the expertise of the firm and the lawyers, but it is not being maximized because lawyers misunderstand what they are doing.
They believe they are there to provide high quality information to the prospective clients. Therefore they believe the quality of the information is the key and that is where their focus lies. In the rest of the real world, this is known as a data dump. Lawyers haven’t realised we don’t buy the data. We buy you.
Having awesome insights, valid experiences, deep knowledge are not enough if the way the information is imparted is substandard. Being an expert in your field is one part and being an appreciated expert is the more important part. Clients will never have the level of in depth knowledge of their legal experts but they can discriminate between who they can understand and relate to and those they can’t. Nerdy lawyers may be sexy within the halls of the profession but not so much with clients.
Clients want people they can understand, who they can communicate with and who they feel they can trust. Here is how the clients sub consciously think about it: “A lawyer on my wave length gets the business over the lawyer who isn’t”. Having great expertise and communicating that expertise are both important skill sets. Lawyers usually only have the former. Smart lawyers who realise getting the best skills to learn how to impart the knowledge, will win the business over those who don’t get it.
The mindset has to shift from “I know a lot” to “I know and can explain complex issues really clearly”. This takes training in how to present to clients, be they gathered in small meetings or at large seminars. It is a skill set that the traditional professions, like law, have been slow to work out is needed.
Lawyers, yes, you do need excellent presentation skills. You may not think so yet, but your clients will vote with their feet and beat a path to your more skilled competitor’s door. The lesson is simple - we buy you. So get properly trained and stop losing business to others. Especially, when there is absolutely no need to have that happen.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, THE Sales Japan Series and THE Presentations Japan Series, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Well Japan, I’m Sorry
Well educated from two top ranked Universities. Undergraduate in Japan and an MBA from the USA. He had a very capable command of English and our presenter did a very good job of conveying the business structure, strategy and results of his publicly listed enterprise. Yet, that presentation could have been so much better with attention to a few simple basics. This difference in polish is both cultural and attitudinal.
Beginning your talk in Japan with a series of apologies is standard practice. First apologise for speaking while standing, because you are towering above your audience implying superiority. Next, tell us how nervous you are about speaking to such a distinguished audience. Don't forget to mention you had no time to prepare the talk properly because you have been so busy. If you are sick, it is always good to get that in there too. If you are speaking in English, then an apology for your poor English is mandatory. At the end, make sure you apologise for giving such a poor presentation.
Why do Japanese speakers go through all of this apologizing? Japanese humility demands a public display of rectitude. Appearing too confident in front of others is not appreciated. Being seen to be a bit of a smarty pants never goes down well. Especially when most Japanese public speakers are untrained, dreadful, boring and killing us with their monotone delivery, it is always good to fit in, rather than stand out.
Public speaking has only a relatively recent history in Japan dating back to early Meiji when Fukuzawa Yukichi established the practice of the public speech. Daimyo or Provincial Lords, were not giving stentorian addresses to the struggling masses or the latter’s samurai betters. Public notice boards were erected to inform everyone of what they needed to know. Western civilization on the other hand has been talking up a storm since ancient times and has embraced the idea as a mark of skill and intelligence. Japan has still not fully embraced the power of the spoken word and so it is not as valued here as in the West. Lack of value translates into lack of attention to being excellent as a public speaker. Especially so, when everyone around you is equally hopeless, so why bother?
So what should Japanese speakers do when they are addressing an audience in English made up of foreigners? What do we foreigners do when we are speaking to a Japanese audience in either Japanese or English?
Most talks are not recalled in much detail. What we do remember though is the speaker. We come away with either a positive or negative impression. Linguistic purity is not required in either case. Foreigners are used to non-native speakers giving presentations with accents, grammatical mistakes and unusual or exotic vocabulary choices.
It seems that there are still some Japanese who are basically convinced, that non-Japanese can't speak Japanese, so any attempt to do so is greeted with approval, as long as it isn't too perfect. Foreigners speaking absolutely fluent Japanese worries some older Japanese people who seem to think their protective language barrier has been breeched and maybe this foreigner knows a bit too much. Better be careful of this foreigner. A certain degree of ignorance is somehow more comfortable, although the younger generation are not so much confronted by the concept of fluent foreigners. They have grown up watching them on television, working as commentators or variety show performers.
For Japanese speakers, when it is your turn to speak to a foreign audience, find out who is in your audience. The chances are if it is a business audience, then you are speaking to a good proportion of Japan fans, boosters and supporters. Many will be fluent Japanese speakers or possibly speak one or more additional languages, so they understand all the intricacies of presenting in a foreign argot.
They will also have been weaned on a diet of presentations throughout their education and thereafter will have an admiration for good speakers. For this audience, then follow western tradition and ditch all the cultural paraphernalia around apologies at the start. Instead open with a blockbuster that grabs everyone's attention and cuts through all the competition for the attention of your audience. Even the most riveting speaker today cannot stay the hands of some in the audience as they surreptitiously sneak a peak at their hand held device, while the presentation is underway. In fact, we are becoming bolder and bolder. We are even doing it in full view of the speaker, while they are mid peroration.
Rehearse the presentation and show command of the material. If there is a slide advancer involved, practice with it before the start, so you can show mastery over the technology. Have some rhetorical questions at hand to maintain the attention of your listeners. The audience should not know initially if they are going to be required to actually answer this question or not, in order to keep them locked into the details of the speech.
Have a proper close designed, in fact, have two ready to go. One for before we get into Q&A and one for after questions. Don't just let the speech fade out, as our speaker did, by saying "well time is up and I will finish here". No, we need to leave our audience with a call to action to get them supporting whatever it is we are promulgating. The final close is to take back control of the speech, because questions from the audience are random and often can be completely unrelated to what it is we have been talking about. We need to restate our main message, so that this is what is ringing in the ears of our audience, as they file from the room at the end.
For foreigners, don't copy the Japanese model because you are not Japanese, never will be considered Japanese no matter how long you live here and are not expected to be Japanese. Give the most professional presentation you can and be another speaker who the Japanese look at and wonder why they don't have those sorts of presentation skills. It doesn't matter which language your are speaking in, always make it the most powerful piece of communication you can muster. You represent your personal brand and the brand of your organisation whenever you speak publically, so how you handle yourself is important. Also, let’s help create role models of excellence to better internationalise Japan and help it to do a better job of selling itself to the wider world. They need the help, because based on Japan’s current presentation skills level, there is still a long way to go.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, THE Sales Japan Series and THE Presentations Japan Series, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Show Me, Don’t Tell Me
Japan is an interesting place where there is a lot of respect for people’s job titles and position in the company. Sometimes though, you are left wondering is this person really one of the elite or is this the best the elite can produce? American friends tell me Missouri is famous for it’s “show me, don’t tell me” mantra. When you can’t back up who you say you are with the goods, credibility declines rapidly.
This seemed like such a case. Seriously sad really. Our speaker had some excellent points to convey but due to silly basic errors, killed his organisation’s messages. I believe there is no excuse for this anymore. Today there is so much information available, so many role models, so much video instruction, so much access to insight, so much training, you really have to wonder how some organisations can do such a poor job.
The impressive thing was our speaker was delivering the talk in English, when that was not his native language. Actually, the level of English fluency was impressive. The speed was good, the pronunciation was fine, the speaking voice was clear. He came with a grand resume, part of the elite of the land, a well educated, senior guy. This was game, set and match to be a triumph of positive messaging and salesmanship. It was a fizzer.
I approached him after it was all over. Being the eternal Aussie optimist from the land of vast horizons, blue skies and wonderful sunshine, I thought our speaker would benefit from a bit of friendly, positive feedback on how he could help his organisation to do better. He wasn’t buying that and asked me for one example. Clearly he believed his talk went down a treat with the crowd, a group by the way, full of long term Japanophiles and boosters for things Japanese. He was in fact preaching to the choir, in audience terms, but even then his messaging went astray.
I asked for the first slide to be brought back up. A confusing coat of many, many colours, seriously dense with data, totally impervious to easy understanding – a florid mess in other words. They were all like this. Data was simply killing the key messages. When I suggested the slides were perhaps attempting to put too much on the screen at the one time, he said I was looking at the cleaned up version. He had taken the organisation’s standard slide deck and pared it back. “Pared it back?”, I thought incredulously. Well it was still ridiculous.
The other issue was the delivery. Our speaker chose to stand in front of the monitor and read to us what was on the screen, while having his back to us for most of the presentation. Fortunately, he was handsome, urbane, charming, international and articulate. He had all the natural advantages to carry the room to his way of thinking. Unfortunately, he failed completely.
What could our erstwhile hero have done? He made the slide deck the centerpiece of the presentation, instead of making his messages the key. We should all carefully cull our ideas and distill the most powerful and important. We should present only one idea per slide, restrict the colour palette to two colours for contrast and try to keep it zen-like simple. If our audience cannot grasp the key point of any slide in two seconds, then it needs more paring back.
Graphs are great visual prompts and the temptation is to use them as unassailable evidence. This usually means trying to pack the graph slide with as much information as possible, showing long periods of comparison and multiple data points for edification. Instead think of them like screen wallpaper. They form a visual background. We can then go to another slide showing a turning point in isolation or we can have a pop up, with a key number, emphasised in very large font. In this way, we can cut through all the clutter and draw out the critical proof we want our audience to buy. Trying to pack it all on one screen is a formula for persuasion suicide.
We need to learn some very basic logistics about presenting. Despite how the organisers have set up the space, move things around if possible to give yourself the best shot to present as a professional. Try to stand on the audience left of the screen. We read from left to right, so we want them to look at our face first and then read the screen. We want to face our audience and if anyone drops the lights so your screen is easier to see, stop everything and ask for the lights to be brought back up. We need the lights on in order that we can see our audience’s faces. We can then gauge if they are with us or resisting our messages. They can see us and we can use our gestures, facial expressions and body language to back up the words we are saying.
Changing the slides and the delivery would have made the speaker’s messages clearer and more attractive. None of the things I have suggested to him are complex or difficult. Why then are we still assailed with unprofessional presentations from smart people? He remained resistant, he is part of the elite after all, but he didn’t get it. So I saw him riding off into the sunset on his quixotic quest to convert others to his organisation’s point of view. Good luck with that one buddy!
People will judge us on what they see. They will note our resume, but they will make up their minds on what we present and the way we present it. Missouri’s rule of “show me, don’t tell me” is a good one to keep in mind when preparing to stand up in front of others and pontificate.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Designing Our Presentation Part Two
Questions are very powerful. These should be asked rhetorically, in a way that the audience is not actually sure if it is a rhetorical question or something they actually have to answer. This creates a certain amount of tension that drives audience attention to what the speaker is saying.
They are curious to find out what you meant.
Quoting some relevant expert on the subject is also good because it references the topic and gives the speaker additional authority to their message.
Statistics are powerful because they are hard evidence and tell the audience this is going to be a fact based presentation and not just opinion.
Something shocking is a good way to grab attention, so make a provocative statement and then explain what you mean.
We can always flag our conclusion at the start and then spend the rest of the time justifying our interpretation.
This is a standard ploy and for that reason we should use it sparingly. Audiences are already distracted and anything that smacks of predictability, sees them drifting away from us and straying into extraneous, unrelated thoughts, completely off-topic.
The title of out talk is usually selected before we get down to the nitty gritty of the speech design. We may have been requested to speak on a certain subject, so our ability to use our title to intrigue, may be contained. It is not such a problem though because most people will have forgotten the exact title of our talk. Unless there is a slide with the title listed, they will have trouble recalling it word for word.
The opening, therefore is the opportunity to break through all the audience noise - all their screaming monkeys running around inside their brains. This should be designed with great precision and delivered the same way. Don't digress, or comment on something that has happened in the lead up, get straight into the planned opening and grab the audience’s attention.
Before the start of the event get there early and mix with some of the participants. Get them talking about the topic. This is a good way to connect with the audience by referencing what a couple of them said in the moments before the speech started. The person referenced feels very special for the recognition and the imaginary boundary between the speaker and the audience disappears, as the speaker becomes one with the group.
Only at this point should we start playing around with the slides to support the presentation. Once you have designed it this way, the need for a lot of text on the screen disappears. We know what we need to say and so we can start introducing pictures and diagrams as well as text. Even the text can be just one word, because we are able to talk to the key points covered by that word. This is very powerful, because it keeps your eyes one the audience and off your text. It also forces them to look at you, because there is no competition for audience attention, from what is up on the screen.
When we are designing the talk there will be key words that lend a lot of weight to our argument and these may be key words we want to emphasise on the screen. We can do this through a photo or a video or some image.
Everyone is used to seeing lots of text on the screen and when you present in a different way you remain memorable. The audience will not remember the details of your speech, but they will remember their impression of the speaker.
Japan may be the land of zen, but there is very little zen influence going on when it comes to slides. Baroque with its ornate detail is more the flavor here with many competing colors and a screens packed with information. These are spread across an astonishing number of different fonts and font sizes.
Japan has a love for detail, but we don't have to put it all up on the screen. Japan also has a love of the written word and what is written down, carries a lot more weight that in Western countries. The point here is that Japan is still some way behind the rest of the world in this aspect of clear communication.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Designing Our Presentation Part One
Designing our presentation is a critical stage. We have identified our target audience for our key messages. We have selected the title to really engage our audience. We know the purpose of the exercise - inform, persuade, entertain, motivate to action.
Designing the conclusion is always a good place to start. The conclusion is really the summary of the key message we want to get across. The actual content delivery of the concluding message may vary from what we design at the beginning but it is still a very good discipline to force us to focus on the one central thing we want our audience to take away from our speech.
Having prioritized all of the various things we could say down to the one most important thing, we can now work backward and think about how we get our audience to agree with our conclusion.
Too many points and our audience will have trouble following the thread. of our argument. Too few points and the argument may not seem convincing for lack of depth and evidence.
We may group similar ideas under the one umbrella idea and may roll these out together. We have the key points selected that we want to raise and now we have to construct the argument to support the ideas. This would include some evidence based around statistics, data, expert opinion, authority references.
Usually three key points is easy for an audience to follow, but if the subject matter is complex or if you have been given a longer time to speak, then five may be needed. There are a number of structures for how you present the individual ideas. It could be a result/problem/ solution structure or you may switch the problem to the start and then outline the solution and the consequent result. The key is that the structure flows logically to make it as easy as possible to follow.
Having derived the key points we are going to make, we go back and design two closes. One is for the very end of the speech. This is to tie the whole presentation together. We might review what we said or we might focus on a particular key point.
Having designed that close, we now design a different one to follow the Q & A session. We need this second close, so that we can keep the whole proceedings on track. We have no control over what people will raise at the end, by way of questions and so it often happens that an audience member will take the discussion off topic. If we just allow the event to finish at that point, we have lost control of the messaging. We need to wrap it up in a way such that the audience have our key point ringing in their ears, as they leave the venue.
Finally we design the opening. This is a tricky one because it is wrapped tightly together with our first impression with the audience. If we try a joke that is weak and falls flat, our initial impression is negative. If we start rambling, we lose the audience's attention. If we commence with something very boring, we are going to have trouble breaking through the noise that is humming away between the ears of our audience. We need to break into their attention and capture them for the receipt of our key message.
We should also be very well choreographed with how we get going. Do the microphone check before the audience arrives. Have the slides ready to go. If there is a change over between your presentation and someone preceding you, then don’t start anything until the logistics are completed. The start of the talk begins at the start and not with any discussion about what you are doing with your laptop to get it ready. Make the first sentence powerful and don’t let anything else get in the way.
In Part Two of Designing Our Presentation, we will look at great ways to open the talk and some key elements of slide design.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Are You Any Good – It Is 10 Minutes In?
We have worked hard to get our opening right. We know that first impressions really count and we have planned the start. We contacted the organisers well before the talk to get a sense of who has signed up for the talk and what their main interests are. We got to the venue early and checked on all the logistics. We don’t need to thump the microphone and ask if they can hear us don the back because we have already tested it. We don’t need to fuss around with our laptop because we are ready to go or if there is a laptop change over, we do that first before we even start saying one word.
That first word is a chosen word, not some accidental offering. We have been speaking with some of the early arrivals to get a sense of why they are attending and to know their name. we reference their name as we start to connect with the audience and remove the barriers between speaker and the gathered masses.
We are also fully primed for the end, with both our first summation and our final close. We know we need two closes, one for the immediate end of the talk and another one for after the Q&A. We have prepared both. We know how to properly handle questions – repeating, if not hostile or paraphrasing if a veiled or direct attack upon us. In this way, we can make sure everyone heard the question and that any invective in a question has been properly neutered.
What about the middle bit of the speech? How we do we keep attention from start to finish when we have an entire audience fully tooled up with their escape vehicles firmly clasped in their hands. Their mobile devices will release them from the mortal toil of listening to us and they can be swept afar to more interesting and pleasant climes.
The next time, you are at a presentation look around after the first 10 minutes and see what the audience are doing. Many will be surreptitiously scrolling through their Facebook or Line feed or whatever, multi-tasking, rather than giving the speaker their full attention. How do not become that speaker who has lost the opportunity to get their key message across to the audience?
Every five minutes we need to switch the pace. We need to be presenting something that grabs the attention of the masses. We need an example, a story, demonstration, audience involvement, etc. This shouldn’t be left to random chance. This needs D-Day level planning, so that you know what slide you will show at what point, what story you will relate. Your voice is such a phenomenal tool yet so many neuter it by turning it into a monotone that is guaranteed to become an insomnia cure.
We need to use pace – fast and slow, strength – loud and soft, vocal intonation – up and down. Japanese native speakers have a disadvantage on the up an down front because Japanese is monotone delivery language. No problem , just work on the pace and strength variables and you will gain enough variety in the delivery to keep your audience’s attention.
Story telling is so powerful and so under used. There is huge demand for reality television, which are like home movies into the lives of celebrities. This is basic storytelling, often at a very mundane level. Nevertheless, these programmes draw an audience because we are fascinated by the personal lives of others. So tell your disasters, your fails, your hard won lessons, your triumphs. Come up with pithy quotes that are referencing well known legends like JFK or Churchill etc.
The key here is the planning and then the practice. What is written down sounds a bit clumsy sometimes when we say it out loud. This is where rehearsal comes in. Go through the presentation and work on the cadence of the delivery. Make sure that every 5 minutes you are switching gears and giving your audience something to do, like raise their hand (don’t overdo this, it is annoying) or ponder, or laugh at, or nod to knowingly.
We cannot let our audience escape and lose the benefit of hearing our valuable message to the idiocies of whatever is trending on social media.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
You Need 400 Faces When Presenting
Can we be successful as a presenter if we don't connect with our audience? Many presenters believe this simply is not needed. This connecting lark is rather fluffy and irrelevant for them because the content is king. The delivery is a sideshow, a trifle, a distraction from the main game. Solid high value information, backed up with verifiable data is the mother lode. Actually that is not true.
Solid, verifiable data delivered in a monotone, presented looking down to the reams of notes on the podium, in a disinterested manner is a communication killer. No matter how good the "goods" are, it is not much help if no one if getting your message. Why aren't they getting it? They are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Line instead. We cannot be so arrogant as to imagine our content can carry the day in this age of distraction. The younger generation are going to be the future business audience from Hell. They are growing up totally distracted all the time, with the concentration span of a dazed gnat. They have an addiction to being in touch with each other all the time and are unapologetically reaching for their escape vehicle - their phone - in a heartbeat.
If you are looking down at your note when speaking then the most valuable data is being withheld from you. Watch your audience like a hawk. If you see them disappear under the desk scrolling with their device, then you can kiss your message goodbye. Look them right in the eye. And do it for six seconds. Why six? Less is not giving us time enough to connect and any longer becomes intrusive - we start giving them sunburn from our intensity.
So the maths on that calculation are pretty simple. Six seconds means ten people per minute. A 40 minute speech means we are constantly using our eye contact to connect with 400 faces. Some will be the same faces, depending on the size of the audience. In a large audience, we may think we cannot connect with everyone but we can. Those seated far from us will imagine we are looking at them. The actual person we are looking at and the twenty people sitting around them, all believe we are talking directly to them. Our object should be to speak one-on-one to every single person in that audience.
But Greg, in Japan, we don't make eye contact. Not true. In a typical business meeting, continuous eye contact will be burn out the retinas of our Japanese counterparts, so we have to learn how to turn the eye contact on and off. A presentation is not the same thing though. This is a different role for us and we need to play the bigger game of being persuasive. To do so means we have to bring our full armory to the cause, to battle listener distraction and escape attempts.
Divide the audience up into six sectors, depending on the size. A smaller audience might become just three sectors. The point is to ensure we visually rove across the audience and speak to every single person, no matter where they are seated. We are not looking at the projection screen, our laptop monitor, the back wall, the front row or only one side of the room. We are circulating in a random fashion around the audience, trying to draw them into the web of our message.
We have in our mind those 400 faces we have to connect with, before our time is up. When we do this, the members of the audience feel more closely connected to us. They feel as if they are being spoken to directly and they feel flattered with the attention.
We can read their faces for reaction to what we are saying. This allows us to respond by varying our delivery, by using voice tone, questions and silence to keep them in the room with us.
If we have their attention then we have a chance of getting our message across. Even if they cannot remember all that we say, they will never forget us. Getting both would be a wonderful result, getting one is better than being totally forgettable like most speakers.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Should I Memorise or Read My Presentation Content?
The content was really great and the way the words were put together was quite clever. Obviously a tremendous amount of work had gone into this piece. The speaker had a previous professional journalistic background and the careful selection of just the right vocabulary and the descriptive flourishes were excellent. The speech was a dud.
It failed miserably because it was a written speech, read to us. He could have emailed it to all of us and we could have read it for ourselves. If we read it for ourselves and struggled with some of the big clever journo style words, we could still break out our dictionaries and plumb the meaning.
The next speaker just spoke. He wasn’t such a fluent talker, sometimes stumbling over some of his words, occasionally stuttering, but he had everyone’s attention because he was authentic. He wasn’t reading to us, he was looking at us and connecting with us. He had a slide deck, but he just used this as his navigation, to help draw us into his story.
The issue here is how should we reproduce the content we have designed. Do we have to remember it exactly, memorise it so we can be faithful to our speech design and message? Speakers get very hung up on their content. They feel that they have to deliver the perfect coalition of words to get their message across.
Our first speaker couldn’t memorise his speech because it was too long. That is the case for all of us – usually the sheer effort required is not worth it. His speech content was far superior in the construction of the content, compared to the second speaker. But he failed as a communicator, because he read it to us. All of his effort went into the crafting the script and nothing into the delivery.
If it is a very short speech, you can try and memorise it, but these are usually very special occasions. Japan is a very formal country, so if you are asked to speak at a friend or subordinate’s wedding here, then there are established protocols and sentences you must use in Japanese. If you greet the Emperor of Japan, then there are set things you must say in Japanese, the specific content will depend on the occasion. Mick Jagger told me not to drop names, but I have done both and I did memorise the content. These were short pieces, so I could can manage them without getting myself into trouble.
I did get myself into trouble though, trying to memorise a longer speech. I was the Dean of the Kansai Consular Corps at the time and was asked to speak at the farewell party for China’s Consul General Li, before he left Osaka for America. I had studied Chinese at University and although pretty rusty, thought I could pull off a short speech. Because I am not a fluent speaker of Chinese, having lived here in Japan for thirty years, I had to memorise the content. The plan was to memorise the first part in Chinese and then switch to Japanese, which is much easier for me.
As the Australian Consul General in Osaka at that time, I thought this would be a pretty deft piece of national branding, emphasising Australia’s commitment to Asia. It seemed like a good idea at the time!
This is where memorisation can get us into trouble, and this includes trying to do it in your native tongue. Well I wasn’t doing this in English, so it was a high risk strategy. I was doing fine actually, until I got to a quote from the famous poem by Mao Zedong called “Reascending Jinggangshan”. All of the Chinese guests in the audience immediately recognised it and started applauding enthusistically. At this juncture I made a fatal error.
After having an internal debate with myself, I decided to wait for the applause to die down and then resume. Because it was a memorised speech and not natural conversation, it was a forced exercise to remember the words. Suddenly my mind went completely blank, a total whiteout.
I could not recall what came next. If you are ever up on a big stage, facing thousands of expectant faces and your mind goes blank, you will find that a solitary microphone stand is not much cover behind which to hide your embarrassment. After about 20 seconds of stone motherless silence, which felt like an eternity, I was somehow miraculously able to pick up the next part and complete the speech, before switching into Japanese. Probably wiser to avoid memorising your speech.
Please don’t read it to us either, if you can avoid it. If it is a highly technical speech, something with gargantuan legal implications if you get it wrong, a life or death statement to the media or on behalf of your absent big boss, then you may have no choice. If so, then please use as much eye contact with your audience as possible. You can study the text, such that you really know the content. You can read the first part of the sentence, then voice the last section while looking at your audience and still remain perfectly faithful to the sacred text.
You can read the words and add in gestures, to emphasis the message. You can stand straight and tall and project confidence, reliability, credibility and trust rather than hunching down over the microphone stand. You can have pauses, to allow the audience to digest the key points. You can hit key words for emphasis and can use voice modulation to bring the text alive. Do not have your head down, eyes glued to the text and cut yourself off from your audience.
Even better, read your audience not your text. Observe if they are buying what you are saying, see if they are understanding the point. You don’t have to memorise your talk or read it to us or read the slides to us. You can have speaking points and talk to those points.
For the vast majority of speeches, a conversational tone of talking to key points will work extremely well. If it is severely formal and you have either memorise it or read it, well go ahead. However if you don’t have that type of caveat, then look at us, talk to us and engage with us. We will forgive any sins of grammar, pronunciation or lack of speaking fluency in the delivery.
We will connect with you and we will receive your message and we will regard you highly as an authentic person who spoke from their heart. And we will remember you in a positive vein.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
How To Present Technical Subjects To Non Experts
Technical experts love their specialty. Usually, they have studied hard and long to get into their profession and there is also substantial on-going professional development required to stay current. They are analytical types who thrive on the detail. When they present technical subjects to business people who are not experts they can run into trouble.
The slide deck will be vast and detailed. There is a lot of information to get through and so the slides can be dense. The subject matter, being technical, is a serious business and that is how they approach their delivery. Somber, low energy, no gestures, monotone delivery are all de rigeur for our self assured,
serious experts. The pace is slow, large numbers of the slides are read to the audience. The entire atmosphere is funereal.
Is there a contradiction between the subject matter and presentation delivery skills.? If the matter is technical shouldn’t the material speak for itself. Isn’t the presenter just a simple conduit of information? Yes, you could do it that way, if you want to be completely forgettable, have no interest in establishing a powerful personal brand and become the go to person on the subject. For many technical people that would be just fine, because they don’t enjoy the limelight, they don’t really want to meet new people and would rather be immersed in their specialty.
If the firm is happy for them to be nobodies in a crowded field of similar experts all vying for the same client business, then that monk like approach is a good outcome. If however, you want your firm to stand out above the din, to become famous for the quality of your team and for your professional bedside manner with non-specialists, then a re-think is in order.
Lets start with the deck, because this is the holy grail for specialists and this is where all the time is sucked up, with iteration after iteration. Slides can be printed out and distributed after the presentation. Why not during? Yes, you can do that but the chances are that you will be on slide 5 and your audience will be on slide 45 and you have lost control of their attention. Better to mention at the start that the materials will be distributed after the presentation. There may be one or two sheets where the detail is so dense, say numbers on spread sheets, that it is impossible to read on screen and these could be handed out at the start.
The details can be presented on the slide because our audience can read it for themselves, which means we don’t have to cover every detail on every slide. We can show and tell. That is, show the slide in its full glory but only refer to a few key points. This allows us to speak without being trapped by the text on screen. We can speak to the points, elaborate and tell stories to bring the facts to life.
Storytelling is mainly absent from the repertoire of technical presenters but these are the things the audience will remember after the talk. They also make the detail more interesting because they are usually dealing with things at the application rather than the theoretical stage.
When speaking not every word needs to have the same value. This is the monotone delivery approach, which quickly puts everyone to sleep. Instead we can select out key words for additional emphasis and hit those words harder when we deliver them. We can bring energy to the fore when we make recommendations or issue warnings. These are simple voice modulation techniques which add validity to what we are saying.
We can use gestures to back up our words, again these bring energy to key points in a way that adds credibility to the content. Our passion for the subject should shine through. The specialist though often believes that their subject matter should be unemotional and delivered in a bland way, that is not controversial. We don’t have to be outrageous to make a connection with the audience. Regardless of the subject matter, it usually has ramifications for people and people are emotional. We can find how this topic relates to their businesses and their lives and make it real for the audience.
We don’t have to be dull. We can take highly technical subjects and humanize them, tell stories, inject situations and people into them to bring them to life. We just need to change our mindset about what we are actually doing here. Are we simply going through the motions or are we trying to communicate our key messages to our audience? That decision makes the path forward very clear.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Don’t Give Mystifying Presentations Please
The global chief’s private jet has landed. We are all assembled in a luxury hotel’s gorgeous function room. The big brand name, the resplendent silver mane, the speaker’s resume and abundant confidence all speak to a brilliant talk coming up. After the obligatory networking and chatting with tablemates over lunch, the main event gets underway. The keynote starts well but gradually we start to lose connection with the speaker’s message. The talk is full of supple subtleties. The main point becomes fuzzy, distant, unapproachable and impenetrable. We sit there wondering are we all stupid, because we can’t grasp the speaker’s nuanced argument or is the speaker simply rambling and incoherent?
Actually, it doesn’t matter which of us is stupid, because the talk has failed. The speaker has not been able to get the message across in a way that resounds with the audience. Being intellectually brilliant and speaking above your audience is not effective communication. We have to know who is in our audience, their level of understanding of the subject and their capacity to be challenged. We need to be able to communicate, which means the listeners can understand and follow what we are saying, rather than trying to impress with our own brilliance.
Structure helps to guide the audience through the proceedings. This speech, if it had a structure, it was obscure, vague and puzzling. Consequently the speaker lost the audience. A heavy mist rolled in on this speech after about the first ten minutes and engulfed us all in such a way, that we struggled to follow where this meandering was going. What was the point being made here? Where are we going with these stories? What is the key argument being made? These are all bad questions for an audience to be asking. They should never have to wonder because the speaker is clear, coherent and provides direction.
The use of slides on this occasion was minimal. In many cases this is a blessing, but not this one. We needed some more form to follow the speaker’s points. We were lost. We could have found a path, if there had been some visual guideposts for us. The slides roll out and pull us along the path of the argument. Other simple ploys like “there are three key issues” or “the five areas of urgent attention are…” helps to frame the content in a way where we can track it. These structures help us to relate the current point to those preceding it.
Maybe a fellow genius, if indeed our speaker was a genius, may have been simpatico with our speaker’s intent and understood the thesis. Alas we were just ordinary punters, turned out in the hope of a nice lunch and some enlightenment from this font of knowledge. Our font this day though was dry and not at all helpful because we couldn’t get the point.
As speakers we have to make it easy for our audience to understand us. If we are going to be clever and tangential, we run the risk of losing people. If we are fixated on subtlety, we can be too opaque for the troops and they just get lost. We were all crime scene witnesses to the merciless murder of a major brand that day. When the big cheese fails like that, we doubt the whole organisation. Our faith in the firm has completely subsided. Apart from the damage to the company, the individual’s personal brand is shredded, torn and tattered.
The stakes are high when you are a presenter, so mastering the ability to connect with your audience is critical. Don’t over complicate the exercise. Have a clear structure, be easy to follow as you navigate your way around your talk and pitch it at the right level for your audience. Do that and your personal and professional brands will be enhanced, appreciated and working for you, not against you.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
What Is The Correct Breathing Method When Presenting?
Breathing is such a natural act and normally, we don’t pay it much attention. Some how though, when we are giving a presentation, our breath control becomes a factor of success. One component is our nerves, which are driving the chemical surge through the body, making our heart rate skyrocket, which speeds up our breathing pattern.
If we are not breathing properly, we can have mental white outs of the brain, because we are not getting enough oxygen. We can’t remember what it is we are supposed to say. We get lost, become panicky and come across as disorganized, unconfident and flakey.
Voice is driven on the winds of breath exhalation and lack of breath power impacts audibility. If we don’t have good breath control, we can find ourselves squeaking out to the audience in this little voice that says, “I am not confident. I am not confident, I am not confident!”.
We might find that our lack of breath control results in our final words of our sentences just dropping away to nothing. We often see speakers kill their key messages, by not supporting the key points with their words voiced with power and conviction. There is no opportunity to punch out a strong message, because we are just vocally doing a disappearing act in front of the audience.
It could also be that we are becoming very breathy when we speak. It sounds similar to people who have respiratory illnesses. They always seem to be gasping for breath. Actually they are and so are speakers with no breath control. They simply can’t pull in enough oxygen.
The lack of breath control gets transmitted to our cadence of when we speak. A lack of air means we are confined to short breathy sentences and the lungs are only being filled in a very shallow fashion just from the top portion.
So how do we stop this and better instruct our instrument – our wonderful speaking voice? I am going to pass on what I have learnt from nearly 50 years of karate training, where breath control is absolutely vital. It is the same method used by singers.
Controlling our nerves is a key part of breath control, because if we don’t, we are working at cross purposes with ourselves. One of the techniques for controlling our nervousness is to go through some deep breathing exercises, before we go on stage in front of the audience. We can do these seated or standing and they don’t take very long.
Place both hands on your tummy and just touch lightly. As you breath in, imagine you need to fill the lungs from the bottom most part of the diaphragm. To help us do this we breath slowly and deeply and we can see if we are succeeding, because the hands on our tummy are starting to move forward. This pushing out of the tummy is a good sign, it means we are doing the deep breath sequence correctly. We reverse the process and slowly exhale and the hands are slowly drawn back in. We need to do this slowly, because a bit too much force and speed here and we can become dizzy, as the flood of oxygen to the brain makes us feel lightheaded.
This diaphragm breathing is actually how we should be breathing all of the time and I recommend you start the practice and make it your default habit. When we are in front of the audience, they cannot see the breathing rhythm, so there is no need to feel self-conscious. Every breath we take starts at the lowest point of the diaphragm and we sense our tummy being pushed out and then being pulled back in. This is how we should be breathing while we are on stage.
Interestingly enough, if we lose the flow and suddenly, the breath begins from the very top of the chest, we will feel our pulse rate pick up, our chest tighten and our shoulders start to rise. This might happen at first, before we can master this deep diaphragm breath control, but don’t worry. Just slow the breath down and concentrate on the lower diaphragm and trying to push your tummy out with each inhalation. Once you do this, the cycle will re-institute itself and you will be getting plenty of air. The key is to pick this up in rehearsal.
Correct breath control gives us the ability to make the tonal variations which keep command of our audience. We can bring power to words and build to crescendos, when we want to emphasis particular key points. It also helps us to relax and look super composed when we are standing in front of people. That confidence is contagious and our audience buys what we are saying. And that is what we want isn’t it.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Where Should I Stand When I Am Presenting?
Usually this isn’t even a question for most presenters because the organisers have already set up the room and your speaking spot has been designated. But have we been designated a spot by experts in public speaking or by the venue crew who usually just haul chairs, lug tables around and set up the stage? Sadly the coalescence between expertise in speaking and membership of the logistic’s team is rare.
So where should we stand? This will depend on the venue size, the illumination of the room, the size of the audience, the layout of the stage, where the projection screens are located and what you want to achieve. I attended a talk where the stage was empty, yet the speech suddenly got underway with no speaker in sight. He was actually wearing a Lavelle microphone and was behind the audience at the rear of the room. The acoustics of that hall however, gave no indication of where he was standing and so it created a buzz as the assembled masses tried to place the speaker’s location, with the voice being the only thing they could all hear. He then strode manfully to the stage and continued his oration. As an attention-getter, to break through all the clutter in the heads of the audience, it was very effective and he did that just by varying his speaking spot from what everyone was used to.
If we are using a screen, then where is it: is it hoisted high above us, are there two giant screens on the left and right or is it at our height in the center of the stage? In smaller venues, the screen is normally at our height and usually set up such that the podium is on the audience right of the stage. No particular thought has gone into this podium location. The choice is purely random, often linked more closely to power outlets and cabling considerations, than the speaker’s effectiveness.
We should stand on the audience left of the screen, so that the audience can read our facial expression and body language and then move their eyes right to read text or images on the screen. We always want the screen to be subordinate to us. So set up the proceedings such that they have to look at you first, rather than at the slides on the screen. Our face is a trillion times more powerful as a communication tool, than anything that is on the screen.
How Not To Use Your Hands When Presenting
We think of speaking as an activity where we use our voice. That is true but we use a lot more than that. We use our face, eyes, legs, body and our hands. When we are speaking while seated it is different to when we are standing. We need to master all situations for when we are called upon to speak in front of others. One of our problem areas is what to do with our hands when we speak. Judging by most of the presentation I see in Japan, few speakers have worked this out yet.
Here are some common habits we can improve upon to make ourselves much more persuasive and professional.
These elaborate rituals are a product of trying to standardise the form and to kill uncontrolled hand movements. It also kills the ability to use gestures to support and strengthen our words. The arms and hands when held in front of the body also create a subliminal barrier between the audience and the speaker. It is saying “I don’t trust you, I am scared of you and I need to protect my most vial organs from you, in case of sudden attack”. As a speaker, we want to be as inclusive as possible, so we need to eliminate all physical barriers (podiums, reams of notes, ipads, arms) between ourselves and our audience. We also want to show we are totally confident and have a welcoming attitude to our audience.
The palms open and facing forward gesture is a universal and timeless indicator of “I am not a threat to you, because, as you see I have no hidden weapon”. This when associated with certain words and phrases says “you can trust what I am saying”. Not a bad thing for a speaker to achieve with an audience, especially to a gathering of card carrying skeptics.
In speaking term though, these postures send all the wrong messages. We want to be trusted as a speaker and to do so, we have to show we are open to our audience. Holding our hands by our sides is a natural position and from here it is easy to raise our hands when needed, to inject a powerful gesture with which to back up our words.
Sheets of paper however tend to become a distraction as we tend to wave them around. The pages quiver and shake if we are nervous and this is visible to our audience. We are sending the wrong message to them. We want to convey belief and confidence in our message.
If we are looking down, be it at the notes page or an iPad, we break off eye contact with our audience. Instead, we need to be watching our audience like a hawk, constantly gauging their reaction to what we are saying. We also want to employ our eye power to engage with them directly and sell them on our key messages. We want to remove all distractions from what we are communicating and we want to free up our hands so we can employ our gestures to bolster our argument.
Having said that, if you find your arms and hands are shaking almost uncontrollably, because the adrenaline is coursing though your body, then by all means hold the microphone with both hands and gather it to your chest, so no one can see how petrified you are. The shaking won’t be visible anymore and you can feel more confident when you are talking.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.