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.