The rule in business is to stay clear of religion and politics, because you risk alienating a chunk of your audience who hold different views to you.  That is clear and sensible. What about other points of view (POV) however which are more related to business itself.  This could be about government regulatory policy, industry trend predictions, marketing issues, quality control, your purported product benefits or any number of contentious items.  When we are giving presentations, should we avoid stating our point of view or should we be open, even if it means being contentious?  Is being contentious a strategy for gaining profile?

Our main objective in giving business related presentations is to gain a positive impression for our company and make ourselves top of mind and tip of tongue, when people are considering the need for our solutions. Most small to medium sized companies are basically invisible to their potential clients, because they don’t have the advertising or marketing muscle of the large corporations.  Giving presentations, getting quoted in the media, engaging in content marketing in social media are all typical ways of overcoming that problem.

How much profile do we want?  If we want to fly under the radar, we are not going to be giving highly opiniated presentations, commenting on issues of the day.  On the other hand, we might do just that, to seek some opportunity to be controversial, so that we get talked about. I see there are some local entrepreneurs here, who have taken a strategic decision to offer opinions and viewpoints, which are designed to counter conventional, accepted wisdom.  This is clearly an attempt to breakthrough all the noise in the marketplace and to try and court the media, which as we know, loves controversy.

I do six podcasts a week, of which five are my opinion pieces on what I think about in regards to leadership, sales, communication and presenting.  My other podcast conforms to the normal arrangement of the guest supplying all of the IP and the host is just there to extract it.  Nevertheless, putting five opinion pieces a week, every week, into the ether could be considered risky. 

When I look back on what I write for my podcasts, there is always a distinct point of view on these subjects.  When I reflect on the public presentations I have given, there is always a strong point of view on these subjects.  The 1000 plus videos on our website are all brimming with my point of view too. Also, the four books I have published are all full of my points of view.  So where is the line when we are communicating our point of view, that we shouldn’t cross. 

I have written about Boris Johnson and Donald Trump in relation to their public speaking techniques.  In both cases, I have sidestepped whether I agree or like what they are doing as elected officials of their countries and just focused on what we can learn from what they are doing as presenters.  This was a conscious decision to avoid alienating my audience one way or the other.  With politics and religion, it is easier to make these judgements I think, because you know the percentage split between their followers and opponents.

What have I done in regard to the Japanese Government’s handing of Covid and the myriad regulations that it has spawned, including shutting the border?  Nothing. This issue doesn’t fit into the four areas I write about, even though the regulations have had a direct impact on my training business, as it has made face to face training extremely fraught.  Whatever my personal views on Government policy may be, I have decided not to seek out advocating any positions at all because they are outside the scope of my area of coverage.  Another factor is I am a migrant here and can have my visa not renewed and have to leave the country, so do I want to poke the beast which is the Japanese Government, specifically their Immigration Department?  I judge that fight not to be worth it.  I did cover ex-Prime Minister Suga’s presentation abilities though in Episodes #233 and #255 and was quite tough in my evaluations.  I didn’t talk about his policies though, so there was a line there I thought I could walk without getting deported. 

The point is to make a decision about how controversial you want to be, why you are deciding that calculation and what are the ramifications, both positive and negative for your positioning.  You can have a clear point of view on subjects without upsetting your audience.  Giving your viewpoint can be useful for your audience, as it helps them to think about their own position in the topic.  As the President of Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan, which is a business built around how to be really good with people, probably avoiding controversy would be an obvious authentic positioning. 

How about your business and your company, are there natural limitations which will apply to how stridently or controversially you can pursue your point of view?  Have you thought about it and decided where the line is located?  Have you set out some points of view on where you stand on relevant topics?  Probably this would be a useful exercise before you promulgate your views into the ether or at public presentations to business audiences.

I sometimes read about certain celebrities, historical figures or leaders who are described as being better presenters with small groups or being better presenting to large groups.  I wonder what they mean and why that would be?  I presume the inference is the person is more impactful with one group rather than the other or feels more comfortable addressing one group rather than the other.  Why would the size of the group make any difference?

Perhaps presenting to a tight circle of listeners makes the speaker feel more pressure because the audience is so physically close and immediate.  Up on the stage there is a good distance between the speaker and the audience and maybe that provides less pressure.  The stage is usually a raised platform or the speaker’s position is at the front of the room, so there is more formality in those settings, which therefore provides more authority and credibility for the presenter.

On the other hand, being up on stage, with thousands of beady eyes boring into your skull can be a lot of pressure for some speakers.  The sheer scale can be overwhelming and the serried ranks of listeners confronting. Looking down at that sea of scowling faces and crossed arms can be spine decalcifying. The small group on the other hand may feel more intimate and safe.

There are some things which work well for both groups, so let’s take them separately.  For small groups, the intimacy means our body language, pacing and volume has to be different than if we were up on a vast stage facing thousands.  We will have a better chance of knowing more about a small audience than a mass audience.  The organisers probably know everyone and can brief us about therm.  This helps us in the planning stage to think about what will be of most value for the audience.  Once we have prepared that talk, we will feel very confident we will get a good reception from the people assembled.

Even if it is a small group, we should stand when we present.  The organisers may try to get us to sit down and present, but we should resist that idea. Standing is better for us to free up our body language and deal with any nerves we have.  It also gives us elevation above the crowd, which also gives us more authority regarding what we are saying.  We can easily see everyone and they can see us too.  We want to be working our eye contact, such that we hold the gaze of each person for around six seconds.  Less than that is not effective in creating a bond and if we go longer it becomes intrusive.  When we get the eye contact balance right, the person on the receiving end feels as if we are speaking directly to them and no one else in the room.  It feels like we are having a cosy chat. It is very powerful and attractive.  Our gestures need to be smaller and less energetic or we can overpower our audience.

When we are facing those thousands of people up onstage in a big venue, there is a big difference between those in the audience, depending on where they are seated.  We see them as an anonymous granite block but they are not. Those down the back, those up on the first tier and up on the second tier can feel remote.  We are remote to them too.  If you are ever speaking in a big venue, get there early and go and sit in the seats at the furthest extremes.  This is when you realise you will appear like a peanut to these members of the audience.

In the same way, we had the small group earlier and we apply the same logic.  We don’t talk to thousands of people.  We speak to one person at a time.  We divide the venue up into six sectors, like the baseball diamond.  We have the inner field and the outer field, the left, center and right field and this includes those seated in the second and third floors.  When we are at distance from these people seated far from us and when we select one person to speak to, the thirty people seated around them, all think we are looking directly at them too.  The effect is the same – they feel we are having an intimate conversation with them despite there being thousands of people in the hall.  Don’t look at the sectors in order though. Make it completely unpredictable and random, to keep people on their toes. 

In the big venues, we need to use huge gestures.  Because of the distance, we have to make a much bigger effort to project our energy all the way to the back wall.  We have a microphone, so we are not yelling, but we are trying to drive our physical energy all the way to the rear of the venue.  The people at the back will feel our energy and will be drawn toward us.  We also have to make more use of the stage.  Not running around on stage from left to right like a maniac, as you will have seen by some people, but purposely spending time on the left, center and right of the stage, trying to get as close to the audience as possible.

Regardless of the size of the venue, we have a plan and we know what to do.  We can be effective regardless of the circumstances, because we decided to be in control and we are well organised.

We think of our presentations as something we give to an audience physically in the room with us or these days, maybe to an audience trapped in tiny little boxes on the computer screen.  Media interviews come up rarely for most business people. This medium requires a very specialised skill set to do it properly.  Amateur business leaders up against the pros from the ranks of journalists rarely goes well for the great unwashed.   Yet many business people are getting interviewed by podcast hosts who are also not  s.  These are usually never “gotcha” style interviews, but they are still going to be shared with a global audience.  Remember, every time we present we are putting our personal and professional brands on display.  How can we approach these presentations we will give on podcast shows?  Here are some ideas to think about.

Before The Podcast

1. Research the podcaster.  Who are they, what have they done, why are they doing this podcast?  The guest on the podcast supplies the IP for the podcast host most of the time.  They may be knowledgeable about the area under discussion but usually we are on the show because we are the expert.
2. What is the configuration of the show?Is there only one host or are there multiple hosts.  This will make the research component more important to know who you are dealing with.
3. What is the style of the show?We must listen to previous episodes to get some idea of how they approach their guests, what types of questions they ask and how they conduct the show.  Are they a good listener?  Do they constantly interrupt and re-direct the answers?  I personally don’t like watching Howard Stern’s shows because he constantly interrupts his guests, which as the audience I find very annoying.
4. Is it audio only or video and audio?Increasingly, podcasts are using both mediums.  Knowing this helps us to decide what image we want to project and how we should dress for the interview.  If the host is always casually dressed, should we match them?  I believe we need to decide what is our brand look and dress accordingly.  In my case my brand is always professional which means suit, tie, French cuff shirts, cufflinks, wristwatch and pocket chief.  I don’t care how the host dresses because their brand is their decision.
5. Do they supply the list of questions beforehand?This is a good idea, although if they always ask the same questions, you can get the idea from watching their shows before you do the podcast,
6. How will they distribute the podcast?Do we have 100% editorial control over what goes out or not?  Most podcasts are using some platform which will broadcast the interview globally, so we have to understand our brand will potentially be viewed by tens of thousands of people over time.

During The Interview

7. When we do media training, we are told to keep our answers brief, on the presumption we will get ourselves into less trouble by keeping it brief.Unethical journalists have a nasty preference for cutting up our comments and then rearranging them against pre-recorded questions.  We can be taken out of context, and now we are sounding controversial.  The media industry has learnt that controversial sells.

Podcasts however are a long form show that usually lasts around an hour.  The temptation is to speak in long bursts, because you have the time.  We can speak in long bursts, if what we are saying is high quality and we want to communicate a complex thought.  If we are just rambling on because we can, then that is a brand value destroyer.

8. We shouldn’t feel any pressure to answer the question immediately.Everything can be edited, so if you take a long pause then the editor will just cut that bit out because they won’t like the long silence.  Take your time and think about your answer.  If you don’t like your answer, then just say you don’t like it and then do it again.
9. If the show is being videoed then avoid having to look at your notes for the interview if you can.It make us look less professional and not in command of our topic.  If we want to consult our notes, then we can do that off-camera and make sure that bit will be edited out later.
10. Don’t look at the camera, if it is video plus audio.Keep looking at the host and engage with them.  We can look at the camera at the start and the finish when the host is engaging directly with the audience, but apart from that, keep you attention on the interviewer.  Switching your gaze from the host to the camera and back to the host, breaks your connection with the audience and looks like you are nervous and not quite sure where you should be looking.

After The Interview

11. Get a copy of the interview, either audio or both video and audio and check the content to make sure you are happy with it.If you are umming and ahhing during the show, don’t worry about that and expect all of these will be cut out.   This is the natural you and the way you speak, so your audience will accept that.  If it is a problem, then there is a hint for you to get some training to improve as a communicator. 
12. A lot of shows are weekly which means they have to have a stock of shows up their sleeve, so that they are never running out of content.  This means it could be some time before your shows airs.  Find out roughly when it will be released, so you can coordinate your own promotion activities
13. Ask for the links to the show, so that you can blast it out to your own social media, website etc., when it is released.
14. If you have your own podcast, ask for the edited file and then add in your own introduction and release it as an episode for your own show.
15. Get a photograph with the host and pump this out into your social media etc., as a teaser for the coming release of the episode.

These fifteen points will be a good starting point to consider, before you accept any requests for podcast interviews.  Podcasts are a good media to promote our personal and professional brands and we should always be looking for ways to do that.

I discovered the journalist Simon Kuper, when I started subscribing to the Financial Times newspaper (FT).  I have a number of go to columnists in the FT and he is one of them. I like his intelligence, wit and writing style.  He recently mentioned his experiences attending conferences after a long break.  He outlined some advice for presenters thinking about addressing conference audiences, which I totally agree with.  Let’s go through them.

1. Bored Audiences. Simon made the observation that the audience is bored even before you start speaking. This can easily happen. If the preceding speakers have been awful, they will have killed off your audience for you.  Simon references redundant openings as a sure signal for the listeners to grab their phones and escape to the warm bosom of the internet.  How we physically walk on stage, how we start, are going to indicate to the audience, if we are worth following or not.  We need a power start, with no hesitancy or tinkering around with the laptop.  Walk on stage with supreme confidence and launch straight into a gripper opening guaranteed to monopolise audience attention in those vital first two seconds.

2. One Key Idea. He noted that people won’t remember everything you spoke about.  We have to be careful not to cannibalise our key message, with too many competing messages.  Simon mentioned one idea, backed up with evidence and the use of anecdotes.  He is actually talking about wrapping the points up in stories, because we will recall these more easily that just data.

3. Speak Less. Simon suggests that if we have a 15 minute spot, then stop at 12 minutes.  His idea is that we don’t want to be blasting through our slides at the end in a panic to get through all the content.  We have all seen this, haven’t we.  The speaker skips what looks like the most important slides in the deck, because they are running out of time and we feel cheated. Less is more.  This stop early discipline will force us to be more concise and clear.

4. Don’t Read Your Speech. His suggestion is to “memorise it by saying it out loud once a day for five days beforehand”.  I disagree with Simon on this point.  There is no shame or stigma to using your slide deck as the navigation for your talk.  The same goes for notes.  I witnessed a Harvard Professor give a three hour lecture during an Executive Education Course I attended in the Business School, with no notes anywhere in sight.  It appeared he did the whole thing from memory.  At the end, as we were filing out of the lecture theatre, I spied his secret.  Behind us on the back wall, there was a large sheet of paper with 10 words written on it.  These were the chapters of the talk, so that he could keep the order correct.

5. Be Visually More Appealing. Simon suggests that as we are boring to look at, we should move around on stage and look at the audience.  I agree to a point.  Certainly free ourselves from the confines of being trapped behind the podium.  Walk around on stage, but do it with purpose, rather than your nerves driving you to wander up and down, becoming a distraction from your message.  Move to the apron of the stage to have more eye contact impact with the audience closest to you.  Move to the rear of the stage to make a macro point and use big gestures to try and engage the entire audience at one time.

6. Use Slides Or Videos. Again, I partially agree.  Simon makes the point to not use slabs of text and that “your mouth is for words and slides are for pictures”.  This is a good idea and certainly pictures are brilliant for engaging the audience.  What we put on the slides can be tricky though.  I watched the Japanese chief economist from one of the major global banks give a presentation on currency movements, which is a very topical subject here in Japan at the moment.  He was a very smart guy and his talk was very good.  Astonishingly, his slides were very amateur. 

He made a very common mistake we often see here in Japan, of just putting up the content, without thinking about whether the audience can absorb it easily.  The slides were too dense and there were too many graphs on the one page.  He needed to simplify his visuals, such that we can get the message in two seconds.  If it takes longer than that, it is too complex.  Also, we should be careful of the visuals competing with us.  They must be our slave and we must dominate the proceedings.

7. Avoid Cliché Jokes. Simon is right to say we should skip boring statements like, “I have the difficult spot after lunch” or introducing a panelist with “and finally last but definitely not least”.   “Without further ado” is a pet hate of mine as well.  Probably no one in the audience has any clear definition of what constitutes an “ado” and we should do a better job of getting proceedings underway.

8. Use Simple Language. Simon made this point in reference to non-native speakers of English, but I think it is something we should all adopt. 

9. Forget Motherhood Statements. He pointed out the weakness of stock phrases such as “all stakeholders need to work together”.  I laughed when he wrote, “don’t say things that are obviously false such as ‘We value all our employees’”.

10. Give Marcus Aurelius A Rest. Regurgitating well known quotes falls flat, because we all know them and there is nothing new on offer. I suggest you find a quote which is pithy and not so well known instead.  We will learn something new and valuable and we will feel better as a result.

We instinctively know these points don’t we, but sometimes we get carried away with assembling the slide deck and we forget the medium we are operating in.  The chief economist I referenced earlier was oblivious about his presentation’s impact, so there are still some major gaps in understanding on display here in Japan.  Let’s take Simon’s points and work on them so that when it is our turn to speak, we are the outlier, the one person the audience will say made the whole conference worth attending.

When we are asked to give a business presentation, we may imagine we are the hero, arriving on our white charger, to rescue the audience from their woes.  We may come armed to the teeth with research, data, statistics, evidence, testimonials and proof.  We have it partially correct.  We are definitely there to add value, to make their attendance worth it and to leave some positive residue from the experience.  However, we are not the hero, jauntily dispensing wisdom and gold nuggets.  We must make those attending the hero and we need to find out what is their kryptonite, the things which are making business hard for them.  We are the catalyst, the seer, the guide, the trusted advisor showing a different and superior path to those already considered.

Once we know their issues, we can fix on our purpose, determine our central message to give them help in their work.  We probably have a lot of good ideas for them, but we have limited time for our talk, so we need to refine the message down to something we can get through in about 40 minutes.

We have some central aims in the talk.  Firstly, we have to find ways to connect with them.  Our grand resume will hopefully go some way to establishing our credibility, but in this era of fake news, that may not be enough anymore.  Our opening has to really crack the code and grab their attention.  A boring start will ensure everyone is grabbing their phones and surreptitiously scrolling around the internet, looking for something much more interesting that us. We need to flag that we have some answers, for some of the central problems which have been plaguing them for some time.

Secondly, we want to motivate them to take action to do something.  This is where we can often get carried away. Before you know it, our talk has become the hundred things you need to do to achieve wealth, happiness and the secret of life.  We need to fix on one major thing which will lift all boats and make a fundamental improvement in their businesses.  We will be facing a mixed audience scattered across industry, specialization, gender age and position. One key action item and one key benefit is the target, because that forces us to go for the richest vein, to tap into the motherload.

Thirdly, to get people behind the idea we need to offer proof of what we are saying.  This is where storytelling is so critical.  If we bundle up a whole bunch of numbers, assorted data and various details, the chances of anyone writing it down are very slim and that anyone will refer to those same notes ever again is even slimmer.  For everyone else, they won’t recall the content, because we forget about 50% of what we hear within an hour, 70% within a day and 90% within a week.

We tend to remember the stories we heard in presentations we have attended if they were told well.  There should be a central figure, the main character and we tell the story of what happened to them.  If we are trying to make a key point, then the main character can become a proxy, an avatar for those in the audience.  The hero of the story is just like them and they can identify with the hero’s situation. 

Next we need to add in some tension.  We want to create some conflict to underline the struggle our hero is going through and which the audience is going through too.  For this purpose, we need the baddie and the “winter is coming” scenario of impending doom, unless we do something right now.  Covid-19, for example, would fit the bill for the common evil negatively impacting our businesses.

We tell the story of some action taken by our hero, who looks very similar to our audience and what was the result of the action they took, that kept them from going off the precipice to their destruction.

When we tell this story it needs to be graphic in order for it to resonate.  We need to transport the audience to the scene, the season and introduce the different characters involved while outlining the plot of what happened.  For example, if there is a CFO in this story, we can’t just say Suzuki was the CFO.  We need to flesh it out more and make it more relatable.  We can say, “The CFO Suzuki looked a very worried woman, her face was lined with worry and you could sense the high levels of stress the low revenue numbers were generating”. 

Each main character needs a small bio involving some emotion, so that we can connect and empathise with them.  We might be having very worrying revenue numbers too, so we know what Suzuki is going through or we may have had this experience in the past, so we can relate.  We need the emotion to be there, to provide the glue to get us interested in what happened to this other company.

Finally, we introduce the fix, our recommendation in the context of what it did for the hero in the story.  We set the scene for what success looks like and this is appealing to the audience, because this is what they are seeking too.  They have identified with the hero’s dilemma and the audience will also identify with the solution.

The more we can have the audience identify with the hero in the story, the more likely they are to receive the lessons we are recommending through the medium of the example we are outlining.  Our purpose was to impart some recommendation and this is one powerful way to get an audience to adopt what we are saying.