Presenting: Good Is The Enemy Of Great

I was recently reminded of this point about a good presentation being the enemy of a great presentation. Two speakers with a tonne of business experience gave their talks, one after the other. Both were very confident, quite competent and rather boring. By most people’s measure they probably did a “good job”, but they could have been great instead. What was missing? The neglected elements are what makes the difference between being great rather than just being good.

One of the speakers used notes and did a pretty fair attempt of looking at the audience rather than concentrating on the text. This is not easy. You have to read the content, then reproduce it from memory, as you are eye balling the audience. If you think this is a snap, just try it.

Did he need to have a written text? Actually no. He could have talked to his key points, given he was highly articulate and experienced enough to do so. Being able to spend more time engaging with the assembled masses, rather than engaging with your script takes work. The content contained all of the expected things. That is an issue as well. Once your audience realizes you are doing the usual routine expected of someone in your exalted position, they tend to mentally switch off.   It was delivered with supreme confidence and you could tell this wasn’t the speaker’s first rodeo. It was good, but it wasn’t great.

The second speaker upped the ante and spoke with no notes. This is a much better version. It means you can spend your entire speaking time engaging your audience with eye contact. It would have been better if the speaker had actually done that, picking out individuals in the crowd and engaging them one by one. Rather, it was one of those one size fits all jobs, where the speaker is talking to everyone and no one at the same time.

It was a big crowd. In these cases, when you select one person and you look and speak directly to them, the distance involved provides the illusion that you are talking directly to a number of people standing or sitting around the person you are actually concentrating on. It means you are engaging many individuals with the sensation that you are directly addressing them and no one else in the room at that moment. This is so powerful you would think all speakers would do it.

So both speakers were using eye contact, but it was fake eye contact. It looks like they are speaking to the people in front of them, but actually it is an undifferentiated mass affair, rather than creating a feeling of one on one intimacy.

All you have to do to change that, is look directly into the eyes of one person for around six seconds and they will feel a profound sense of personal connection with you. Why six seconds? The time spent under six seconds can come across as fleeting and perfunctory, rather than a genuine attempt to really engage. Over six seconds of you staring intently at someone, brings out the fear you are a psycho axe murderer, to the audience member involved.

The other element that was missing was engagement with the message. I am struggling with finding the correct descriptor here. Uninspiring platitudes is too harsh a judgment, because I am sure they were genuine in what they were telling the audience. The problem was it sounded just like the type of thing they should be saying, so our expectations were met, rather than exceeded. Good, but not great.

On both occasions, there were no attempts to connect with the audience at the emotional level through storytelling. This is rather the problem with most business speakers. They are talking to us, but not engaging or moving us. Storytelling really brings the human element to the fore. We easily follow the plot, we can identify with the characters and we will feel an emotional connection with the point being made by the speaker. This is how you go beyond good to achieve greatness, as a communicator in business. The fatally sad part is that both of these speakers’ professional lives are absolutely brimming with human stories which we can naturally grasp and appreciate. There is such a richness in using stories to drive home the point, but the treasure was unspent on this occasion. Why?

Because they couldn't go beyond being good to challenge themselves to be great. This is the issue when we gain confidence to address an audience. We feel we were professional, that we did a good job, that we completed the task competently compared to most others. This is true, but we fall short of our full potential when we are self-satisfied with these lower rungs on the ladder to speaking success.

It sounds harsh but realistically most business presenters we experience are rubbish, so our scope of comparison creates a false sense of achievement. We need to become the best we can possibly be. To do that we need to engage the audience with our eyes, speak directly to them and regale them with human stories that really stir their emotions. This should be the standard against which we measure ourselves.

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.

Interview by Guy Perryman from Tokyo InterFM 897

As presenters we work across many mediums.  Most often we are standing in front of an audience presenting.  Someimes we are able to use video for television or own own TV shows on YouTube.  I have done many television interviews over the years and now host my own television programme on YouTube called The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show.  Podcasts are a type of radio show which allows individuals to broadcast their messages, without relying on the traditional media.  I have also done a lot of radio interviews as well and now host three podcast shows a week.

Being interviewed though is another ball game, because you ose control of two very important things - the content direction and the editing of the final version which goes to air.

Radio requires a number of things and obviously when you are only able to project your voice, what you say and how you say it become vital.  In this interview I am trying to demonstrate how to do both.  I didn't know what the exact questions would be in advance, although I knew the general direction the show would take.  

This means you need to think fast and try to make your responses as interesting as possible to the listening audience.  What we say should be interesting and this is where storytelling is so powerful.  Also the use of the voice to have variety and energy is important to keep the audience listening to you.

We shouldn't miss any chance to persuade our audience to do what we suggest.  We are in the persuasion business and so we need to have an action we want the listeners to take.  If you believe in what you are doing, you should never be shy about recommending it to others.  I talk about the Dale Carnegie course in this interview, not to sell more courses.  I talk about it because I know we have the cure, the magic formula for so many people and they need it.  My job is to get the message out and this type of broad based audience is a great chance to do just that.

Listen to this interview and ask yourself if you were being interviewed, how would you go?  Would you be abe to present your suggestion for the people listening in a way that they would accept?  Would you be able to weave some stories into your talk to hold everyone's interest?  Are you prepared to share personal things about yourself so that your audience can more easily connect with you?

Oprah’s Golden Globe’s Speech Carries Smart Lessons

Oprah Winfrey has been celebrated by many for her recent acceptance speech at the Golden Globes event. It proves once again the power and attraction of being able to command an audience and being persuasive with your message. Like her or loath her, that performance was very impressive. She is a seasoned professional, with many years in the limelight, so naturally she was very comfortable up there on stage. The surprising thing for me though is how many famous actors have trouble stringing two words together, when it is their turn to speak without a scriptwriter feeding them the lines. So being a celebrity, being in the business, is no guarantee of oratorical magic. What can wepick up from her speech to make our own presentation’s more successful?

I like the fact that Oprah started straight away with a story. She located the story in time in 1964, with a location - her as a child sitting on the linoleum floor of her mother’s house watching the Academy Awards on television. By giving us the time and location she is urging us to mentally transport ourselves back to our own childhood, sitting on the floor watching television like she was. With a few short descriptors she has mentally taken us with her. This is why telling stories makes us so powerful as communicators. She has grasped out total attention. No one in that audience was reaching for their mobile phone to check their Facebook or Instagram accounts during that story.

She wrapped up the story by transitioning to comments about the judging panel and then connected that segue with the current debate about the role of the press. This is a big topic and again, something that everyone has been exposed to recently, so it is easy for us to understand what she is talking about. Putting issues into a topical reference point makes it relevant to the audience and more interesting.

She used some powerful headliner sentences during her talk to engage the emotions of the audience. The first was when she said “speaking your truth”. This related the issues about the accuracy of reporting of the press with the current scandals about the abuse of power by men, which has seen famous men fall by the wayside, one after another. This use of a rallying cry is made to engage and energise the audience. Being able to reduce complex issues down to a headline is a real skill, but these are the things on which successful rallying cries are built. She also used another good segue to link the current issue with the issues her mother and others like her endured, again linking back to the start of the story.

By bringing up the VC Taylor story of her kidnap and rape on the way home from church, connected the theme of men using their power to abuse women, by putting it into an historical civil rights context. The extension of that story to include Rosa Parks again linked an unknown person VC Taylor to a more famous personality, to bring more credibility and memory power to the listener’s perspective. Now she has built a platform of context for her most powerful rallying cry of “Their time is up”.

There is a certain cadence to this build up. She was piling on the references to injustices of the past, to show the current injustices in a historical light and then hammer home her powerful statement of the current moment - “their time is up”.

Getting this type of build in a story is the art of storytelling. We need to set the scene, add the logs to build the fire and then throw the petrol on the fire at the right moment, to ignite the audience’s emotions. This was a masterful piece of planning and execution to get to the point of the story.

She used the “Me Too” mantra as a plea for no more cases, moving the completion of the speech to a more positive bent. She had been talking about a lot of negative things in the first part of the speech, but now she was moving the audience along the scale from desperation that nothing can ever change, to one where change is a reality. She mentioned more headline phrases, “hope for a brighter day” and then talked about a “new day on the horizon”. This is leaving the audience with hope for a better world. This is a powerful, positive call to end the speech with.

This is a useful thing to remember for our own talks because often we can be going deep into a problem and can get trapped in a negative loop. She ended with a clear Thank You and that was it, nothing more added or needed to be added and all done in under 10 minutes. Make it clear for the audience that you have finished. In our talks we can have a Q&A session, so it needs to be apparent to the audience where we are in the programme and that they can now ask their questions.

Another thing I noticed was she had controlled passion throughout this talk. She was using great energy to bring her words to life. She was also totally congruent with her content and her delivery. What she was saying and the way she said it matched up perfectly and we have to make sure we are doing the same in our talks. If it is a serious subject, then look serious and no jokes.

Her eye line was adding to her message. She was working the left, center and right sides of the room, as well as direct to the viewing audience, when she would look straight at the camera. This makes for a very inclusive style of speech. We should make sure we are addressing the entire audience. We should try to pick out people in the audience and speak directly to them for about 6 seconds, before picking up another person, repeat and repeat and repeat until we are finished. I noticed she also didn’t let the audience applause break her timing, she carried on over the top of it, to keep the flow. When we have found our speaking rhythm we should keep going with it.

A polished performance and one that reinforces the importance of planning well what it is you are going to say. She injected crescendos into that speech with strong well composed headlines. She embraced key messages into the stories which themselves were easy to follow. She involved her audience by engaging with them. We can do all of these things as well, all we need to do is plan for the impact we want and then work backwards constructing how to achieve it. Speaking has so much power and all we have to do is learn how to tap into that well.

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.

No Warning Speaking

Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks. Uh oh. No preparation, no warning and no escape. What do you do? Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter. It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue. One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there in your chair, taking a mild interest in the proceedings going on around you and next you are the main event.

Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds. By the time you have heaved yourself out of your chair, your brain has well and truly started to panic. A mental whiteout is probably fully underway and your face is going red, because of all the blood pressure of the moment.

Here are a couple of things we can do in this situation. Firstly, take a realistic look at the task at hand. The length of your talk will not be expected to be long. If you are a seasoned speaker, you could get up and wax lyrical for an hour without a problem. For everyone else, we are talking two to three minutes. Now two to three minutes seems rather short, except when you are suddenly thrust in front of a sea of expectant eyes of an audience.

Once upon a time, I completely forgot my next sentence and discovered the pain of prolonged time. I was asked to give a brief talk in Mandarin to a crowd of around a thousand people, when I was Consul General in Osaka. It was a special event for the departing Chinese Consul General Li, who was heading to New York. Actually, I was going okay but I paused to allow some applause to die down – this turned out to be a major error on my part.

I found when you go suddenly blank, a single microphone stand doesn’t provide much cover, up on a very big stage, with all the lights on you and everyone staring at you. That 30 seconds or so of silence, where I was totally lost and unable to recall what came next, seemed like a lifetime. So I know that two to three minutes can appear really daunting when suddenly called upon to speak.

Begin by thanking whoever unceremoniously dragged you up the podium for the chance to say a few words. Try and smile at them, through gritted teeth if you have to. You have to say something, so take the occasion and put your comments into some form of context.

You can use the concept of time as your ally. For example, here is where we were, here is where we are today and here is where we are going in the future. This past, present, future construct will work for just about any occasion and any subject. That is the type of ready to go format you need to be able to call upon when you don’t have much preparation time up your sleeve.

Another good construct is macro and micro. Talk about the big picture issues related to the occasion, then talk about some of the micro issues. This is useful for putting the event into a frame you can speak about easily. There is always a big and small picture related to any topic. Again, this construct travels easily across occasions and events.

We can use the weather, the location, the season or the time of the day as a theme. We can put this event into any of those contexts rather easily. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a long presentation.

We can talk about people that everyone would know, who are related to the event. They might be present or absent. We can make a few positive remarks about our host. Then we can thank everyone for their attention, wish them our best and get off the stage.

Let me give you a real life example. I was at an event for Ikebana International, sitting there calmly minding my own business, when I heard the speaker suddenly call me up to the stage to say a few words. I had the time from standing up to walk to the podium to compose myself about what on earth I would say. At the extreme that time gap was probably 10 seconds. I was going to need to speak in Japanese, so that just added another level of excitement to the challenge. It had been raining that day, so I miraculously dreamed up a water related analogy.

I began by thanking the host for allowing me to say a few words, although I secretly I wasn’t so happy about being put on the spot. I mentioned that the stems of the Australian cut flowers that were being exhibited that day, contained water and soil from Australia, as they had just arrived that morning by air. I said that as a result here in Japan we had a little bit of Australia present and each of these flowers were like a floral ambassador linking the two countries together. I then wished everyone all the best for the event and got out of the firing line pronto. Probably not an award winning talk, but good enough for that occasion, with that amount of notice. And that is the point. You need to be able to say something reasonable rather than remarkable to complete your sudden duties.

So always have a couple of simple constructs up your sleeve if you are suddenly asked to speak without warning. Don’t just turn up thinking you can be an audience member and can switch off or these days start immersing yourself in your phone screen. Imagine you were suddenly singled out for action and have your construct ready to go just in case.

You may not be called upon, but everyone around you will be impressed that you could get up there and speak without warning. The degree of difficulty here is triple back flip with pike sort of dimension and everyone knows it. They are all thinking what a nightmare it would have been, had it been them up there in the firing line. You will be surprised how much a difference that little bit of preparation will make to coming across as professional, rather than uming and ahing your way through a total shambles of a talk. Your personal brand will be golden for the sake of a bit of forward planning. Now that would be worth it don’t you think.

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 The Rhetorical Question

Questions in general are powerful tools for speakers. They bring focus to key points we want to get across. They are particularly useful in getting our audience engaged. They also have danger within them. Knowing when to use questions and what types of questions to use are things which must be worked out in the planning of the presentation and shouldn’t be done on the fly. If you want to get yourself into trouble then ask the wrong question at the wrong time and brace yourself for the reaction.

There is a cadence to any talk or presentation and in the planning phase we can break the delivery down to five minute blocks. It doesn’t have to be five, it could be four or six, but five minutes is a long enough time to go deep with a thought, idea or imparting some information without losing the concentration of the audience.

Actually audience concentration spans are a nightmare today. They have become so short and everyone has become addicted to multitasking. Even if they are enjoying the presentation, they are scrolling through their screens right in front of you anyway, without any hint of shame.   This is the new normal. We will face this problem forever and we are never going back to the good old days of people politely listening to us right through our presentations.

This is why we need to be switching up the presentation every five minutes or so, to keep the audience intrigued with what we are presenting. This is where great information or insights really help. The audience access to something new or valuable will pry them away from their screens for a few minutes longer. We will need to be using the full range of our vocal delivery skills to keep them with us. Any hint of a monotone delivery and the hand held screens will be blazing light throughout the room.

Questions are an additional assist to break through the competing focus for audience attention. By simply asking a well constructed question we can grab audience attention. We may have been waffling along taking about some pressing issue or downloading some precious data, losing our listeners in the process. However when we lob in a question, we magically get all eyes back on us. We have now gotten the audience thinking about the point we have raised.

The downside with asking questions though is people in the audience want to answer them. They see the question as a great opportunity for them to intervene in the proceedings. They may have a counterview and enjoy the chance to debate with us. They may have their own personal agenda and this break in the traffic is perfect for them to weigh in with what they think. They may even get into debates amongst themselves and exclude us entirely. Within no time at all, the proceedings have been hijacked and we are no longer in control of the agenda.

This is where rhetorical questions are so handy. They give us the ability to capture the mental attention of our audience on the topic we are discussing, get them engaged but maintain the control. A rhetorical question and a real question are identical. The audience cannot distinguish one from the other. This is good, because we can keep them guessing. What we want them thinking about is whether this a question they have to answer and are they ready to do that or is this a rhetorical question and all they have to do is listen? The difference between the two is the timing of the break before our next contribution. If we stop there and invite answers then they know it is time to speak up. If we leave a pregnant pause, but then answer the question or add to it, then they know they are not being required to contribute.

The key point here is to design the questions into the talk at the start. In those five minute blocks we need to have little attractions to keep interest. They might be powerful visuals, great storytelling, vocal range for effect or rhetorical questions. The key is to have variety planned from the start. In a 40 minute speech, apart from the opening and the closings, there are going to be 5-6 chances to grab attention. At the start we can use vocal range and visuals but as we get to the middle and toward the end, we need to bring in the bigger guns as people start to fade out.

We can’t flog the audience with a series of rhetorical questions and wear them down. We can maybe get in two or maximum three in a forty minute presentation. Anything we repeat gets boring very fast. Anything that smacks of manipulation gets the wrong response.

There is a fine line to be walked here. We do want to control the agenda, the debate, the timing, the attention of the listeners, without appearing controlling. Sprinkling a couple of well constructed rhetorical questions into our presentation will help us to maintain interest and defeat our screen based, social media and internet addictive rivals. Get used to this, because this is the future for all of us as presenters and we have to lift our game to make sure we are in a position to have a powerful influence with our audiences. The alternative is speaker oblivion.

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.