Why Do You Need To Bother With Presenting
As usual I got the venue early. I was doing what I teach others in sales to do, get to the venue early, check the nametags of who are attending. This way you can put faces to names of people you know and you can see if there is a potential client in the room who you would like to meet. The speaker was also there nice and early setting up. This is a very good practice and allows you to fix any technical issues which arise. Sure enough the stand microphone was not working properly and she could not be heard at the back of the room. So a pin microphone was called for. While waiting, I was chatting about whether she did much public speaking. I was a little bit astonished by her answer.
She said she did not and that this would be the last one she would do. She mentioned she got a lot of invitations but declined them. Now as a strong advocate and preacher of doing public speaking to grow your company and professional brands, I was aghast to hear this sacrilegious viewpoint. She dug the knife in deeper and twisted it when she asked me how many of her competitor CEOs in her industry I had heard talk. Actually, she was right. I could only think of one and that was a long, long time ago.
Now I would have thought that this was a tremendous advantage and would be praying that my competitors stayed as silent as the tomb, so I could go around shooting my mouth off at every opportunity. Interestingly, in her industry the herd instinct seems to prevail over differentiation. If they don’t do it then I shouldn’t do it either.
That seems totally crazy to me. She could use these speaking spots to build up a positive image of her company. She could make sure her firm was top of mind in that competitive high end of the market. Even if we didn’t all become consumers of the brand, we would become fans of the brand and would recommend it to everyone over her rival’s alternatives. She has risen to a position of consequence in her job. She is the first female CEO in Tokyo in that industry. What a fantastic chance to grow her personal brand as well. I can’t imagine her current employer or any future employer would look askance at her efforts to promote herself as the face of the brand.
I asked her why she was reluctant to speak and again her answer floored me. She said she didn’t think there was any point running around telling people how great XYZ company was. She believed they needed to experience the quality of the service to appreciate it and her telling people about it wasn’t effective. I must be too deep in the public speaking world to have these types of thoughts.
I said to her, “Nobody is here to hear about XYZ company. They don’t care one iota about XYZ company. They are here to learn what you are doing, your successes and failures, so that they can apply those in their own businesses”. This would have seemed obvious to me, because I do a lot of speaking, but I could see this struck her as an entirely new idea. I explained that in providing value to her audience, her worth and her company’s worth become further enhanced.
So it would seem she didn’t understand her audience and what they wanted. I had read all the name badges, so I knew exactly who was in the room and what companies they came from. This was a gathering of people hungry to learn something new. She could just as easily have asked the organisers who was attending, so that she could tailor her remarks accordingly. She was accompanied by her head of PR, who should have done that for her, but sadly the PR person though charming, appeared clueless about using pubic talks to grow the brand.
One thing I will praise our speaker for was flexibility. After listening to me giving her my mini Master Class in speaking, she did switch gears during her delivery and try and give more audience perspective to what they are doing. It could have been so much better though, if she had planned the talk with that at the forefront of her mind, when she and her team started work on the talk.
The realisation of things I take for granted, not being the common perception, was a good wake up call for me. They say a fish is the last thing to discover water. I will make a bigger effort to promote the idea of public speaking as an absolutely indispensible arrow in the quiver of business and we must learn to become master archers in our field of endeavour.
Dealing With Questions When Presenting
Japan is quite interesting in the sense that you often don’t get any questions after your presentation. Screaming silence at the end. Before the presentation, we often spend our time thinking what would happen if I can’t answer the question or what will I do if I get a tough question? Japan has the opposite issue where the talk falls flat on its face, because there are zero questions for the speaker. The whole construct collapses into anti climax. Having no questions has the inference that the topic wasn’t interesting or that the speaker was a boor, rather than it was a brilliant presentation, which answered everything perfectly and comprehensively. After calling for questions and then being left stranded high and dry, it feels quite embarrassing. On the other hand, getting questions you can’t deal with is also tricky. This is either because you have no idea how to answer them and look a fool or because the question feels more like someone is trying to inflict grievous bodily harm upon you.
The no questions outcome is in fact, a result of lack of planning from the outset. The speaker has prepared a talk where they are focused on transmitting information to the audience. The crowd received it and that was that, game over. We need a different approach. In the planning stage, break your talk up into brackets of around five minutes. At each five minute point, we need to liven things up a bit. We should anticipate our audience might start flagging. We know their attention spans are increasingly microscopic and audiences are so easily distracted today.
Asking a rhetorical question is a good way of dragging everyone back into the room with you. This works because they are not sure if they have to actually answer it or not. Normally we allow the tension to build a little, before we spring the trap and answer it. Sometimes we can just leave it there, hanging and not answer it at all. If you are worried about facing a sea of blank, silent faces at the end of your talk, this is a good seed to plant, to inspire the audience to ask you later about the answer. You have tempted them with your question. However you didn’t sate them with the answer. They are vaguely dissatisfied as a result and may raise it in the question time, because you have sufficiently piqued their curiosity.
We can also pose a straight question to the audience and ask them to consider their thoughts on the subject. We don’t answer it ourselves and we don’t extract any answers from them at that moment either. This is another seed planting expedition to inspire them to ask their questions or make a comment. Or we can invite them to go deeper on a topic or specify we can have more clarification during question time, if there is an interest.
Being the first to do anything in Japan or to volunteer, pushing yourself forward is frowned upon. That is why deathly silence sweeps the room when we get to the Q&A. Therefore as the speaker, we have to create some momentum ourselves. After seeing there are no hands going up, we pose our own question and then we answer it. We can say, “A question I am often asked is....” Having answered our own question, we may find the coast is clear enough for one of the members of the audience to ask their own question. We can also use a sakura or a plant in the audience, to ask the first question, if we worry the atmosphere will collapse when no one puts their hand up. I am sometimes asked by event organisers to ask the first question, if they think the crowd is a bit shy. My job is to get the ball rolling and in all instances it has worked.
In some cases, the question will be outside your scope of understanding or knowledge. Don’t try and bluff your way through it or give some half baked answer to make it seem as if you know the answer. Just say you don’t know and if the questioner will exchange business cards with you later, you will do your best to get the answer. Move on quickly and smoothly, by saying, “who has the next question?”.
Now nasty, hostile, angry, smarty pants questions are a different matter. Either the audience member thinks you are full of crap or grossly mistaken. They think you need correcting and they are just the person to do it. They want to draw your attention to all the other possibilities you have neglected. Sometimes in internal meetings, they may be an ambitious, competitive colleague who wants to take you down. Their aim is to make you look like a numbskull in front of everyone. Or they may be trying to take the whole conversation off piste, on to a mad tangent. They try to highjack the proceedings.
What do we do about that?
We need to understand that the distance between our ear and our mouth is too close. We need a circuit breaker, an injection of rational thought to ward off the default emotional reaction. This is almost impossible to do once the chemicals in the body kick into gear. So we have to get in early to regain control of our brain and mouth. We will usually have some words already formed in our mouths, poised for release. We need to stop that process and switch to another tack. We want to make an initial quite bland, vanilla, neutral statement, which neither extinguishes nor encourages the incendiary question. In the few seconds time it takes for us to make that short filler statement, we can mentally regroup. This allows us to move on to our second or third possible reply. These will always be better thought through than the first one that just bolted out of our mouth.
One little bonus tip.
When you do get around to answering the hostile questioner, maintain direct eye contact with the instigator for six seconds and smile. Then continue with your answer while make eye contact with everyone else in the audience, one person at a time for six seconds each. Never ever give the nasty question originator any more eye contact after that point. Ignore them completely from then on. They were smug, arrogant, narcistic. They were secretly saying to everyone, “look at me, look at me. I asked a zinger question because I am so tough and smart”. They want everyone’s attention, to be the star of the show, to eclipse the speaker, to trample over your presentation. We can’t have that. After that first six seconds of direct eye contact with them to face them down and show you are not scared of them or their zinger question, you simply blank them. Take all the air out of their sails by not giving them any more attention whatsoever, throughout the remainder of the Q&A session.
Action Steps
How Do You Follow On From Really Bad or Really Great Presenters
One of the most painful experiences as a presenter is watching the speaker before you put the entire crowd to sleep with their dull, monotonous monotone delivery. I don’t know which is worse, but the opposite problem is when the speaker was legendary and you hear your name being called because you are up next. Either way, what is your plan? Oh, I see, no plan! Maybe that is not a very good approach.
Often when you are invited to speak at certain events, there are a bevy of presenters and you are one of them. You might be in the Green Room watching on monitors or hidden back stage, waiting to come on. If the current speaker is just droning on, you can literally see the audience wilting. In Japan the wilt factor is high and the wilt speed is quick. There is no social remonstration here about sleeping while the speaker is on stage.
In 1979, when I first arrived in Japan, I was amazed, well actually shocked, to see how Japanese university students felt no compunction about sleeping right in front of the Professor. The good Prof would be warbling away and those in the back rows just checked out. They would fold their arms on the desk, rest their head on their arms and then off to sleepy byes. In Australia, that would have been unthinkable, considered the height of rudeness and you would have been called out for it during the class.
Having attended a huge number of speeches and given hundreds here myself to Japanese audiences, in Japanese, I have seen this time after time. The fatal error is to dim the lights for the slide show and bingo, a good chunk of the audience has just fallen asleep. There are no digs in the ribs with a sharp elbow by neighbours to prod some semblance of respect for the presenter. Everyone just carries on regardless.
I have also been in the nasty position of having to follow on from a speaker who has murdered the audience. By the time I turn up for my talk they are all certifiably brain dead. What can you do to retrieve the situation? Well the concept of this being a distinct possibility in Japan needs to be established in the planning phase. Most people neglect to consider this untoward turn of events if they are one of a number of speakers.
The easiest thing is to pause and not start immediately. The hum of the previous speaker is like a sleeping draft for many in the audience, a bit like white noise in the background. Their brain has adjusted to that low hum and off they go, dropping into blissful slumber. By injecting silence into the room, you break the pattern and pattern interrupt is a key to grabbing attention. The silence also builds anticipation on the part of those still compos mentis. Thirty seconds of silence seems like an eternity and those imagining it is all over now, will emerge from their little nap, to discover you are there on stage ready to go.
This is when you hit it hard with that first sentence. Crank up the volume and be loud without being a screamer. Again, add a slight pause after the first outbreak of hostilities to create more pattern interrupt. Now you have restored everyone’s attention to the speaker, give a truly professional talk, engaging your audience with tonal variety, eye contact, gestures, pauses and great content. Trying to get an audience in Japan to engage with the speaker through raising their hand in response to a question, often generates zero reaction because nobody wants to stand out in the crowd. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” in Japan, so forget any physical refreshment for your audience through speaker nominated actions. Stick to engaging the audience through photographs, especially featuring people. Use storytelling to draw them into your message.
What about the opposite issue when the current speaker is really rocking it? The audience are laughing, clearly enjoying themselves and hanging on their every word. They depart the stage to a rousing ovation with a clearly satisfied reaction. Now they are calling you up. Fortunately you have a plan for such an occasion. You start by turning to face the direction the previous speaker took when they departed the field of battle and you compliment them to your audience. “Wasn’t that a fabulous talk. Thank you very much Suzuki san, that was really great”.
You have now joined the team compact between that star speaker and the audience. You have identified with the audience and they like you, because they agree with you. There is no shame or loss in credibility to praise the other speaker. In fact, it shows just the opposite. You display what a broad mind you have and that you are totally comfortable in your own skin. Not intimidated in the least and simply oozing confidence.
Do not open with an apology ever. Don’t talk about you won’t be as good or tell them you feel really insecure after listening to that speaker. That screams out “loser”. After a slight pause between bonding with the audience as part of previous presenter fan club, you launch right into your talk with a really good question. You know it is a really good question, because you have designed it to be that way. Or you might hit them with a famous quote they all know, from some worthy they all respect.
What you are doing is another version of pattern interrupt. They were tuned into the previous topic and now you need to redirect their minds away from what they have just heard, to listen to what you are going to say. Be professional in your delivery, be valuable in your content and be the best you can be. You may not overpower the impression of the star speaker, you may not vanquish their memory, but you will have shown you are a serious, competent person too.
The key is to have two plans. One for the audience decimator and one for the superstar. No matter what happens you are ready. That will show in your presentation and so your personal and company brand will be enhanced.
Subtly Selling Yourself When Presenting
We have all been there. The speaker gets up to speak after they have had their resume read out by the MC or they do it themselves once they get started. Sometimes the MC makes a mess of it and other times they read out the content without any enthusiasm whatsoever. This is mainly because they are poor public speakers themselves. We should always supply our introduction to the event organisers. This is our personal brand here and we need to make sure we are being represented properly. It doesn’t always go according to plan though.
I hate it when the MC can’t be bothered reading out my carefully crafted, deeply thought through introduction for this audience, on this topic. They decide to abbreviate it or summarise it or wing it in their own words. Invariably this is a substandard product and does nothing to build the brand. I would rather they were incompetent speakers and read it exactly as I wrote it, than if they were extraordinary presenters who just ad-libbed their way through it. We want 100% control of how we are presented to the audience. The MC has zero idea of what we are trying to achieve in our personal branding efforts, so we cannot leave it to their whim on the day.
As the speaker, we should insist that the MC follow our script to the letter. We should instruct the organisers that this is a requirement, because often the organisers and the MC are not the same person. Their job is to tell the MC to toe the line and not stray from the script. In this regard, the organisers will have more influence over the MC than we will have. Nevertheless, we should not rely on the relay of instructions logistics between the organisers and the MC. On the day, we need to speak to the MC directly. Have no hesitation in telling them, “Please read my introduction precisely as I have crafted it, as this is how I wish to represent my personal brand”. This may seem a bit presumptuous, bolshie and pushy but this is your brand. You need to protect it from anarchists, idiots, dilettantes and do gooders.
In the vast majority of cases for business presentations, the organisers have invited us to be fonts of wisdom and impart pertinent insights, deep analysis, and sterling advice to the audience. What they don’t want is blatant self promotion and selling our stuff from the platform. If we break this rule, we won’t be invited back and our reputation will suffer. We also look crass, grasping and opportunist to the audience.
So how do we sell ourselves, when we have that captive audience of possible prospects right there in front of us? Obviously, we are not going to run through the typical laundry list of when our firm started, what our company does, with the usual boring facts, that are immediately forgotten by everyone. Our first step is to get there early, check the venue, the equipment, the arrangements and stiff the MC on their role in contributing to our glorious career. We make sure they know they need to follow the script on introducing us and that they can forget any independent adventurism. As the audience wanders in we start working the room. “Thank you for coming. I am today’s speaker. May I ask what attracted your attention about this topic?”. We engage in some small talk, exchange business cards for follow up later and filter and fillet the participants, to see if there are any potential buyers in the room. If you have other team members with you, they can do the same with the people you may not be able to meet. This way, you have the followup option in play for after the presentation. We need to do this because these days, the organisers are reluctant to share the list of participants, because they are worried about privacy issues.
The second step is to position what you say in a way that represents value to the audience. It gives them useful information on the “what” and the “why” but not too much detail on the “how”. The how bit is what they need to pay you for, once they engage your company. This is a tricky balance between providing substantial value, without providing too many tools for the audience to do it by themselves without you.
We can use a case study formula of (1) client problem, (2) solution and (3) result to show what we do works. In the problem and result part, we can be quite detailed. We are looking for people to identify with the issue, because they have the same one and to impress them with the result, because they want that too. The how part can be described in less detail. For example, “We worked with ABC company to uncover the changes which needed to be made. We did this through using our brainstorming methodology. The beauty of this method is that it works really well in Japan. It eliminates all hierarchy of age, stage, position, rank and delves deep by engaging the quick thinkers, as well as the deeper thinkers. It produces practical, implementable ideas very fast”. In this example, we have outlined how great the method is, without revealing the mechanics of how it works in practice.
The third area for emphasis is when we have done original research. Our global CEO Joe Hart visited Japan in 2018 for the 55thAnniversary celebrations of Dale Carnegie Training in Japan. For his speech to the American Chamber of Commerce he was using original research created for that speech on “AI in the Workplace”. This is a good way of demonstrating that your firm is at the cutting edge and can provide relevant insight into key issues affecting companies in target industries. If you cannot produce original research, then curate the latest and greatest findings which may not be know to the audience. You didn’t make it, but it shows you are well informed and up to date on that subject.
The fourth option is referring to items which are highly complex or involved and mention you can’t go into details right now, but explain that you are happy to speak off line with anyone who has an issue or an interest. This is the lure in the water, set to make the fish bite. You show this shiny object and then take it away, so that the audience want to follow it. This gives you the chance to have people line up after the talk and exchange business cards to get more information. The real object of the speech is to be sitting in their office a few days later, talking in depth about their problems, to see if you have the solution.
We provide value first and foremost. This adds to our personal and company brand. We tease and tantalize the audience, rather than sate them with too much detail. The What and the Why are covered completely, but the How is kept in reserve for a conversation in their office after the event.