Experts, pseudo experts, amateurs, believers, sceptics, supporters, enemies make up that sea of faces in front of us when we get up to speak. We can get some basic data from the organisers about who is in the room. What industries, companies, gender, age configurations are arrayed in those venue seats. What we can’t tell are the information assimilation biases of our audience members. This means we have to plan for a spread of reactions to what we are going to say. By plan, factor that into the content and the delivery of our talk. How do we do that?
There will be four basic personality styles in that random selection of individuals gathered to hear our talk. Obviously we can’t easily satisfy four different demands at the same time. During the course of the presentation we have to input elements which will appeal to all four, at different times. Usually speakers don’t do this at all. They plan and deliver based on their own preferred styles and to hell with the rest of the room. Actually, it isn’t that nuanced. It is not a conscious decision and more of one by neglect.
Content needs to have evidence. The degree of granularity we can go into however will be linked to our knowledge base and also to the time available to cover the topic. If we just bludgeon our audience with numbers for forty minutes, the Analtyicals in the room will be euphoric and everyone else totally nonplussed. They love the detail, the proof, the evidence through numbers and 0.0001 is a fully acceptable number for them. They don’t care about us speaking in a monotone or being fully boring, as long as we keep coming with more valuable data. They will ask us incredibly detailed questions about what we presented and will be carefully checking to spot any contradictions or errors in the numbers or the assertions.
Amiables are very conservative and low key. They don’t like bombastic outbursts. Radical ranting and venting don’t go down very well with them. Calm delivery, in not too a loud a speaking voice is appreciated. They like plenty of reference to people. Who was involved, what did they do, how did they feel about it, are all curiosity factors for them. They generally won’t raise their hand to ask a question, because they prefer to keep a low profile. If we are low key throughout the talk, then the Analyticals and the Amiables will be fine with that, but not so other key types in the audience. We need to have periods of calm interaction with our audience, to keep these first two groups happy. Focusing on data and people tends to go down well.
Expressives are bored with all of that data and hate that low energy stuff speakers get up to. They want some action, flamboyance, excitement, passion, enthusiasm, pizzazz and entertainment. They don’t care too much for the nitty gritty detailed evidence. They want to see some powerful belief and emotional commitment to what we are saying. They like the towering rhetoric of the motivational speaker. If really moved, leaping out of their chairs and being supportive would be no problem for them. We need to provide some big picture speech elements for this group. At specific moments we can unleash our passion for our recommendations, get very powerful in that advocacy and really push out the volume and the energy.
Drivers are very outcome focused, so what value can you bring to me? What can I learn that will make me better so that I can use it to improve what I am doing now. The “five key things”, the “ten steps” are all super attractive frameworks. They want to know the why, the what and the how. They don’t need the cheerleader, because they want the takeaways. They are their own cheerleader, so they search for new knowledge they can apply. Your passion is appreciated but the viability of the information in concrete usage terms is more appealing. Having lots of energy is fine but having very little is not. Be powerful at times but come laden with gifts of guides to doing better.
In our talk we need to have phases that provide value to all four groups. We cannot favour our own style or one other style exclusively, because we have effectively excommunicated the rest of the group. This is a delicate act to pull off, which is why it needs careful thought and planning beforehand. You can't make this stuff up or get the balance right on the fly. We have to start with the premise that we have a range of people in the room. We need to give them all a taste of wonder, defined by how they see that playing out.
In our High Impact Presentations (HIP) course, we do a number of presentations over two days of training. What I love about teaching this programme is that you see the results immediately. If we are teaching leadership or sales, it is very hard to see immediate results and those programmes are multi-week efforts. Day One we have the first presentation which forms the marker for the programme. I challenge everyone to give me their very best, knock it out of the park, most spectacular presentation they have ever given in their life. When we get to the end of Day Two and they compare the last video of their presentation with this first one, everyone has exactly the same reaction “oh, my God” because they have made such vast, almost unimaginable improvement in just two days.
People who are already quite good, become more polished and sophisticated in their presenting. The real eye poppers are those who are shy, panicking, timid or inaudible through fear. Two days later they are unrecognisable from what they were the day before. I was looking at some of this amazing progress being made and I was thinking to myself, what has made this huge difference?
Kiai is a key factor. Kiai (気合) is a Japanese word made up of two characters ki ( 気) and ai (合). Kiai means to bring your life force to a point of convergence. In karate terms, this means the blow is delivered with a total commitment at the point of impact. Your whole bodyweight, mind, breath, voice are all layering on top of each other, to register an explosive outcome inside the body of the opponent. Your middle body area from the hips to the rib cage, are compressing like a vice. All of this is being done at hyper speed as well, to create the maximum amount of power.
The first time I heard a kiai was in February 1971. With other beginners, I was waiting outside a door that led to our first karate class and we could hear all this crazy yelling going on inside. I peaked through the gap in the door and saw many people dressed in these white pajama looking get ups, leaping around and making a hell of racket. I didn’t know then that for the next 50 years, I would be doing the same thing.
The same phenomenon is not limited to martial arts. If you have ever watched competitive weight lifting for example, you will hear the kiai when the lifter drives total concentration to the point of the lift and exhales with a strong breath at the same time. This is what we do in karate and what we need to be doing in our presentations. Instead of grunting and exhaling, we are using our vocal delivery range to bring impact to our message.
The students I was teaching presenting had no kiai when they started the HIP. Their words were just words, spoken at normal conversation level, as if they were chatting with the person sitting next to them. The presenter has permission to lift their speaking voice to a much higher level than is normally the case in polite conversation. Remember, we are standing up in front of others seated in a venue, so we have to project our voice to the back of the room. If we are presenting online, it is the same thing. Video has two nefarious impacts on us. We appear to have gained three kilos in weight when on camera and our normal voice strength is down by about twenty percent. That means we have to raise the speaking level twenty percent online, just to get to a normal level, let alone going a bit harder because we are presenting.
In the course, I explain that we have to speak with more power. We have to hit the words harder than normal. We also have to mentally project our energy into the audience. So it is not just the voice range that is important. As I mentioned, we are focused on the kiai, the convergence of our life force. We push our body energy toward the people sitting in front of us through our body language. The breath is being exhaled with the delivery of the words and the energy output level is extremely high. Our gestures are also being added in to provide even more physical presence to what we are saying.
I always need to encourage the participants to go bigger with their gestures. This helps to raise their energy level and to add more power to their presentations. When I am telling them to go bigger, they never go big enough, so I have to really push them. They think this looks completely crazy and is making them come across as totally out of control. Every single person coming back from the Review Room having looked at themselves on video say that even though they thought they looked over the top, it didn’t look like that on the video and in fact it looked completely congruent with what they were saying.
When we are speaking using more kiai, the audience feels our presence. They feel our passion, commitment and belief in what we are saying. This is very attractive to the listener and they are more likely to accept and support what we are saying. Bring your breath, physical energy, gestures and voice to a point of convergence when you speak and you will have real impact as a presenter.
Sometimes the organisers of the presentation event ask us if they can distribute our slides before the speech. They are thinking that this will help the audience to follow what we are saying. Especially in Japan, audience members are probably better at reading than hearing the content. So having the slides at hand to refer to during the talk makes a lot of sense. Never do this! Ignore the supposed sage advice of event organisers, who themselves rarely if ever give public presentations. There are very few occasions when you need to be handing out bits of paper to support your talk.
The only exception to this rule of mine would be if there are numbers involved and they are locked into tiny cells in a spreadsheet. I am sure you have suffered the ignominy of sitting in an audience and struggling to make sense of the numbers being shown on the screen. The speaker gracefully moves through the spreadsheet, pointing out various gripping correlations and conclusions. Of course, they have added an important caveat before their pontifications about what we are all looking at, by saying “you probably can’t see this but….”. Naturally we can’t see it. The tiny number squiggles are unable to be claimed from the cells on screen, because the presenter has not considered the needs of the audience.
I could arrange for just those spreadsheet numbers to be distributed before the talk, so that people can read along with my explanation. This is giving verity to what we are claiming because the audience can check the numbers themselves. I am still reluctant to do that though. As soon as I refer people to the sheets of paper in their hand, I have lost my connection with them. They are now looking at bits of paper and not at me. I can’t see how they are reacting, because their faces are looking down.
I would prefer to treat the spreadsheet numbers like wall paper on screen. They form a backdrop, but I don’t expect anyone to plumb the depths of numbers they cannot see, let alone read. Instead I would use some animation and blast out key numbers in huge font in a call out emerging from the background. Now everyone is looking at one huge number and I would explain the importance of that statistic or number. The wall paper in the background is a type of proof that we have the numbers, we are not hiding them. We don’t need to show every number in the collection though, because there will be some numbers more important than others.
We just keep repeating this animation process for every key number. We can make the sheets of paper available at the end, for anyone who would like to go more granular. In this way, all eyes are kept on me as the presenter. I can also read the faces of the audience as I present these key data points. I am scanning their faces for resistance. Am I going to get any pushback during the Q&A? Are they buying my argument?
If we distribute the entire slide deck before the talk, then what is the point of the talk in the first place? We may as well all stay at home and just send everyone an email with the attachment and they can read through it all at their leisure. Once the audience has that document, they are reading page eighteen while you are explaining page one. You have lost control of the narrative. They are now processing what they are seeing in the document and somewhere in the background, they can hear some white noise. That white noise is you, by the way, droning on about your presentation. They are not fully listening any more and as the speaker you have effectively lost your audience.
As the presenter, we must never become second fiddle to the slide deck or the spreadsheet. We must control the flow of the argument. The story is meant to unfold in a certain logical order, a build that pushes ever onward, toward a powerful conclusion. We are here to sell our argument and that means we have to get right behind it all the way. Don’t delegate the point of the talk to the slide deck. Get out in front where you can dominate proceedings and where you can read ever nuance of your audience’s reaction to what you are saying. We must be the star of the show, not the cells in a spreadsheet or masses of text on screen.
So, when the organisers, those never presenters, insist we need to distribute the talk beforehand, cast them a steely glance. In an icy voice of shivering indignation refuse their idiotic offer. Others are allowed to be unprofessional, but we must be the island of insight, knowledge, intelligence and experience. That is the path of the real presenter.
Donald Trump has made this technique of “many people say….” famous for dealing with opposing views. This is not an exercise for or against Trump. Rather, it is just looking at different ways we can head off opposition to what we are saying. We should have a point of view when we speak and therefore we should also be prepared for opposing points of view. Getting to the Q&A to deal with pushback is okay, but it is better to deal with it inside your presentation.
Most of us are one dimensional when we prepare our talks. We are thinking of ourselves and what we want or need to say. We don’t give much thought to how others will receive it. In Japan, it is unusual for anyone to go after you when you are speaking. Good manners requires that everyone be stoic and put up with annoying counter opinions. No one should lose face in a public arena. This is fine, but those who disagree may not bark, but they do bite. They will do it afterwards, rather than in public. They will criticise your failings to others and you will go merrily on your way, never realising that the audience thinks you are a total light weight. Better to grasp the nettle in the moment and end it then and there.
The key is to first design your talk in the first draft. I don’t mean write the whole thing out word for word, but to design the two endings for before and after the Q&A, to create the key points with evidence and finally design the blunderbuss opening to grab everyone’s attention. Once you have this framework start looking for your points of view interventions. There will be a few of these in the speech. These are the things you want us to believe or to do.
Now isolate these out and think about the opposite point of view. What would be the strongest arguments against your point of view. If you say there aren’t any, then a big reality check on your self awareness sounds like it is in order. Take the lawyers approach of preparing the brief for the other side in the argument. What would they say, how would they refute the points made, what counter evidence would they proffer. You might not think the evidence is comprehensive but that isn’t the viewpoint of those holding those ideas. Also consider what questions would they ask to find any holes in your proposition?
In the talk, you can draw on the Trumpian technique of putting up a stalking horse argument and then disposing of it comprehensively. You might say, “there is an alternate viewpoint that says XYZ. Most experts however believe that ABC is more convincing and better supported by the evidence”. You have said that not just you, but the experts are opposing this XYZ viewpoint and what is more, they have looked at all the evidence and concluded that what you are saying is more accurate. Third party interventions from experts makes it harder for people in the audience to disagree with you.
“Japan is different” is an all weather counter for just about everything that people base their views on. Japanese people disregard any surveys or research presented unless it includes Japan in the comparisons. It doesn’t matter what it is, unless there is a Japan component involved, they conclude it doesn’t apply here because, well, Japan is different. We can say that normally we would expect EFG to apply, but because this is Japan then we get UVW instead. This is hard to argue against because it is well accepted here that this logic makes sense. Of course, we have to have good evidence that this is how Japan does work in this case and that usually isn’t hard to muster.
Another method is to mention that the evidence is not complete yet, but that the trends seem to be pointing to whatever it is you are recommending. This is allowing that later research may refute what you are saying, but as far as we know up to this point, this looks to be true. Again, we make ourselves a small and elusive target for counterattack.
Mentioning this is your experience allows other to have had a different experience, which is fair enough. You are not saying that you are the sole guru on this subject, but everything you have seen so far, tells you this viewpoint seems to be the best case. You are open to other’s experiences and this comes across as a very even handed and balanced approach.
The key is in the planning, to know where the hot buttons will be pressed by people in the audience and to head them off at the pass, before they get going. Taking other opinions into account will make your talk seems more rounded and less dogmatic. You come across as knowledgeable on the subject and an expert who should be listened to. It is hard to argue against and your talk will go very smoothly when you get to the Q&A. The Q&A is the graveyard of many a good talk by the way, because the speaker didn’t plan ahead for pushback. We won’t be in that category anymore, going forward.
“How was it?” is a pretty lousy survey question a presenter may ask of acquaintances, friends or their staff immediately after speaking. Unless they are your sworn enemy or a sadist, they are not going to tell you what they really think if you stink, because of the relationship you have with them. We need to make sure we are growing and improving as presenters, so objective feedback is crucial to achieving that aim. How can we grab ourselves some of that good oil?
I always talk about the importance of eye contact with your audience. The reason is simple. This is the key factor in getting objective feedback in real time. By engaging in eye contact with as many people in the audience as possible in the time allowed, you have a greater chance of reading the reaction to your words. We want the lighting in the room to be up and not darkened, so that the slides can’t dominate you as the speaker. This is because we want to be able to clearly see the audience.
If they are leaning in or leaning back, there are two completely different messages there. We get the lean back posture in our training classes from those individuals who were told by their boss to “go to training”. It is a common posture of sceptism, reluctance, irritation and disbelief. The same applies when speaking. There is no greater feeling when presenting than to have a large audience lean in to you. It only has to be a few millimetres but when done on mass, it is like a drug. Once you have experienced it you want that feeling every time.
Facial expression in Japan is a tough one. The serious “I am really listening to you” face and the “this is crap” face look exactly the same here. I was giving a speech in Japanese to 150 salespeople in Kobe and there was a gentleman seated about half way down on the left. Right throughout my talk his face oozed with the “this is crap” reaction. At the end, he sprang out of his seat and bolted down to where I was standing exchanging business cards with some of the audience. I thought my karate training was about to come into play here because he was going to hit me. Instead he was pumping my hand in the handshake and telling me how much he liked the talk. I was silently reflecting that I wished he had told his face he was enjoying it. Most people will have a positive or at least neutral facial expression but don’t assume a serious face is a negative reaction was the lesson for me.
Nodding the head up and down is a sign you want to see. It says the audience is in agreement with you. When you start to get this head nodding going on across a lot of faces it is a powerful acknowledgment that you are doing a good job selling your message. A way to train your audience to do this, is to nod up and down yourself when you make a statement you want people to agree with. They will mimic what you are doing and get this head nodding habit of responding that way to other things you say which they like.
Japanese audiences have zero conception that they are expected to take any action during your talk. We have to get them physically involved which helps to get them supporting your key points. We can’t go crazy and overdo it, but in a 30 minute speech you could get them to raise their hand twice and that wouldn’t feel like it was too much. Beyond that however and resistance will emerge. So, to increase engagement you can ask a question, a rhetorical question. That is good because it forces everyone to concentrate on what you are saying, rather than allowing their minds to roam around. You can also ask an actual question and raise your own arm up to model what you want them to do. The question you ask has to be delivered in such a way that the only possible answer is a “yes”. This makes it as easy as possible for them to raise their hand. For example, “Raise your hand if you are getting tired of Zoom meetings by now?”.
If you have someone with you when you make the speech, don’t ask them what they thought about it. Ask them to tell you what they thought went well and what could you do better next time. Having some helpful friend start canning your talk is not going to make that speech a positive experience for you. We have to ask them very specific question too, as far as possible. For example, “Did you find the speech opening grabbed your attention to stop thinking about other things?”; “When I mentioned the names of a couple of people in the audience I met before we started, did that help to make a deeper connection with the audience?”; “When I summed up again after the last question, did that help to recall what my main point was?” etc.
Some speech host organisations do surveys of the event and their response rate is usually microscopic and so of little help. You can always distribute a flyer to every table, with the QR code access to a site, where they can answer a few short questions. You can do this during the speech as you are wrapping up. It is not great timing, because you are asking people to divert their attention from what you are saying. However, if you wait until after the talk has finished very few people will bother to do the survey.
Instead say “please take one minute to do the survey using the QR code on your tables and then I will go through the final bonus slide for you”. Stop speaking for that minute and just wait. After the bonus slide has been covered, we sum up again to make sure our key message is the last thing they remember. In this way, we will get a much better survey of the crowd and the feedback will help us to focus on the areas needing more work.