Pizazz Baby, We Need More Pizazz When Presenting
Pizazz is one of those unusual words, that sounds kind of cool, but is a bit vague. In presenting terms, we are really looking at being more interesting and engaging and doing that in a sparky, non-anticipatory way. Droning on when presenting is a pretty strong norm for many people. They talk at us, not with us. They are lifeless and low energy. This may be fine for having a cup of tea with your friends, but if you want to present, then you have to switch it up.
A workman like, by the numbers, presentation is fundamentally boring. A recent presenter did a painting by numbers job with his effort. The talk had completed the exercise in the allotted time and he had spoken about a number of key points. The delivery was wooden though, the voice tone was flat, the whole thing was a lifeless shambles really. The snapper though is that the speaker represents his organization to the world at large and he did a poor job when up on the podium.
When you are in a high profile role, like being the CEO, then you simply have to perform. Never forget we judge your whole organisation on you. If you are mediocre, we assume everyone is the same. We don’t say, well that guy or gal was the exception. The rest of the crew are all dynamite. Nope, we say they are all duds down there.
So engaging your audience is a requirement. This is easy to say, but not so easy to do. Energy is a key component of this process. Somehow we all know that enthusiasm is contagious, but miraculously manage to forget this, when we start speaking in front of groups. The low energy insult became a trademark of President Trump when disparaging his political opponent Jeb Bush.
It is cutting, because it implies you don’t have what it takes to be a leader. Whether you agree with Trump or not, the point is valid. If the leader is low energy, we somehow doubt they can do the job properly. We don’t get to meet that many CEOs or politicians in person, so we draw our conclusions from seeing them on television, in videos or at public presentations. Remember we are all on show when presenting.
The podium is one area of difficulty, but with the prevalence of YouTube videos and business social media, presenters are starting to really branch out. This was brought back to me not so long ago, when I saw a video on LinkedIn of someone I know and the delivery was fundamentally funereal. The whole atmosphere was dark, bleak, lifeless. This guy is a smart guy and if we read the transcript we would think what he had to say was valuable. The voice however was a monotone, the energy was totally insignificant and the exercise was absolutely dreary, not motivational.
Sadly, the message while actually pretty good, was just destroyed, totally killed by the poor delivery. Now if you are going to put yourself out there, especially in the crowded alleyways of the YouTube video world and broadcast through social media, then you have to step it up. There are so many windows to the world now and everyone can see us. Once upon a time, you could be fairly hopeless and only a few poor souls would know. Not anymore. This is where the pizazz idea comes in.
If you want your message to cut through the white noise of a squillion other presenters, then you need to have an attitude that says, “I want to stand out and be heard”. Casey Neistat did that with video blogging. There were plenty of other well established video bloggers out there, but he brought a movie style approach to his vlogging. He would set the camera up, so that it recorded him entering the room, for example. A simple but very effective idea. All the other vloggers were one dimensional – they were pointing the camera at themselves, as they held it at arms length. He made a small change that set him apart. He brought some movie making style pizazz to the exercise and the rest of us are happy he did that. Now it is much more interesting for us the viewer.
Gary Vaynerchuk did that with his Daily Vee vlog. He combined reality television style presentation, with motivation and information. Nobody had done that before. He created some pizazz and is getting close to a million subscribers for his show. He gets a lot of work speaking, sells his books and gets business for his digital agency off the back of his notoriety. All he did was make a small innovation in a crowded space, so he could stand out and he has been incredibly successful doing that.
This then has to be the mantra. Set yourself apart when presenting. If you want to move into video, then you really need to compete. This is not just you presenting while being recorded. Yes, you can do that, but if you are going to blast yourself around the world via video on social media, then add pizazz to the mix and make it interesting. Be that little bit unexpected, have something that differentiates you from the pack.
You don’t have to be handsome, beautiful, deep bass DJ voiced or tall. You just have to be interesting, engaging and relevant. Use voice modulation, tell stories, speak with, not at your audience and bring your full energy to the task.
Okay, let’s all go back to the drawing board. Let’s stop doing what we have always done and think about how we could add some pizazz to our presentations and start experimenting, to find what works best for each of us.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Own The Space And Work The Room
Getting up in front of people is confronting for a lot of speakers. Beady eyes are boring into you, a sea of serious faces is scary, the lights are painfully bright and the pressure feels intense. You start to doubt your preparation was sufficient for the occasion. You throw up the laptop lid and then try to mount the podium such that it provides a safety barrier between you and the great unwashed. You studiously avoid confronting eye contact, by staring down at your laptop screen or your notes. Or to leaven things up, you read the screen to the audience, presenting a nice view of the top of your head. If you have a partly bald pate, like some medieval monk, then that makes it all the more gripping. It doesn’t have to be so pathetic. In fact, you can “own the space and work the room”.
By properly designing your presentation in the first place, you can release yourself from the laptop. The main screen will be composed of little text and mainly images. These are images designed with the object of conveying the key points in two seconds. This means you are replacing text on a screen, with oral word pictures delivered by you. This is so much more powerful. The slide advancer technology is pretty good these days and this frees you from having to be physically chained to the laptop.
Now you can move to the audience. Depending on the size of the occasion, the approach will be different. Let’s assume a 30 person plus venue. You divide your audience space into six sectors, like a baseball diamond. Left, Middle, Right Field. You then cut it in half, so you have an Inner Field and an Outer Field. If the audience is smaller than 30 people, then you probably have just left, right, front and back to work with.
The point is to “work the room” by engaging with your entire audience. Make around six to eight seconds of eye contact with each individual, in all of those sectors. Do it randomly, unpredictably, to maintain interest. If you do it a predetermined order, the audience will leave you, because they are able to anticipate where your attention is focused. Once they know, they switch off and are easy prey to distractions, like their phone and the internet.
In a larger audience, one individual seated toward the back receives your eye contact but the twenty people sitting around them, all think you are making direct eye contact with them. In this way, you can continuously engage the entire group.
Don’t pace across the stage while talking. You see nervous speakers doing this and it becomes highly annoying, as they keep traipsing across the stage from left to right, left to right, left to right. Don’t do that. Here is Dr. Story’s Iron Rule: “Don’t talk and walk. Move in silence, land on a spot and then speak”.
Certainly move to the extremes of right and left of the stage. Make sure you engage with those seated on the side of the venue. From the center, walk across to the left and use your eye contact to connect with these audience members. Move back to the center and do the same with the center group, then repeat the process for those on the right. Then back to the center. I think you get the idea.
The key is pause speaking, move to a new position and then start speaking from there. Having a pause is a good thing in a speech. This gives you time to take up your new position and it allows the audience to digest what you just got through telling them.
There are also six speaking positions we should be using:
One, is the middle part of the stage, separated equally from the screen and the stage apron.
Two, in this center location, our chin should be held up at a ninety degree angle to the floor. This is the neutral position of having no particular emphasis attached to that location.
Three, if we want to make a macro point then back away from the audience, toward the rear of the stage, where you can be seen most widely.
Four, in this back of the stage location, hold your chin up at a slightly higher angle than ninety degrees.
Five, if you want to make a point of emphasis, then move to the front of the stage apron, as close as you can get to the audience.
Six, in this front of stage location, drop the angle of your chin down slightly to be less than ninety degrees.
By the way, be careful about going to the edge of the stage so you don’t fall off. Don’t laugh. I have almost done this a couple of times in my enthusiasm to get close to my audience, while trying to drive home a particular point. Falling off the stage will make you a memorable speaker, but it is not advisable.
If the stage area is smaller and the screen occupies a good portion of the real estate, then don’t walk in front of the screen, if there is a projector involved. In very short order, you become the screen and that is totally distracting for an audience. Now you would think this was such an obvious point. However, we have all seen speakers do it. They are not aware of the projector in front of them and they have lost the attention of their audience.
In this case, stand on the audience left side of the projector. We read from left to right, so we want people to look at our face first and then look at the screen. I would say that 80% of the time the room is set up for the speaker to stand on the opposite, the audience right side, so it is best to let the organizers know in advance where you want to stand.
We can still use our middle, back and front distances on the audience left side of the stage but we can’t use the audience right. That is unless you hit the “B” key on the laptop and black out the screen. In this case, you won’t be in the way of the light beam from the projector and you can move around freely. By the way, to bring the screen back up again, just press “W”.
Take control of your speaking environment. Do not rely on clueless people to set it up for you. Get it properly organized beforehand. The speaking spot is a physical environment. We don’t want to just turn up there like a spectator, we want to dominate it. Make sure you “own the space and work the room”. If you do, your audience will buy your message and they will remember you as a powerful and confident presenter – someone they would like to hear from again in the future. Remember, this is how you build your personal brand.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Hard and Soft When Presenting
It is so easy to become “Johnny One Note” when presenting. We get locked into a modality of voice and body language power. We just keep hammering away with that mode throughout the whole talk. That might be fine for us, but for our audience it is killing them. If we are all massive power and bravado, after about five minutes, people want a break. If your “aura” is too strong they worry about radiation. If on the other hand, you are a mouse at the microphone, then they feel all their energy being drained from their body, as they shrink into the chair.
If we have a lot of energy, are excited about our topic and eager to share the goodies with our audience, then we can easily find ourselves to talking to our audience, rather than talking with them. The best presentations feel tremendously personal. The speaker has hit on a theme or topic that really resonates with us. The way they deliver it, feels like they are speaking only to us in the room. When we are at full power, it can feel like those cartoons where the audience member’s hair is being blow waved back off their head from the full force of the assault. Not a good idea. They quickly tire and lose interest in our message.
If we are very quietly spoken, modest, perhaps shy and by some supreme misfortune, find ourselves in front of an audience, we struggle to get through the content. We make no attempt to engage with the audience. We are scared of them and want this over as quickly as possible. Our voice whimpers low confidence, we deny our vocal chords the necessary air to project our voice and our body language is in shut down mode. The audience doesn’t feel we are sold on what we are saying and rapidly conclude they are not sold either.
It is easy to get locked into one mode and difficult to break out of it, to inject some vocal and body language variety. We need that variety to keep our audience engaged and also to cover all the bases with the variety of people sitting in front of us. Some will be rambunctious and love the loud. Others will be timid and prefer the low threat environment of the softly spoken presenter. Being in one mode only means we lose a part of our audience. We don’t want to lose anyone when we are speaking.
I found this myself in Kobe. I was speaking in English to a group of departing American University exchange students. I gave a General Patton style power play of motivation about how they should take all the things they had learned in Japan, go back home and really shoot the lights out.
Man, I was powerful, energized, committed, on a complete roll. I was also one single stop on the volume control - loud. It was a twenty minute speech and it was full on, from start to finish. There was no dialing the power up and down. I was pretty happy with it. I thought I had been so wonderfully motivating, giving these young people the full benefit of my many years in Japan and my broad and deep perspectives on life and success. A true tour de force, or so I imagined.
Immediately after me was a Korean Professor, who was teaching at that host University. When he spoke, it was clear, but a little bit soft. I found I had to lean in to hear him and had to concentrate on what he was saying. I had to work a bit to get the message. Now the interesting thing was the complete contrast to the full force gale these students had been subjected to by me. Here we all were, really concentrating on what the good Prof was saying.
I was sitting there thinking to myself, “ah, so soft can also work when presenting”. As I got more experience and knowledge, it became clear that our talks need to mix it up. Now that sounds easy to say, but when you are confident in one mode, it is not so easy to just switch gears and go to the opposite mode.
The secret is in the planning and the rehearsal. Here we hit two major stumbling blocks. Most people do zero planning about the delivery component. They spend all their time putting together the power point visuals. They score another big zero too when it comes to rehearsing. They practice their speech live, for the first time, on their audience. Uh oh!
When we are planning, we need to look for which parts of the speech we are going to accentuate with power – including voice, facial expression and body language. We also look at where we are going to drop the energy and voice, to draw our audience into us.
The telling of stories in speeches is very powerful. They lend themselves well to harmonizing the ups and downs of the delivery, with the flow of the story. Break the speech into 4-5 minute blocks and see where the tempo needs raising or lowering. Make sure you practice to make the switch, otherwise you will find yourself on one power control point throughout.
The result is we can keep the attention of everyone in the audience and get our message across to all.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations.
Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
Boris Johnson’s Lessons On Public Speaking
As the Foreign Secretary for Britain, Boris Johnson gets a lot of practice giving speeches and fielding tough questions. There is the temptation to say, “Well of course he is a good public speaker, he is a politician after all, isn’t he”. That is true, except that very few politicians are any good at public speaking and amongst those who are good, he is certainly up there with the best. Being an Aussie, I have no well informed views on Boris as a politician. I use him as an example, because I want to draw out some lessons for all of us, on how to become better public speakers. If you do or don’t like him as a politician, then fine, but let’s limit our discussion to his speaking abilities.
At the British Chamber event he spoke at, he gave a short address and then took previously submitted questions from the audience. We talk about some people being larger than life and that is the feeling we get when we see him in action. He radiates energy and confidence. He grew up in a wealthy family, had an excellent education at Eton and Oxford and then worked as a high profile journalist. We may have none of these things in common with him, but we can take heed of the power of projecting energy and confidence.
Even if we are not particularly confident, we can raise our energy levels and this will make us appear more confident to the audience. For various emotional reasons, some speakers wish to share the information with us that they are not feeling confident, that they are poor at public speaking and that they are scared of the occasion. They do this in the belief that this will elicit a certain amount of sympathy and understanding from the audience and we will go easy on them.
This is a false dawn of hope, because that is not what the audience is thinking at all. The audience is already totally distracted by the time we get up to speak and what they are expecting is to be entertained and informed. They see our role as to provide that. If we kick things off with this confessional approach, we will have large swaths of the crowd quickly whipping out their hand held device and escaping to the internet.
Boris has enough confidence to derive humour at his own expense. He is comfortable to talk about his inadequacies, because he knows people have trouble identifying with Mr. or Ms. Perfect. We can’t feel close to people like that, because they are so alien from our experience. He also knows that his ability to connect with the audience will balance those self-confessed failings out. This is different from telling us you are hopeless as a speaker.
What he is doing is finding ways to connect with the audience and not come across as a smarty pants type we won’t like. With his intellect and elite education, he could quite easily display his mental acuity, but that won’t connect him with his audience. He has a good capacity to seem like the “common man”, albeit one educated at the best academic institutions the UK can provide. Now we might be an expert or an authority in our own field and it is quite easy to slip into the mode of Professor teaching the great unwashed. Not taking yourself too seriously requires confidence but it worth adding in some examples of this here and there. Don’t overdo it though, because it can come across as totally manufactured.
He has a style of speech which is full of connectors. He incites us to feel part of his crowd. He had a very good understanding of who was in his audience that day and encouraged us to feel he was making some remarks to family. Know your audience before you speak is a golden rule in presenting. Research who will be in the room, so you know how best to connect with them. This inclusive style of speaking is very effective. It is the feeling of being let in on a secret, of being brought into the fold, of being one of the in-crowd, we are all in this together, etc.
He does this with words, but also physically. He leans in, he makes constant eye contact with his audience, he projects his energy toward us. He also cleverly relieves the tension or any complexity, by playing around with that unruly mop of blond hair sitting above his cranium. We may lack the coif, but we can lean in, we can look individuals in the eye for around six seconds and encourage each person to feel we are speaking directly with them alone.
He is very good at making us all feel that, despite any differences, we are all on the same side. He does this by looking for points with which it is easy for us to agree. This is something we should be planning for our talks. How can we phrase ideas in such a way that it is very easy for the audience to support that construct. This is not dumb luck or random chance. This is a result of careful planning at the speech design stage. We look for common outcomes, which we will all feel are beneficial and we relate what we are saying to provide that context. Design “Buy In” and your chances of getting connectivity go up dramatically. Most speakers spare not a second for this in the planning and wonder why they can’t connect with their audience.
At the very end, he restated his key points, so that the last thing we remembered was what he wanted us to recall. We should always make it our habit to do the same with our audiences. Also, when he finished, he finished. He didn’t dilute the key messages by trying adding anything or take us off on a tangent. He said what he wanted to say and left the podium. We should do the same. Resist the urge to add too much. It only detracts from the core content we want to get across.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.