Have A Point Of View

Often we will hear a presentation and receive a lot of information from the presenter, but we are not really clear on what is their point of view on this subject. We don’t think we need to state our point of view when it is a product, because there will invariably be quite a lot of features which can be talked about. The problem with that is features by themselves are not persuasive enough. None of us buy features, because we are all too busy buying the benefits of the features. It also might be a service. The client wants to know what difference our service will make for their business growth. It is an intangible too, so the purchase decision really rides on the client buying an image of what success will look like. This is where having a point of view kicks in.

We have to tell the buyer how great our solution is. We shouldn’t be thinking all I have to do is present the detail and the client will buy what I am selling. If only it was that easy. Instead we need to be telling them that this is the greatest thing on the planet.

Technically oriented people are particularly prone to understatement. They believe that the data sells itself. This is because often they are very logical types. They didn’t get the email which explained that we all buy on emotion and justify with logic. They need to state their point of view on how great they think this piece of technology or intellectual property or whatever is. If we want the audience to get our message, we have to stand firmly behind what we are suggesting. Don’t make the audience do all the work – tell them this is the greatest whatever.

If we believe there is some imminent change approaching the current state of the market, we should mention that and predict what we think the likely ramifications will be. We may be proven completely incorrect but that doesn’t matter. At that point in time the audience will leave the presentation knowing that you stand for something and there is an internal logic holding that construct together. It may eventually go in a different direction, but there are always so many mitigating factors, it is hard to be held to your incorrect prediction. The key is you give the audience the sense that you stand for something and are not just wishy washy and uncommitted. Better to be proven wrong, than immediately dismissed as someone who can’t commit to anything and just supplies raw data.

We want belief to be demonstrated by our speaker and when they have a point of view backed up with a solid structure supporting their proposition, we see that as professional We may or may not like or agree with what is being said, but we respect the intellect and the delivery. We should never rely on the slide deck or the slick video to do the selling for us. We need to use our voice and body language to show our enthusiasm for our point of view. This is critical because we are more likely to follow your line of reasoning, if you show your 100% commitment to it.

The structure is simple. We explain our point of view, we then spend the next twenty minutes or so, supplying data, examples, facts, testimonials, stories which are the evidence for this point of view. It is all beautifully connected together. We finish by restating our central proposition and call for the audience to agree with this and support that point of view. We now go into Q&A and marshal even more evidence to support what we are saying, this time in the face of people who put up alternative ideas or totally opposite opinions. In the final close we again state our view and call for everyone to support it, this is the last thing ringing in the ears of the audience as they depart the venue.

If we want to be remembered then we need to have a point of view. If we want people to support our product or service we need to sell them our point of view on why they should buy it. We need to back all of this up with passion, enthusiasm and belief. If we do this then we will be successful as a person of influence.

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.

Zen Presenting

Zen study is a way to strip out all of the non-essentials in life. The noise, the distraction, the things that are not so important. People sit around concentrating on their breath cycle or one word or a number of other methods to quiet the mind, so they can get more clarity about themselves and what are their real priorities. As presenters, this is a good metaphor for when we are in front of people speaking.

You would think with all those thousands of years of Zen in Japan, in art, in design, in temples, gardens, in history etc., that the Japanese people would be legends of simplicity and clarity when presenting. Not true! Presenting as an idea only came to Japan around 160 years ago. Fukuzawa Yukichi who founded Keio University and who graces the 10,000 yen bank note, launched public speaking in Japan in the Meiji period. There is an enzetsukan or speech hall still on the grounds of Keio University, where presumably the first speeches were given.

Western society plumbs the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome, parliaments allowing debate and Hollywood for models on speech giving. Japan has no home grown role model. If the authorities needed you to know anything in old japan, a notice board would have it written there for you. No shogun oratory from the castle walls to the assembled masses. No Mel Gibson Braveheart style speeches before vanquishing the foe in battle. Japan bypassed all of that until Fukuzawa Yukichi decided this was another area of modernization that needed implementation, like wearing ties, boots, hats and petticoats.

No slide deck in those days, but Japan certainly was an early adopter of the technology for giving presentations – the overhead projector, the slide projector, the modern light weight projector, large screen monitors, electronic pointers. Any venue you go to in Japan will be bristling with gear.

Interestingly, the content on screen will also be bristling. There will be 10 graphs on the one page, lurid diagrams employing 6 or more vivid colours, text so small you could use it for an optometrist’s eyesight test chart. Where has the zen gone?

We don’t need any tech or screens or props or gizmos. We can speak to the audience and enjoy being the full focus of their attention. Many speakers are competing for attention with what is being displayed on the screen. Company representatives love to play the video of their firm or product or service. They can be quite slick, the joy of the marketing department and the pit into which a chunk of money was thrown for the production company, directors, designers, film and sound crew, talents and innumerable others who all got a slice of the pie.

The question to ask though is does this video actually assist the speaker to make the key point under consideration. Often they are like eye candy, but are not on point to the main argument. Unless it strongly reinforces your message dump it. It will only be competition for you the speaker and it will suck up valuable time which could be spent better with you as the man focus.

I saw Ken Done, a well known Australian artist, give a talk in Japan many years ago. He has a very unique visual style and yet he moved around from behind the lectern, stood next to it and just spoke about his art to the audience. It was very engaging because it was so intimate. The Japanese audience loved it. There was only one source of stimulation for the audience and that was Ken Done. This is what we want – to be the center of their world for the next thirty or forty minutes.

Don’t use a slide deck unless there is something in that content and presentation on screen which really helps bring home your argument. If it is for information purposes, then that will work well. If you are there to persuade, then you will be so much more powerful if all the attention is concentrated on one point and that point needs to be you.

In this case we have stripped away all the noise, so we have to fill the void with word pictures. We need to be having the audience see what we are talking about in their mind’s eye. If you have ever read the novel after seeing the movie, you find yourself transported visually to the scenes from the movie, as you read the text. This is the same idea. We have to transport the audience to a place, time and situation that we are describing in words, in such a way that visually they can imagine it.

We don’t always have to have slides or visuals. We are the message, so let’s manufacture the situation so that we are the center piece of the proceedings and all eyes and ears are on us and every word we say. We can Zen our way to speaking success!

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.

Bailed Out By The Brand

My eyes are closing. I am struggling to stay awake. There is something about this presentation that is not working. I thought, it must be me.   I must be tired. Later however I realized the problem. I was being lulled into sleep by the monotone delivery of the presenter. Now there was no excuse for this because the language was English. We know that Japanese is a monotone language, so you can sort of understand that this is going to lull you to sleep, unless the presenter is on their game.

The brand by the way is gorgeous. This is seriously high profile, a name that everyone knows and respects. The name alone triggers images that are all first class. The slides and videos he presented were all quality. These people have money and they know about marketing very high end products. They have been doing it for a very long time and they do it globally.

Our speaker had all of this powerful support going for him, yet the actual presentation was sleep inducing. Why was that? The brand is a passion brand, but there was no passion. The brand is a great story, but the storytelling was minimal. The delivery was wooden. Measured, but wooden. The person delivering it comes from a culture that is exuberant, intense, enthusiastic. He showed little of these traits.

Fortunately, despite his lifeless delivery, the brand is so powerful it can survive his attempt to murder it. But what a wasted opportunity. It is not as if this brand doesn’t have competitors. There are many and they are also high quality, high status, expensive, exclusive, well healed. He needed to stand out amongst a very crowded field, infecting that audience that evening with his passion and belief in the brand. He is their guy in Japan, so that is his job, every time, everywhere.

It was a good audience too. These are people who appreciate a good brand, who are influencers, who can spread the message. No one will bother though because they were not receiving any energy from this talk. This is the danger when we have a strong brand supporting us. We can become complacent. We imagine we don’t have to do much because the brand sells itself. The marketing department’s glossy photos and slick videos are enough.

Not true. Brands are being recreated every single day. When the product is consumed that is a brand defining moment. If the brand promise is not delivered when the product or service is consumed, then the brand is that much lessened. If this continues, then the brand will disappear, vanquished by its competitors. The brand doesn’t have to be consumed to define the brand though. We as representatives of the brand, are influencing the quality perception of the brand every time we present. If we give a really average performance then the audience will start to doubt the quality claims of the marketing department about this brand. Never forget, we judge the entire organisation on you and how you come across.

If our man in Japan had given a high energy presentation, extolling the virtues of the brand, that would have been consistent with the positioning of the brand. If you are representing a funeral home however, that would not be appropriate. So obviously we need to be congruent. This brand case though would be a great platform for enthusiastic storytelling and verbal passion for the brand. Where were the gripping stories of high drama and intrigue, as they duked it out with their competitors across the globe and over the decades? Where were the human dimension stories of the customers who were famous and fans. This is a glamour business and yet there was little glamour presented in his talk. The styling is seriously beautiful, but we heard nothing about the design team. We got no insider account of some of the legendary tales from the past. It was flat.

There was little or nor energy being transmitted to the audience. When we speak we have to radiate that energy to the listeners. We need to invigorate them. We do this through our voice and our body language. It is an inside out process, where the internal belief is so powerful it explodes out to the audience. They see we are convinced, we are believers and they become believers too.

It is interesting that we have a client company we do training for and the external image of the brand is over the top. Yet the people who work there are very muted, very low key. The contrast is quite jarring because it goes against what we would expect. This means that if we are representing a dynamic brand we had better be dynamic. Our speaker was not dynamic at all. He put me to sleep. No brand consistency on his part and that is just not allowed.

Let’s raise our energy levels up when promoting our company in a public presentation. Make sure our voice is using all the range of highs and lows to get full tonal variety. No monotone delivery please. We need to punch out hard certain key words and phrases, like the crescendos in classical music. We need our body language to be backing this up, our gestures in sync with what we are saying. We need to lift the energy of the audience through our personal power. None of this happened that evening and the brand will survive, but the brand elevation opportunity was totally missed. If he keeps doing this, over time, it will be to the brand’s detriment. I wonder if the leaders of his organisation have a clue about any of this?

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.

Crazy Things Smart People Say

Education can be a barrier to intelligence sometimes. This is often the case with people educated in very hard skill disciplines. They are asked to absorb vast amounts of complex information and to follow strict procedural structures. The rote learning aspect becomes paramount. This is fine and will get you graduated out of varsity and into the real world. With so much invested in technical knowledge other skill sets are not fully appreciated enough.

Soft skills, such as communication, are not highly valued. The thinking is that this is rather fluffy stuff. Serious people are knowledgeable about deep technical subjects and how they transmit that knowledge isn’t all that important. The quality of the data or the advice is considered to the key thing, not the delivery. Anyway the delivery bit smacks of conmen, carnival barkers and dodgy sales types who talked you into buying that timeshare you never use while you were on holiday.

I was reminded of this recently when talking with a very highly skilled technical person. I have actually seen this person present and he has vast amounts of data at his ready command. He is steady, reliable and a bit dull. Normally being a bit dull mightn’t be a problem, except in his profession the competition for advice is fierce. Gathering potential clients together and giving them a snapshot into how brainy you are is a great prospecting tool in his profession. You would think that intelligent people would be able to work out that the delivery of all that brainpower was a competitive edge. An edge that needs to be really finely honed and maintained.

In the course of our conversation I was suggesting that he could do some presentation training and this would help him stand tall amongst the weeds. There was a need but only a low recognition of the advantage that this would give him relative to others, who also claim they have big brains as well. This is a common blindspot for technical professionals. They confuse having the knowledge and big brains with being automatically awarded the business by clients.

Today, across all industries, buyers are much better educated and informed. They have access to global information, at a speed unimagined in decades part. “We will gather our big brains together and they will come” did work for the longest time but not anymore. All professionals have to be highly knowledgeable and persuasive. The persuasive part requirement hasn’t been universally grasped by the technical experts as yet.

Our reluctant hero asked me what the presentation training would cost and then proceeded to tell me it was too expensive. This was shocking to me. His profession has no hesitation in charging vast sums to clients because they see the cost through the prism of the value they provide. The actual amount of money was a peanut, in fact, yet he was reluctant to invest in himself to become a dominant player. I am sure if there had been a global conference on his key subject matter, he would have jetted off without hesitation and spent a considerably larger sum to attend the event.

I was shocked not because of the money involved, but because of his inability to grab the chance to become well recognized as THE expert in his field. Participants leave his current presentations lukewarm. They are not salivating at the prospect of working with him. They are not highly motivated to sign him up as their advisor. They are still guarded and unsure. He could switch that whole thing around easily by investing in himself to extend his abilities.

Are you like this too? Are you in denial about the reality, that in this better informed world stocked with your competitors, you need all aspects of your skill set working for you? Brains, experience and the ability to communicate to potential clients that you have both are fundamental to the new order of business.

You have built it, but we won’t come because we are going to the other guy who invested in himself and became a fully rounded professional. That “expensive” peanut is costing my friend and others like him a lot of money but they haven’t worked it out yet. Don’t be like them. Invest in yourself and learn how to work every audience into a passionate belief that they need you and your services right now.

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 Captivate Your Audience

We can speak to a group and then there is another level, where we try to captivate our audience. What makes the difference. The content could even be the same but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner. Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life. We see this with music. The same lyrics, but with a different arrangement and something magical happens. This new version becomes a smash hit. Speeches are similar. A boring rendition is given a make over and suddenly has the audience enthralled. I am sure we would all vote for the enthralling version, so how to do we do that?

The quality of the argument we are going to present is important. We definitely need to design two powerful closes, one for the end of the speech and an extra one for after the Q&A. Importantly, we start from this point when designing the talk. We work out what is the most compelling message we want to leave with our audience and we start working backwards structuring the speech from here. Once we know what we what to say, we need to be gathering evidence to back up that assertion. We have to remember that statements are easy to make, but the listener needs convincing. We now do a rough sketch of the key points and the supporting evidence.

In a thirty minute speech, there won’t be so much time, so we might get through three or four of these key points and that is it. Now we make sure that the evidence is super strong, offering really compelling proof, to build credibility for our argument.

Next we work on a blockbuster opening. This has to compete with all the things running through the minds of our audience. The things they were doing before they got to the venue, the things they have to do after this speech. The hand held device is a modern day siren call, diverting their attention away from us, as they check email and social media. We have to smash through all that obstruction and clear a path so that they will hear our message. The first words out of our mouth had better be compelling or we will lose the battle for today’s minute attention spans. We need to carefully design what that will be.

We want our visuals on screen to be clear and comprehendible within two seconds. If it is taking the viewer longer than that, then they are too dense. Let’s keep the colours to an absolute maximum of three. Photos are great with maybe just one word of text added. This intrigues our audience to hear more. We can then talk to the point we want to make. If we use graphs, we should have only one per screen wherever possible. If we are going to use video, it had better be really, really hot and the transition from slide deck to video, back to slide deck has to be seamless.

Every five minutes we need to be switching the energy levels right up, to keep our audience going with us. This is key. Classical music has its lulls and crescendos and so should we.   Naturally, we have tonal variety right throughout the talk, but we need to be hitting some key messages very hard, around that five minute interval. This needs to be combined with some powerful visuals on screen to drive home the point. This is not delivered by chance, good fortune or accident. We need to plan for this and structure the presentation so that this brings all the vocal and visual elements together at the same time, in a powerful, impressive way.

We are meticulously sprinkling stories throughout the speech to highlight the evidence we want to provide for our key points. Data by itself is fundamentally dull, but stories fleshing out the data are so much more scintillating. These should be full of stimulation for forming mental pictures in the minds of our audience. We sketch out physical locations, describe colours, talk about the season, mix in people they may know, explain the why of what is in the story. In this way we want our listeners to see the scene in their own mind as we explain the point of the story. It is a bit like reading a novel, after having seen the movie. As you read it, you can mentally imagine the scenes you saw previously on screen. This is the effect we are going for.

Our final close after the Q&A has to go out with a bang and not a whimper. We want a strong call to action. The final vocal delivery must finish on a rising upswing. Don’t let that very last sentence peter out at the end. Remember, we want to muster the audience to our cause. We want them to leave dyed in the wool supporters. We want them getting a tattoo with our name on it. Okay, I was getting a bit carried away there. That is probably too much, but you get the idea.

We need great structure, evidence, visuals, stories, pacing, energy, passion and belief in our presentation. The delivery is going to rock because we make it rock through rehearsal after rehearsal, until we have refined the whole thing into a symphonic triumph. That is how we need to be thinking to captivate our audience when we start constructing the talk. Begin with captivation in mind.

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 Danger Of Longevity

Sometimes you see a confident presenter really bomb. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, the contrast is vast. If they are totally hopeless and they bomb, well that is understandable. But a competent presenter bombing shouldn’t occur. It did and I was wondering why that happened? Where did our speaker go wrong?

Comedians have this same problem – no one laughs at their jokes and there is not much camouflage for them to hide behind, when all they have is a microphone stand on a stage. Being in the limelight, at the podium, on stage, up on the dais is a pressure location. When you are revealed to everyone as a flop all your desperate attempts to refloat the Titanic, make the whole thing seem even more preposterous and pathetic.

In this case, there wasn’t even a good recognition that things were rapidly going south. It was only at the end, when it was too late to do anything about it, that the speaker realised he had bombed completely. The tepid applause reaction was a give away. The lack of questions a more immediate one. The whole apparatus of the talk collapsed in on itself, under the weight of its own ineptitude.

The issues were a misreading of the audience and an arrogance. The audience had been lured to the venue with bold promises of goodness and light. The content wasn’t good enough to back up the advertising and the audience spotted the gap straight away. They were there for answers. There weren’t any and they knew it.

The arrogance was an assumption about the speaker’s credibility being sufficient to justify the content of the presentation. When we emphasise the years in business, we are aiming for increased credibility, linked back to our stupendous track record. We have stood the test of time etc. Our speaker had not properly prepared the presentation. He gave it a “once over lightly” treatment, because of his supreme confidence in his ability to deliver the talk. He was a good speaker and a competent presenter. He thought his track record stood for itself. The only problem was the content of the talk was rubbish.

We tread a fine line with the longevity thing. Track record, sustained over many, many years is a credible thing for the audience. The only concerns are that the whole affair may be perceived as dated. We are always being fed the new and greatest, latest best thing. Business fad books come and come and come. The old ones are taken out the back and quietly disappeared. When we talk about the good old days we like it because we were there, but the audience only cares about what is the relevance for them. We have to be skilled to make it fresh, new and connected to their current business reality.

Our speaker failed in that regard. I said arrogance and this is the bit that hurts. Our pride in our track record can make us blind to the fact that people don’t really care all that much. We like strolling down memory lane, but so what. We arrogantly assume that what we did was important. Wrong. Where is the link to the audience’s current problem right now? We have to keep building that connection. The successes of the past help us to prepare for the future. The failures of the past, help us to prepare for the future.

This is the skillset needed in a speech presentation. Getting the audience need properly understood, suspending what we like to talk about and instead focusing on what the audience is keen to know about is our task. If we fail to get that balance right, we can come across as dated. This is what happened to our speaker. He delivered a brilliant rendition of his past glories and achievements, without effectively connecting to the audience’s concerns of today.

I am getting older too, so I took copious notes from this speech on what not to do, if I am ever tempted to talk at length about my good old days. I think we all should avoid that temptation too.

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.

Job Well Done

When you see someone do a very good presentation, your faith in humanity is restored. There are so many poor examples of people killing their personal and professional brands with poor public speaking skills, it is refreshing to see talks done well. It is not that hard really, if you know what you are doing and if you rehearse and practice. This is where the majority of lousy speakers trip up. They don’t rehearse or practice, they just unload on the poor unsuspecting audience. Here is a hint. Never practice on your audience!

The global CEO of a major pharma company jetted into town recently and spoke at a chamber of commerce event. The presentation was well structured and flowed in a way that was easy to follow. The slides were professional and clear. He spoke fluently, wasn’t reading from any script and instead was talking about the key points up on screen. When we got to Q&A, he repeated the question, so that everyone could hear it and then answered it. He did that while addressing the entire audience, rather than just speaking to the inquirer. When he did not have the information referred to in a question, he admitted it straight up, without trying to fudge it. This builds trust and credibility.

I doubt he did any rehearsal for that audience, because it was a stump speech he has given so many times he was entirely comfortable with the content. Could he have done better? Yes, he could have added more stories into the presentation. A few vignettes from the exciting world of white lab coats, where they were developing new medicines to save humanity, would have been good. He could have delivered it with a bit more passion. It was professional, but it came across as a stump speech. He was supremely comfortable delivering it and that is one issue we have to be alert to. When we are too comfortable, we can sometimes put ourselves on cruise control. We should keep upping the ante each occasion to try and see how much further we can push ourselves.

Another function was an industry awards event and the main VIP guest made some remarks before announcing the winners. Humour is very, very hard to get right. When you see it done well, you are impressed. You need to have material that is funny for a start. Then you have to be able to deliver it so that people laugh. This sounds easy, but as professional comedians know, the timing of the delivery is key. So are the pauses and the weighting of certain key words. It has to be delivered fluently, so no ums and ahs, no hesitations, no mangling of words. Getting the facial expressions to match what is being said is also tricky.

Our humorous speaker was delivering some lines that he had used a number of times before, so he knew his material worked. It is always good when big shots are self depreciating. We can more easily identify with them when they don’t come across as taking themselves too seriously. “I am good and I know it”, doesn't work so well.

Where do we acquire this humorous material? We steal it. Our speaker had probably heard those jokes somewhere else before and just topped and tailed them for this event. He made them sound personal, as if they had really happened to him. This is important in order to build a connection with the punters in the audience. So, when you attend an event and you hear someone make a good joke or tell a humorous story, don’t just laugh. Write it down and start using it yourself. The secret though is to practice that humourous telling on small audiences, to test you have it just right. The cadence is important and that takes practice. I would guess our speaker had told those jokes many times before. It is fresh for us, but for him it was well within his range of capability. This is what comedians do. They introduce new material in small venues, filter out what doesn’t work and then they bring it to the big stage. We should do the same.

Another place where we can find humour is in what we say that makes an audience laugh. When I returned to Japan in 1992, I was called upon to do a lot of public speaking in Japanese. I began with constructing what I thought was humour. This was a pretty bold step because I had no track record in being funny in English, let alone in Japanese. These jokes of my own creation all completely bombed. However, I would say something not meaning to be funny and the Japanese audience would laugh. I took note of that reaction and realised that was a joke. I would incorporate that into my other talks. Over a long period of time and a lot of speeches, I built up a stock of these humorous sprinklings of pixy dust that worked.

It was refreshing to see two competent speakers in action recently and it is certainly a skill that all of us can improve in. There are some simple basics of speaking we need to concentrate on - prepare, rehearse, learn – repeat!

Pink Elephant Your Way To Influence

Don’t think of a pink elephant. Did you think of one when you read that sentence? It shows how easily we can we swayed by images. If I had said don’t think of the letters p-i-n-k-e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, you would have been fabulously successful. What is the difference – both refer to the same prohibition? We are very much susceptible to images, yet we rarely use this facility when we are trying to have influence with those around us.

We think that force of will, desire, status, oratory, personal power, connections or wealth is how we can have influence with others. In various circumstances, some of these will work, but most are out of reach to the ordinary punter. What else can we do? Well we can “pink elephant” our way to greatness. We can incorporate images into our conversations to persuade others to follow our recommendations.

Getting others to follow our ideas is how we have influence and we have all heard that storytelling is a powerful vehicle for explaining recommendations to others. Like with joke telling though, most of us are pretty average at these skill sets. It sounds easy enough – just tell the joke and people laugh, tell the story and people will get in line behind you. Well we know that few are any good at telling jokes or stories. That is mainly down to a total lack of planning.

Professional comedians spend an enormous amount of time working on their content and then perfecting the timing and mastery of the delivery. If you ever watch Japanese rakugo comedians for example, you can really understand the work that goes into this line of enterprise. They sit on a cushion, usually hold a fan in their hand and that is it. Everything else is down to what they say and how they say it. They create multiple characters, locations, situations and dialogue out of thin air.

On our own part, we normally spend zero time working on our ability to have influence. We don’t craft our story content, nor do we practice the delivery over and over to have the best effect. We just blurt out of our mouth whatever it is we want and then get discouraged when no one could care less about what we want.

There is a simple formula that is a powerful engine for gaining influence. It works on the basis that a good idea is a good idea. The reason for that is because the rationale behind the idea is compelling. If your idea doesn’t engage the emotions and logic of the listener, they are unlikely to be convinced of it’s value. It is a subtle appraoach. Ramming our ideas down the throats of others is the usual way people approach conversion to their way of thinking. This widespread habit has spawned a public of doubters, skeptics, nay-sayers, trolls and haters. We have to recognize that this is our potential audience from the start.

So don’t tell people what you want up front. “I think we should hire more sales people right now, to expand the revenues”, you say fervently. The immediate reaction to this bold expense plan is to inspire everyone in earshot to get to work on coming up with the thousand good reasons that is nonsense and won’t work. Instead we need to build up some images in our story that lay things out in such a way that the audience leaps ahead of the story. We want them to arrive at their own conclusion, that we should hire more people to raise the revenue. By the time we get to our recommendation at the end of the story they are already there and wondering what took us so long to get to the obvious answer. This is called winning without battle, in this case a battle of wits and intellect.

The storytelling should have scenes the listener can see in their mind’s eye. We might say:

“Last Friday, I was up on the 44th floor of the headquarters in Akasaka having a coffee with Tanaka san from the CFO’s office, talking about how to achieve the President’s recently announced five year revenue targets.

Interestingly, she said that they had just finished a computer simulation analysis of the results from the last five years. They found that sales per salesperson were averaging around 40 million yen per year.

I was surprised to hear that even first year newbies like young Suzuki san in the sales team, more than covered their costs in the first year.

I always presumed those new hires were a cost to the company.

Tanaka san was busy getting ready for another presentation a little later that afternoon, so she walked me over to the gorgeous new dark wood paneled board room on the 47th floor.

She booted up her laptop and showed me this line graph on the big 65 inch monitor there, that each year the average increase in salesperson revenue was 50%. I didn’t know that by year three, the salespeople were really starting to pull in sizeable revenue numbers.

It was interesting to me that new hires cover their costs and that the real results get going in year three.

If we are going to meet our five year targets, we should hire more salespeople right now.

If we do that they won’t cost us anything this year and in three years time they will be producing the big numbers we need”.

Now that story required a little over one minute to tell. This is not a huge burden on the listener’s patience. I included people, locations, images they could identify with to make it real. At the very end, I made a call for action – “hire” and then finished off with the icing on the cake with the benefit of doing that action – “produce the big numbers we need”.

Don’t “free form” when trying to have influence. Carefully plan what you will say, practice it to get it concise and digestible for your audience. If you do that you will have people follow your recommendations and ideas and that is what we all want, isn’t it.

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 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

1. Recognise where your personal power switch is set – high, low or medium
2. Plan the speech for the delivery component not just the visual presentation
3. Inject points of change, from either high to low or the other way around
4. Make the power mode consistent with the content, so it is congruent
5. Break the content delivery down to 4-5 minute blocks and then determine the power mode needed at that point in the talk
6. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

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

1. Show you are confident (even if you aren’t).
2. Project energy, lift for the occasion
3. Don’t begin by apologising for any of your speaking inabilities
4. Don’t be afraid about talking about your mistakes
5. Don’t take yourself too seriously but do it sparingly
6. Look for speech and physical connectors to be able to bond with your audience
7. Create points of agreement for your audience
8. Sum up the key points you want to leave with your audience and then shut up, don’t keep adding and adding!

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.