How To More Concise, Clear and Persuasive When Presenting
We run training on presentations and public speaking continuously. These three requests to be more concise, clear and persuasive, often come up from the participants, regarding the nominated areas where they want to improve. In this Age of Distraction, if you miss the first two, you can kiss goodbye to number three. As soon as an audience hears you rambling, they are scrambling for the mobile phones to exit your talk. When you are mystifying your audience, they bolt for digital device safety.
I am the only English native speaker in my team here in Tokyo. My staff all have very fluent English and are skilled communicators. One of them however, as much as I love her to death, drives me nuts. When her brain has fixed on a topic she launches straight into the main body of what she wants to tell me. It has become a bit of a running joke in the office, because I will stop her and ask “what is the subject of this wonderful exposition?”.
We can do the same things when we are speaking. We are so deep into our subject, we forget that the people listening are unable to follow our thread, because we haven’t set up the topic properly. We have phases of our talk. The opening is the dynamite, the nitro. We light the fuse and blow everyone out of their complacency, sloth and slumber in order to get them to pay attention to us.
In the main body of our talk we need to be thinking in terms of five minute blocks. At around this frequency, we need to be switching it up, to keep our audience attached to what we are saying. We might do this through a powerful story, an impactful slide, an insightful quotation, or a killer question. When we make a statement in the main body, we need to make sure we are bolting on some evidence to prove what we are saying. Data, statistics, survey results, testimonials are all excellent sources of credibility for our provocative claims.
The arrangement of the blocks needs to have a logical flow. It might be by theme, chronological, micro to macro, problem-solution-result or any number of easy to follow formulas. The point is to choose one and use it, rather than allowing the muse to take you on a journey without direction.
Bridges between the sections are useful guideposts too. For example, “We have covered XYZ, now let me explore ABC”, or “In a moment let’s investigate the influence the economy may have on our projections”, or “There are three key things we must be vigilant for, the first is….”. These are threads to stitch the whole presentation together into a format the listener can follow without having to work hard at all. If we make our audience work hard, we often find they are all lazy escape artists and we have lost them.
Time is the weapon of choice for the speaker when it comes to learning to shave words, hone sentences and trim excess. Rehearsal is absolutely key to getting the timing correct. On how many occasions have we all had to sit there and listen to an unprofessional speaker tell us they are “running out of time” and they will have to “whip” through the last slides? How do we feel? Cheated, big time! We came to get some key information from the talk and skipping over key slides to satisfy some arbitrary time constraints has us worried we are not getting full value from the time we are allocating.
When the stop watch is running, you learn to sharpen up the prose, glean the essentials and focus on the most important things only. Rambling away soon trips you up and you realise you need to cut the excess and stick to the most powerful points only.
When we get to the end, we wrap it up with two closes, one for the pre-Q&A and one for the very end. These are our opportunities to underscore our punch lines, hammer our main conclusion, reinforce the ideas we are promulgating and leave the audience with a thought pounding so loudly in their ears that it won’t get easily displaced by something else. The close puts a nice bow on the whole enterprise, wrapping things up sweetly.
Action Steps
Man, Your Monotone Is Killing Me
Normally we expect Japanese speakers to be boring, because their language is a monotone and so they apply the same formula when speaking in either Japanese or English. That is okay in a way, because it is a cultural thing. However, for foreigners there is no excuse. If you are giving your talk in a monotone, expect to lose your audience. Forty minutes of listening to some speaker’s monotone delivery is enough to make most people suicidal. Regardless of how gripping the topic, the grip of slumber proves more powerful and relentless.
This was me recently. I turned up at the appointed time for the talk, all full of vim and vigour, eagerly awaiting the unveiling of this troubling topic. The speaker came with a grand resume, a prince among princes on this topic. It wasn’t princely. He wasn’t even the jester. It was more like a lecture from the hooded hangman or the grim executioner.
My eye lids grew heavy as he droned on and on. Seated unwisely toward the front, I struggled to observe the common courtesies, as my eyes willed to close. It was excruciating. I was sitting there thinking, why is such a vital topic being garrotted here in full view of everyone, by the way he delivering this talk? What is it about this delivery that is driving me to sleep?
I think there were three factors at play in particular. The monotone itself is a noise we often refer to as white noise. Your refrigerator often gives off this low hum. It is there all the time. Well not your Japanese refrigerator, because the living spaces are are too small here to put up with that, so Japanese technology ensures they are a silent as the tomb. I mean your big western model, in your big kitchen, in your big house. The speaker’s monotone mimics this white noise that has no highs and lows to keep us interested. I don’t recommend you telling any speakers soon that their talk was as exciting as the white noise of your refrigerator, but you are certainly allowed to think that.
The refrigerator monotone also has the feature of being continuous. This was our speaker too. He just warbled away for the entire time with almost no pauses. Pattern interrupters like pauses are good for the brain, to keep audience attention on what you are talking about. They are like little warning buzzes that something has changed and we should pay attention to the speaker. Pauses are translators for us. We can take a moment to translate what was said into our own understanding. Continuous talking ensures each idea is drowned by the succeeding wave of the next idea.
There are no key words in a monotone. Every sentence has equal value and every word in a sentence is tremendously democratic and the same as every other word. I like democracy in political systems but not so keen on this in speeches. I want key words highlighted by voice modulation. I have just finished narrating the audio version of my next book Japan Business Mastery. I don’t have a great DJ style baritone voice. In fact, after 48 years of doing all that yelling, the kiai, in karate training, people tell me I have a rather husky voice. Sadly no one says “sexy husky voice”, they just nominate it is husky. Nevertheless, I don’t ask better qualified professionals to do it, because they won’t know which are the key words I want to hit harder than others. This isolating out particular words for attention, is what makes the talk more interesting. We are guiding the listener along a path we have predetermined about how they should think about what we are saying.
It was painful. Talks shouldn’t be painful should they. We go to be informed or persuaded or motivated or entertained and possibly all four if the speaker is really good. Check yourself by taping your delivery. Are you using voice modulation, pauses and punching out key words for emphasis? If you are not, then bring some pillows for the audience members, because that will wind up being your most valuable contribution to the proceedings.
Action Steps
Visual Elements In Presentations
There is no question visuals are super powerful in presentations. This can range from your eye contact, body language, gestures all the way up to actual live fireworks. Think about sporting presentations where they make heavy use of visuals to stir emotions. The half time show is full of music, fireworks, action. The team scores a goal and the big screens are zeroing in on the action that just occurred. The boxers are introduced as they enter the arena and fireworks are exploding behind them, like they are modern messiahs here to save the masses. You might not think of it this way, but this is what you are competing with today, as the lines get blurred between how events are presented.
There you stand, with just your slide deck advancer in your hand. You are facing an audience fully tooled up on the most realistic computer games, viral videos, light show events and quick cut video action. You are thinking your information quality will carry the day, because you speak in a monotone, are deadly boring most of the time and embolden us with the passion of road kill. Sad to say, but none of this ever worked well and it certainly doesn’t work today.
The quality of your information has zero significance if no one is paying attention to what you are saying. In this Age of Distraction, audiences are leaping on to their phones at the first sign of tedium. Even when binge watching their favourite television series, they have the implement of destruction - their phone - at the ready to take up and multi task.
The question today is how to integrate all of this cool stuff into our presentations without it overwhelming us, the presenter. Slide shows are an ever present danger, as the audience loses their connection with us and are absorbed by what is up on the screen. The worst thing you can do is hand out the slide deck beforehand, because you are on slide two and they are on page eighteen. The disconnect with what you are saying becomes close to total at this point.
Videos can be very good for presenting things in an attractive manner. I was watching a video at a presentation recently and the supporting video was very slick. It managed to capture the action, the drama, the excitement in a way that formed a positive impression. This is the key word though – impression. It doesn’t last. We have our attention monopolised for a short period of time and then we are back to distraction HQ.
What I notice with most presenters who are using video is they let the video run wild and they don’t attempt to control it. By this I mean, they just play the video. We should have an intro for the video and an outro for after. We shouldn’t just let our audience watch the video as if every aspect has the same value. We want to be hitting key messages in that video, in the same way that we hit key words in our sentences to create greater emphasis for our messages.
The video will have one scene or a couple of scenes which help us with our messaging and rather than just running the video, we want to focus our audience’s attention right there. We need to set that up. For example, “In this video please look for the scene with the interview with our Chief Scientist. What she has to say is fascinating and may change your perspective entirely”. When we hear a set up like that, we are now in a heightened state of anticipation. We are wondering what is she going to say that will change my perspective?
Once the video is over, we need to wrap a bow around the key messages and refer back to the evidence we presented in the video to back up our point of view on the subject. For example, “What I like about the message in that video is that we can control our future, if we choose to take that route”. This sentence would be referring back to your key message from your talk, so that the whole thing is congruent. This is how we control the video, rather than what has become the norm – the video controls the speaker or it is just fluff, that has no lasting impact and everyone has forgotten it within the next thirty seconds.
As presenters, we have to ensure the focus is fully on us and that the audience is completely riveted to what we are saying. The Age of Distraction is also the Age of Destruction for Presenters. We need to control the visual elements, so that they are always our servant and never our master.
The Power Of Conversational Style When Presenting
We often see presenters elevated up on stage or positioned at the front of the room, flanked by or under a screen, and protected from the audience by a rostrum. In Japan standing above your seated audience requires an apology for doing so at the start of the speech. This is a very hierarchy conscious society, so implying your superiority to your audience, through your physical positioning has to be wound back immediately. We add to this feeling by driving the slide deck, playing around with the lighting, using a microphone and speaking in a knowledgeable, commanding voice. All of these devices place a barrier between the speaker and the attendees of the talk.
Is that what we want though – a barrier to our audience? If we want the audience to buy what we are selling we want to have total access to the participants. Believe my statistics, follow my suggestions, take action on my ideas are typical outcomes we want to achieve. Getting people to come with us necessitates persuasion and having appeal. The less barriers between us and them, the better.
A useful approach is to speak conversationally with our audience, as if we were all intimates of long standing, where the trust had been built up over the years and where the simpatico is flowing. It also lends itself to sharing information like confidences, that only the specially initiated and conspiratorial are made privy to. We are letting you into special data and insights, that only those in the room can know.
This requires a switch from speaking at an audience to speaking with an audience. We call out the names of audience members we know or have just met, to build that feeling of connection between speaker and participants. “Suzuki san and I were chatting a moment ago and she made an interesting observation on the subject”, “I am glad my old friend Tanaka san is with us today, because I consider him a great model for what I am proposing”, “Obayashi san and I were speaking during the networking before lunch and she mentioned that there was some new data on this topic”. As soon as we do this, the people we are referring to feel three meters tall, because their name was mentioned in a positive, supporting way. We also break through the mental barrier between speaker and audience by including the audience members into our speech.
The tone we apply moves from oratory to more of a chatting over the backyard fence style. It is much more inclusive, convivial, endearing and conversational. We still pick out key words for emphasis by either putting the power in or pulling it out, we use pattern interrupters like speeding up or slowing down our speaking speed. A conversational monotone is still a sleep inducer. We need to avoid that. We still use gestures and we will increase the frequency of inclusive gestures. What would be an inclusive gesture? The stylised wrapping your arms around your collective audience is a good one, as if you were drawing them in toward you. Pointing to the audience with your arm outstretched and the palm up is a non-threating way of engaging your audience. Our eye contact at six seconds for each person, has enough balance to make it inclusive without it becoming invasive.
Talking about ourselves, sometimes in a self disparaging manner, reduces the hierarchy feeling between us and them. Boris Johnson is master of this. He has a very elite background, but makes fun of himself in his public speeches. Depending on the audience, he sometimes makes a show of being flustered and disorganised for effect. This positions him better as an “everyman” with his audience, rather than a distant upper class elitist. Not taking yourself too seriously is always good advice, if you want to connect with your audience no matter how brainy, powerful, superior you may see yourself relative to the assembled punters. Just don’t overdo it, because then it becomes sensed as manipulative and fake. A little humour at your own expense goes a long way.
Action Steps
Remember, if you would like any questions you have, answered live by me, then just put in the email header “I am based in…and am interested in joining your live Presentations Q&A” and send that email to me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com. I am planning to do a Zoom meeting with everyone and we will record it for those who can’t make it. Tell me your location because I may do a couple of versions, to best suit your time zone.
Avoiding Flat Presentations
“The good is the enemy of the great” is a clever saying and very true. In presenting terms we can have people who are competent but not even close to maximising their potential. They are sitting there in the lukewarm bath, never experiencing or understanding the joys of an extra ten degrees of heat. In presenting terms, turning your inner thermometer up ten degrees when facing an audience has a tremendous impact.
Our presenter was intelligent, well read, well researched and had good content. The presentation was workman like. It got done. The content was covered. The points were made, the slides were run through, the questions got handled. And then….
This is the point. There was nothing. It wasn’t retained in the audience’s mind. There wasn’t that feeling of WOW. It just dribbled out and ended, disappearing into the void with all of mankind’s other mediocre speeches. What was missing? Where was that ten degrees of heat which was never applied?
The opening was flat. It just started. The level of voice strength of the speaker, chatting with the attendees before the talk and the start of their actual talk, was at the same strength. The body language was at the same calibration for before and after the start. It was if the speech was just a continuation of the dialogue that had been going on prior to the kick off.
Everyone has a full brain when they walk in to hear us talk. We have to get out the crow bar and jemmy our way in there to be heard. That means the first words out of our mouth have to signal the talk has now begun, pay attention, listen up, cease and desist what you have been doing prior. We have to clearly draw a line for the audience to get them to concentrate on what we are saying. We only have a few seconds to capture their attention so they will grant us their permission allow us to hold their attention.
We cannot leave such a vital intervention to chance. We must design it carefully. The words have to be laden with hooks to keep them interested and with us. We might lure the audience into our story, using word pictures to capture their imagination. We want them to mentally see the scene we are painting. We could hit them with a stunning statistic that baffles the brain and make it sit up and take note. It might be a quotation from a famous person to add credibility to the point we are making. We need to plan for cut through.
Part of that planning needs to involve how we are going to marshal our physical resources particularly our eyes, voice, gestures, posture and positioning. Voice is where we start, because that is a powerful tool to break into the consciousness of the audience. By lifting the volume up, we force people to stop whatever it is they are doing and listen to us. When we add in a gesture to back up the voice the overall impact is strong. We cannot use eye power with the whole audience at the same time and have any impact so we select one person around the middle, then we give them both barrels of eye contact, for around six seconds. We just keep repeating this as we work our way through the whole audience. If it is a huge crowd we keep doing the same thing and at a certain distance, everyone sitting around the intended recipient of our eye power thinks we are looking at them anyway. We can physically move closer to our audience. When we do that, we use our standing height above a seated audience, to tower over them and add more power to our physical presence.
If we can get the start going well, then all we have to do is maintain that throughout the talk. We will add in vocal range when we are talking, to keep our audience in Japan from going to sleep. We can uses pauses for emphasis and to build anticipation. The key is to get a good start and then maintain the energy. Our speaker started small, stayed small and finished small. The whole thing was muted, flat, unremarkable and infinitely forgettable. Don’t be one of those speakers.
Action Steps