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THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan

THE Presentations Japan Series is powered by with great content from the accumulated wisdom of 100 plus years of Dale Carnegie Training. The show is hosted in Tokyo by Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and is for those highly motivated students of presentations, who want to be the best in their business field.
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THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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Now displaying: January, 2022
Jan 31, 2022

The Q&A is a great chance to clarify any points which were not clear to the audience.  This is an opportunity to really reinforce some points we made in the talk, to make them even more impactful with the audience. We can also draw on our reserve power and add extra content which we couldn’t include in the speech.  Apart from when we were mingling with our audience before the talk starts, this is the next opportunity to interact with our listeners.

 

We have to take some precautionary steps to prepare for the Q&A.  When we are designing the talk, we have to think of the likely questions we may get, so that we are well prepared to answer them.  We also have to understand that the Q&A is like a street fight – there are no rules.  Members of the audience can argue with us, call us a charlatan, debate with us and dismiss everything we have said. People can also ask us anything they like, however off topic. 

 

There are a couple of steps we need for dealing with hostile audiences. From the very start we should clearly state how long we have for questions.  We may find the hostile audience is quite hard to deal with and then we suddenly say we have to go and we look like a coward running away.  Once we have stated the time limit for questions, we can just say, “we have now reached the end of question time” and then we can go into our second close and leave with our dignity intact.

 

After stating the time limit for questions we say, “who has the first question”.  This is a subtle hint that we are expecting a lot of questions. If we don’t get any questions, we just say, “a question I am often asked is….”.  We state our own question and then we answer it.  Usually this gives people in the audience the courage to ask their question because the ice has been broken.

 

The type of people who go after a speaker are trying to show everyone how clever and tough they are.  When we receive this type of question we look straight at the person, but try not to move our head.  In polite society, we sometimes nod when people ask a question to give them encouragement, but we don’t want to look like we are agreeing with them and the thesis of the hostile question. 

 

We look straight at the person, no nodding and just hear them out.  We keep calm because we know we have a sure fire way of dealing with hostile questioners.  Once they have finished, we stop looking at them and now look at the rest of the audience.  We paraphrase what they have said. 

 

We do this in a special way, where we take all the sting out of the question.  For example, if they said, “Isn’t it true that your company is going to fire 10% of the workforce, just before the end of the year, when it is impossible to find another job”.  If it wasn’t a hostile question, we could just repeat it because often people sitting in other parts of the audience couldn’t hear what the questioner was saying.  

 

We absolutely do not want to say, “The questions was, is it true that we are going to sack 10% of the staff before the end of the year”.  Instead, we paraphrase and purposely weaken the invective.  We could say, “the question was about staffing”.  Now we turn back to face our hostile questioner. 

 

By paraphrasing, we have given ourselves between five to ten seconds to consider how best to answer the question.  We proceed to give the first six seconds of the answer, while maintaining eye contact with our questioner.  After that, we never give them any eye contact again for the rest of the event.  They feed off attention, so we now strategically cut off their supply of attention and we look at the other audience members and talk to them.  We keep making six seconds of eye contact with the others in the audience until we finish.  The hostile questioner becomes deflated, because they are not getting any of the limelight and attention they seek.

 

The other people attending the event will be amazed at how professionally you handled the situation, which they know had it been them, they would have had no idea what to do.  Our personal and professional brands have just been elevated.

 

We now say, “who has the next question?”.  If it not hostile, we can repeat the question so that everyone can hear it and we then answer it.  Again, we start the answer by directing our eye contact to the person asking the question and then move our eye contact to others in the room for six seconds each.  If we want a bit more time to think about our answer, we can just insert a pause.  Or we might use a cushion.  This is a brief neutral statement that buys us thinking time.  For example, we could say, “Thank you, I am glad you have raised that point”. We wrap things up by saying, “We have time for one final question.  Who has the last question?”.  We answer it and then we go into our second close. 

 

Generally speaking, we want our answers to be concise, so that more people can interact with us by asking questions.  It is also advisable to be brief because we will get ourselves into less trouble with our answers!

 

Jan 24, 2022

What is a complex subject?  That really depends on the audience.  If they are all experts in that subject area, then the presentation can and must be done at the same high level.  If they are not knowledgeable on the subject, we need to avoid assuming too much prior exposure to related information and not use jargon and acronyms. There are varying levels of difficult themes when presenting.  It is relatively rare that we have to present highly complex content in a standard business talk.  Rather, this type of activity would take place at specialist conferences and at industry events, where the audience are experts or at least dilettantes. This is usually an inform type of presentation, where we are going to clearly explain a technical or complicated matter and pass on insights, data, statistics etc.

 

We have a number of guiding requirements when we are designing this type of presentation.  

  1. We need to develop flexibility in making complex material simple and understandable. We often work inside our own mental framework, where we know what we are talking about and assume that is the same for everyone listening.  We need to step outside our bubble and see the content from the audience’s point of view.  How can we deliver the message in a way which will overcome their barriers to understanding?  How can we communicate in a way which makes the subject seem simple to grasp?

 

  1. We must seek ways to communicate the information in an interesting manner. Storytelling is brilliant for making dry facts and figures spring to life and attain a relevancy which appeals to our listeners.  We should definitely never resort to speaking in a brutal monotone when delving into the bloody entrails of the subject.  Voice modulation, pauses and hitting key words harder than others, will provide the light and shade needed to create variety in the delivery, making it easier for everyone to follow our key messages.

 

 

  1. Let’s relate to the audience at their level. This can be tricky because there is rarely the same level of expertise in the room.  We have to aim for the lowest common denominator and speak at that level, without alienating the actual experts in attendance. 

 

  1. We must follow a logical progression of ideas otherwise the complexity of the subject will lose members of the audience. It is hard enough to deal with difficult subjects without making the delivery hard to follow as well.

 

 

  1. We shouldn’t forget to develop emotional contact with the audience. Well designed visuals can connect to everyone’s emotions.  Like storytelling, the slides can bring a dry idea to life and make it compelling. Showing the results before and after in visual form, especially using photos, is both powerful and convincing. Importantly, we must have one idea per slide as our standard, to make sure the audience can understand the point of the side in just two seconds.

 

  1. As always, when thinking about how to approach the nitty gritty of the talk, we begin by designing our two closes. What is the key information we wish to inform our audience about.  We must work hard to strip this down to the minimum number of words required because that will aid gaining clarity.  The second close can just be a repeat of the first close or we could express the key point in a different way.

 

 

  1. Now we work on the core message. Depending on the length of the talk, we will build a certain number of chapters, each of which provides the evidence and proof to back up what we are telling everyone about our subject.

 

  1. Finally, we design the opening. In the case of complex information we can use an analogy. How does this work?  An analogy is very useful when we are trying to explain complex concepts in a simple manner.  We are comparing the similarities of two dissimilar things.  For example, “designing the corporate strategy is like ordering a gelato”.  In this example there is nothing similar between designing corporate strategy and ice cream.  We are taking two dissimilar things and connecting them to make a point. 

 

  1. Having stated the analogy, we now have to explain what we mean, so that the audience can get the point. We continue, “When we order the gelato, we hope this is going to be what we want and will give us the flavour and taste outcome we want, but no matter how good it looks in the refrigerated cabinet in the store, we won’t know the truth until we actually taste it.  This is the same with corporate strategy.  It may look perfect on paper and the design seems to make logical sense, but we won’t know if it works until we apply it”.

 

Obviously, this is the design stage where we start with the end, but in fact we are going to deliver the talk in this order: analogy, analogy explanation, main body, close number one, transition to Q&A, close number two.

 

Whenever we have a complex subject to present, we need to approach it differently from our usual garden variety talks.  The basics don’t change – we need a good design and an excellent delivery, but the mindset needs some revision before we begin the process.  If we do this then our talk will be well received and we will continue to build our personal and professional brands.

 

Jan 17, 2022

Persuasion Power Eats Everything For Breakfast

Intuitively, we know that people who can command an audience, energise teams, excite customers and secure decisions through their persuasion power are successful individuals.  Did they gain persuasion power because they were successful or did they become successful through their persuasion power.  We know it is the latter.  Given we all know this, then why are so few business people successful as speakers.  I attended a chamber of commerce AGM, which just shocked me.  It hadn’t dawned on me that as part of the proceedings those aspiring for a position on the Board, had to get up and say why they should be selected.  When I realised this prospect was looming, I thought to myself, “this will be interesting”.  There were some very serious corporations’ very serious heavy hitters assembled to joust for seats on the Committee.

 

No Free Pass for Corporate Captains Of Industry

What a revelation.  Almost none of them could string a five minute talk together extolling their own virtues.  I was wondering how on earth they were allowed to represent their brands with such an underwhelming facility in persuasion power?  Why didn’t their companies invest in making them presentation and promotion advocates advancing the brand’s credibility.  As often happens though, they didn’t get the training, they just got the responsibility for their big enterprise’s revenue production.  They toiled long and hard in the engine rooms of their companies becoming outstanding individual performers.  Often they started as technical people, typically engineers, who were excellent in their field of specialty.  Promotion after promotion led them to run the operation.

 

Getting to the top and being able to successfully promote the brand are not the same thing.  The apex of the organisation narrows down to only a limited number of contenders for the top positions.  Those who have the technical skills, the experience and the ability to persuade others will self-select themselves for the top job.  The logical conclusion is to not wait until you get promoted to garner the facility to persuade, but to grab that skill set so that you are the one who gets promoted.

 

Self Promotion That Elevates Personal Brands

Promoting oneself and being really good at what you do are also not a given.  We have to be intelligent, competent, industrious, patient and strategic.  At the same time we should get training and grab every single opportunity to promote our personal and professional brands through presenting.  Once we gain more ability, we will be given more opportunities for bigger events and larger venues.  Being able to present to a large audience is good, but being able to keep presenting to large audiences is even better.  We scale up our capacity to dominate any sized venue, as we learn the intricacies of each step on the ladder.  The chances though of getting a series of large events from the very start are low.  We have to put in the sustained work and build up our presenting nouse, skills and confidence.

 

My recent TED talk was speech number 546 for me, so you would think that would be a dawdle for such an experienced presenter.  What I immediately realised though, was the scale was different.  It wasn’t a typical large venue, it was a vast global audience.  Normally, if you underperform in your talk, only the assembled business people know about it.  If you do a poor job on your TED talk, then you are exposing your personal brand to the entire world and exposing it forever.  In my case, it is even worse, because I teach presentation skills professionally. I also have my global Dale Carnegie colleagues and all of my competitors, watching like hawks.  I also recently published my book on presenting in Japan, raising the bar on expectations.  On the other hand, if you are under the spotlight and you do a professional job, then your brand becomes global and your credibility goes up.

 

The Catastrophe Secret Escape Hatch For Presenters

It looks like there is no safety net with presenting on the big stage but that is not quite true.  Yes, you only have yourself to rely on for the success or failure of the talk.  No one can sweep in from the wings of the stage and rescue you from a self-induced disaster.  What people see on stage is only the tip of the presenting iceberg.  Be it the experienced presenter or the novice, there is one huge escape hatch from speaking catastrophe and that is rehearsal. 

 

This is such an obvious thing, you have to wonder why I even raise it?  What is amazing though is that the vast majority of business talks are given once, delivered to the live audience and that is it.  Investing time and effort into the rehearsals will do more for a person’s personal and professional brand than any other factor.  I teach company presidents how to deliver their speeches and the before and after versions are comprehensive validations for why everyone should rehearse as much as possible.  I am there to coach and provide feedback for them, but any speaker can get valuable feedback in rehearsal if they know how to do it.  Never ever ask “how was it?”.  A torrent of confidence crushing critique will land on your head immediately.  Instead ask, “what was I doing well and what can I do to improve it?”.  Do that every time and you will maximise the effectiveness of the feedback during your rehearsals.

 

“Persuasion Power Eats Everything For Breakfast”

“Persuasion power eats everything for breakfast”, should be our business community mantra.  We know this is true, but are we doing anything about honing our presenting facility?  Hope is not much of a strategy for becoming a persuasive speaker.  Getting professional training, rehearsing and seizing every opportunity to give talks are the keys to success.  With greater responsibility comes the requirement to be highly persuasive.  So let’s get to work and become highly persuasive, fully primed to step up.

Jan 10, 2022

The prediction business is always fun.  We nominate our plans so that God can laugh, according to the old Yiddish proverb.  Nevertheless, we need to make some plans don’t we.  The Gregorian calendar beginning of the year is as good a time as any to think “start”.  The last two years has seen the entire speaking business metamorphise into an online venture for the most part.  Standing in front of a crowd is now somewhat of a distant memory for most of us.  Internal meetings have gone the same way and we chime in from home on what is happening with the results so far this month or quarter or whatever. 

 

The world seems to have sunk into the abyss of the ordinary, when it comes to persuasion power. Meetings have moved from the usual insomnia inducing exercises in the physical meeting room to the online room, but faithfully retaining the insomnia inducing capability.  The best part of this has been the boredom of listening to colleagues drone on, is leavened by just turning your camera off and doing other more interesting stuff in the background, without drawing any boss wrath.  Of course, our colleagues are doing the same thing to us too, when it is our turn to speak.

 

Online webinars have also sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where the crush of the weight of the water saps any life from the talks.  People are so amazingly adaptable.  They have learnt how to move their usual boring delivery online and without any apology.  Once upon time the speaker would only be impinging on the time and patience of a small crowd of people, but with the wonders of Webex, Zoom, Teams, etc., the tech has created a weapon of mass destruction.

 

Is this your plan for 2022?  Are you writing in your organizer, “I can’t wait to bore people to death again this year”?  I doubt that would be the case, but I also doubt that among the many goals being set for this year, becoming a master of persuasion is in there.  How could that be the case?  The complexities of communication have only gone up with the advances in society and business. 

 

We operate in the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism.  Social media armed mobile phones have allowed us to spend every second of our downtime endlessly scrolling for something more interesting.  Our concentration spans are being measured in nanoseconds today.  We have become the most distracted generation in global history.  How can we gain persuasion power in this tech induced mess?

 

Our other problem is no one wants to believe anything they hear anymore, as everyone is more anxious about falling victim to fake news.  It isn’t much respite from the pressures on modern communication to know that even if we are getting our message listened to, a lot of people are doubting anything we say.  Science itself is in doubt and now “alternative facts” is a thing. Where will all of this end and what does it mean for us as presenters, persuaders and advocates?

 

There are some sure bets, some certainties that we can rely on though.  These include the fact that the majority of people in business will remain hopeless communicators and persuaders.  They won’t analyse the current reality for opportunities to stand out, to break through the noise and get their messages heard and believed.  They won’t understand that while what we say is important, how we say it is more important to being effective as a presenter.  The ability to wield language and to wield its delivery are potent tools for success in business.  If everyone was well versed in being persuasive, our task would become more onerous and competitive very quickly.  Well, that isn’t going to happen, because our colleagues and competitors will just wander into 2022 and repeat the same mistakes they made in 2021. 

 

Let’s add “I will become a master of persuasion” to our list of things to be achieved this year.  Standing above the hoi polloi isn’t easy, but this is one area where we can seize the advantage.  If we haven’t studied this art of public speaking, let’s commit to doing that.  If we haven’t taken the training, then let’s get that into our schedules for this year.  The great unwashed will do nothing, so let’s take action and differentiate ourselves from those who are either ignorant or lazy or both.  Persuaders of the world, arise in 2022 and seize the opportunity to polish our craft and take success into our own hands.

 

 

Jan 3, 2022

What is our presenter vision for 2022?  If it has any element of success involved (and it would be a pretty rare resolution that didn’t have that), then being persuasive is going to be integral to the success of realising that vision.  If you are trying to climb the corporate ladder, then getting your thoughts sorted and have others listen and agree is persuasion power.  If you are the boss and you want the team to get behind your new ideas, direction, project, fresh business initiative etc., then you need them to follow you and that means having persuasive presence.  If you are a peer and you seek the cooperation of your colleagues from other divisions, then you need to persuade them to elevate your needs up their priority list.  If you want your clients to buy and buy right now, then your persuasion skills have to be excellent.

 

Great.  How do we become more persuasive in business?   Being a force of nature won’t work.  No matter how much belief, passion and enthusiasm we have mustered, the person we are talking to won’t care much, unless they see something concrete in it for them.  We should plan our interactions, so that we get the best result.  That makes a lot of sense, however, we can’t always have that opportunity.  We may be in the midst of a discussion and we suddenly need to weigh in with our idea.  We have no time for careful, detailed planning and scoping of how the conversation should run, because the situation it so fluid.  What do we do?

 

Habit is a powerful tool in business.  It means we can engage in high level activities without needing any preparation time.  Therefore we need to build habits, so that we are in flow, reacting spontaneously without thought.  The habits we choose can be destructive though and defeat us in our quest for persuasion.  Interrupting others when they are speaking would have to be at the top of the “stop doing” list.  This is always a problem, because it says to the other person that what they are saying has no value and we are more important than them.  Finishing their sentences for them would probably rank as number two in the deadly habits list.  It says we are more articulate and clever than they are. We have anticipated where they are going with the conversation and we can get there more effectively than them, because we are smarter than they are.

 

Instead, we need to make CEP our new persuasion habit.  I know everyone needs another acronym like a hole in the head, but they are a handy short form to help us remember the content, so please bear with me on CEP.  The “C” stands for “context”.  We start not with our proposal or suggestion, but with the background.  This is a very strategic choice that guarantees we can reduce rejection and resistance for our idea.  When we leap into our plan or idea, we will face two levels of resistance.  The quick thinkers will be telling us why that idea won’t work or that it has been tried before and failed, etc.  The deeper thinkers will be doing the same thing, but they won’t necessarily voice their opposition at that moment, because the bolshie, assertive few are dominating the airwaves.

 

Starting with the context is genius because there is nothing to disagree with.  The listeners are just hearing the background which has led you to draw certain conclusions based on the details and facts of the case.  The quick thinkers will be racing ahead of you and leaping to conclusions about what should be done.  The deeper thinkers will be doing the same thing, just at a much more substantive level. 

 

The “E” stands for the “execution” that you are recommending to the group.  Our recommended actions won’t be whimsy, accidental or fantasy.  Based on the facts of the case there are some logical things which should happen as a result.  The listeners in many cases will have arrived at the same conclusion as we have or are well on the way toward it.  They will be more likely to agree with our idea, because they feel they have discovered it for themselves independently, based on the facts they have heard.

 

The final “P” is for “payoff”.  The idea of recency says that people tend to remember best what they heard the most recent, so we save the best for last.  They have raced ahead of us to what the execution piece should be. The next thing they hear is the payoff from taking that recommended action, which makes it even easier for them to agree with our idea.

 

The key is to make this process our standard operating behaviour.  Instead of jumping in and blurting out our idea, naked and undefended, we go straight to the context first.  By making this our habitual way of introducing ideas and suggestions, we create a new habit, one which substantially eliminates opposition to what we are saying.  If you make this one decision to adopt the CEP habit for 2022, then your persuasion power will get a tremendous boost.

 

 

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