This is horrible. Man, this is so bad, what were they thinking? I am watching a video of a leader asking for some major changes to the organisation’s finances and he is doing a woeful job of it. They have a dedicated Coms team, there are talented people in the leadership group, so I am asking myself how could this train wreck come to pass? I was also thinking, “you should have called me, I could have saved you a lot of wasted opportunity with your messaging”. Too late now, the video is out there for all to ignore. This is a classic case of people who don’t spend any time appreciating the importance of communication and presentation skills, suddenly going for the big ask and then falling flat on their face.
It was serious subject, a heavy subject and the background chosen for the video was given zero thought. When you are asking for a truckload of dough for a project, you want the background oozing with solid credibility. You need to look Presidential, capable, considered and trustworthy. That lightweight scene setting wasn’t given much thought but the talking head only occupies a small part of the screen. Having people moving around in the background distracts us from the key message. No one thought about that either. They should have told those people to buzz off for ten minutes, so the video could get done.
The camera saps twenty percent of our energy. If you are a low energy leader, you can come across as cadaverous. You need to ramp up the speaking power. If the message requires convincing people about spending more money, then you really need to amp it up, to come across as confident, considered and competent. The body language, gestures and voice modulation need to be on point. Hitting key words is a must, as are carefully thought through pauses. We need these to allow the audience to absorb what we have just said. Rolling thoughts over the top of each other leaves the viewers lost.
The camera is also unforgiving. If you can’t hold its gaze, then you look like a shifty Souk merchant trying to sell us some dodgy, dud stuff. You have to look straight into the camera barrel and keep looking at it the whole time. You don’t want to be sitting too close to the camera when you are doing this though. A massive close up of your dial isn’t going to work for most people, so better to back up a bit. It also allows for gestures to be used and more importantly, to be seen.
Looking away, looking down and looking at your notes are a no no. If it is an important occasion, a key topic, the big ask, then do what the world’s leaders have learnt – use the teleprompter. You need to refine the script and then read it, word perfect, while looking straight into the camera lens the whole time. This takes some practice, some effort in the preparation, rather than just pulling up a chair and free styling in front of the camera for a “once over lightly” approach to a serious subject.
I will never forget a gorgeous young American woman I saw on YouTube. She was the complete package. She was teaching people how to use the teleprompter. However her eyes were obviously reading across the screen left to right following the text. You don’t want that. You need to be able to zero in on the lens and read the text at the same time. That takes some time to get right. You also have to play around with the teleprompter speed setting as well, to find the right cadence for your talk.
There were no gripping stories to give us hope. Just a dry rendition of what he wanted to tell us. The visuals were not clever. Cherry picking the minimum damage case smacks of the carnival barker and snake oil salesman. Show us the real numbers, so there is more honesty about the proposition here for us to consider. He was trying to be too clever by half and failing miserably.
Our errant, non-persuading persuader really murdered the message. Once it is done, it is out there. His personal and professional brands both took a massive hit thanks to that video. His messaging missed the mark and I doubt people will be persuaded to join him on his programme.
I am not super opposed to his offering, I get it, but I am vaguely insulted by the lack of professionalism. If he can't get this right, how can I expect he can get anything else right. It is the remaining coffee stain on the pull down tray in the aircraft when you board, that gets you worrying about whether they can actually do a professional job on engine maintenance if they can’t get this simple thing right, why should I trust them with complex things?
There is no excuse for this exercise in bungled communications. In this day and age there is so much information available on presenting skills, it is staggering. For example, in my own case, I have broadcast over two hundred and twenty pieces on the subject, for free, over the last four years. Don’t allow yourself to become part of the casualty ward of failed suicidal persuaders and communicators inflicting mortal harm to their brand, through lack of awareness and preparation. Get the training now, so that when it is time to step up and be counted, you can carry it off with aplomb.
There are 13 common mistakes which prevent presenters from owning the room. Here they are - don't do these things!
Succeeding Shintaro Abe as Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga has now been thrust into the public arena in a new dimension. When he was the Cabinet spokesman, he made a valiant effort to say as little as possible at press briefings, be defensive and always treat journalists with complete disdain and disregard. He didn’t need to be appealing or a good speaker, because his job was to look down the whole time read from the prepared script in a monotone and obfuscate at all turns. Actually, he was the “black hole” of public speaking, drawing all of the press energy into the void and just extinguishing it. Maybe you will replace your boss one day and have to take over the role of representing the organization to the wider world. Can you do a better job than Suga?
Keiko Ishikawa, a public relations consultant, was quoted in the media noting Suga’s choice of vocabulary is “not that bad”. Rather it is “how he attempts to convey the words that is the problem”. The role of second fiddle mouthpiece for the Abe Cabinet and being the Prime Minister in your own right, require substantially different skills. Actually, there are few skilled public speakers in business, government and politics in Japan, so Suga blends in nicely with the ineptitude and many failings of his peers and colleagues. The problem is that being hopeless like everyone else does not help you to be persuasive.
Ishikawa noted, “As his facial expressions and words and phrasings almost never vary, there’s no strength in his eyes. We can’t understand what he wants to emphasis and where his heart is”. Robotic would be a good descriptor of his approach to public speaking. Yes, I appreciate that Japanese is a monotone language but that is no excuse, although many will volunteer it to justify their personal lack of ability. Even in Japanese, we can pull the twin levers of speed and strength to gain vocal variation and this is open to Suga too, but he chooses to drone on instead. We know he is bad, but how about you? If we recorded your talk, would it be a deadly monotone, driving everyone deep into slumberland?
Professor Mehrabian’s research in the 1960s flagged the issue of the way we speak not matching the content of the words being a problem. When we are not congruent, only 7% of our message is getting through to the audience. As a speaker, achieving only a 7% success rate of verbal message transmission should get you fired from your job! With Suga and many other leaders in Japan, facial expressions are wooden from start to finish. If it is bad news, then look worried and if it is good news, then look happy. Those reactions would be congruent. Suga is not doing that, so he is giving up a tremendous persuasion tool – his facial expressions. Our face is a million watts more powerful than any slide deck on screen.
Ishikawa also complained, “His articulation is bad and could be improved by practicing moving his mouth, speaking clearly and changing the tempo of his speech”. The fundamental issue here is there is no interest or will to be a clear communicator. He was the master of obfuscation in his former job and he has carried that like a badge of honour into his new role. The Liberal Democratic Party has a very comfortable majority and no real challenge from the opposition parties, so a sense of entitlement is strong in their ranks. “Who cares about being a good public speaker, because the punters are going to have to vote us back in anyway, so whats the problem?”.
The will to persuade listeners is a fundamental professional skill requirement. We see so many Japanese business executives, just like Suga, pathetically going through the motions reading their speeches, with no passion for their talk. In some cases, they may want to do a better job, but they worry if they slip out of lockstep with the rest of their hopeless colleagues and do a professional job, they will draw negative comments. I was coaching a new President to give his first key speech to the company’s stakeholders. The content was terrible. Dry, boring and devoid of any life or interest. He rejected the proposed changes to improve it, because he didn’t think his audience would accept a professional version of his talk. He was limiting himself in order to blend in with everyone’s zero level expectations of a professional speech. In Japan, this becomes a self-perpetuating nightmare, where the entire country’s leadership remain duds when it comes to public speaking.
There may be hope with the next generation. The much younger Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi was not very good at public speaking at the start of his political career. The difference was he became serious about his communication skills. He studied rakugo (traditional storytelling) and listened to recordings of his own talk and speeches. He made an effort to improve his presentations. Today he is a million times better than his boss and is talked of as a future Prime Minister.
Japan’s politicians, bureaucrats and business executives are not your role models. The lesson is that in the Kingdom of the Blind, the one eyed man is King. When you see everyone is aping Suga and his ilk, when it comes to professional presentation skills, run a mile in the opposite direction. Rather, become professional, persuasive, gain self confidence and have presence when you speak. How do you do that? Like the rest of us, get trained!.
It makes sense to be authentic when presenting, because this is the easiest state to maintain. As someone wise once noted, “if you are going to be a liar you need a stupendous memory to keep up with who you told what”. Presenting is something similar. Maintaining a fiction in front of an audience takes a lot of skill. In fact, if you have that much skill, why worry about faking it in the first place? Well, there is a place for fakery when presenting, but we need to know when is appropriate.
We know that the way we think about things influences how we well we do. Imposter syndrome is a common state of mind though amongst people, across a broad range of situations. You might write a blog and put it up on your website, or waffle away on Clubhouse or pontificate to an audience, live or online. But who are you to talk about this subject? Are you saying anything worthwhile or just regurgitating what far cleverer people have already said? Do you really know this subject? Is your experience valuable or even relevant to others? Are you really qualified to give advice to people running far bigger organisations that your own?
Looking over that list, it can be enough to scare you off emerging from the deep depths of your comfy comfort zone ever again. So, we have to create a positive mindset that “yes”, we have every right to address this subject area, even if we feel a fake when compared to other more famous or clever people. The funny thing is they suffer the same imposter syndrome too, relative to their illustrious peers. Academics, for example, are generally a put upon group, because they have to publish their research to get ahead in their careers. When they publish it, they are now exposing the weaknesses of their intellectual process, their inadequate research ability or their dubious writing skills, to the entire expert community in their area of defined speciality.
Confidence warrants confidence. If we sound and look confident, most people are likely to ignore the emperor has no clothes and is not perfect. They will be carried away with our enthusiasm for our subject, with our passionate belief in our findings and our commitment to share the knowledge. The problems crop up when we become nervous speaking in front of others. Normally, we are quite even keeled and confident, but with all of those beady sets of eyes drilling holes into us, we start to wobble. Suddenly, our imposter syndrome fears come flooding forth and soon our usual cool, calm, collected façade is torn to shreds, as we are exposed as a self doubting, insecure, fake.
Now how would the audience know we are a fake? Well, we very helpfully tell them, by saying daft things like, “I am rather nervous today”. Or “I am not very good at presenting”. Or “I didn’t have much time to put this presentation together and I am afraid it won’t be very good” and any other of the motley collection of dubious, sympathy seeking, self-serving, cop out proclamations. Do us all a favour and keep all of this imposter syndrome stuff to yourself. Here is a secret - we all want you to succeed.
If you are nervous presenting then fake it, such that you appear at least “normal”, rather than being reduced to a quivering tower of jelly on stage. If your knees are knocking from the nerves, then stand behind the podium until you feel more comfortable to walk around. If your hands are shaking and you have to hold a microphone, use both hands and draw it on to your chest, so that your body secures the erratically jiggling instrument. If your throat is parched, then have warm, room temperature rather than iced water, close by and drink it when you need it. The iced water constricts your throat and you don’t want that, so forgo the usual venue offered beverage and request the no ice alternative. If you begin to speak and instead of a mellifluent note, out pops a constrained, awkward, embarrassing squeak, then clear your throat and try again. If you stumble on the pronunciation of a word, try again. If you get the speech points order mixed up or miss one, then fake it and keep going, offering not a hint of anything untoward occurring.
If you act enthusiastically, you will become enthusiastic. If you act confidently, you will become confident. Yes you might be nervous, but as Winston Churchill said, “if you are going through hell, keep going”. That is the point. No matter what happens, the show must go on and that means you must keep going. If it is a disaster, then dust yourself off and climb back in saddle. As the Japanese saying goes, nana korobi ya oki (七転び八起き) - “fall down seven times, get up eight times”.