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.