The vast majority of the time in our company we are teaching presentation training to groups of fourteen. We have two instructors and we video everything. We provide an enormous amount of one-on-one coaching during the training and the results are spectacular. All good. From time to time, we provide one-on-one coaching to company Presidents. Usually, they have a special talk coming up and they need to really nail it.
Being able to customise the training exclusively for them is a joy for the instructors, because we can go so much deeper. Having more time with them makes an enormous difference. The power of repetition comes into play and that completely changes their results. Doing their talk once is the usual experience for most businesspeople. Most don’t rehearse. Well that isn’t quite true – sadly, they rehearse on their live audience. Not the greatest idea in the world and to top it off, they only ever deliver that talk once. This ensures there is no real growth associated with the activity.
When we do one-on-one coaching, we help with the design of the talk and the crafting of the delivery. This is where the expertise of the trainer really comes into play. If the trainer is also an experienced public speaker, that is even more ideal. Getting the design right for the occasion is critical. As trainers and public speakers, we have a broad range of ideas to draw upon to help with the design phase. Most businesspeople don’t get that much practice to design their talks in a year, so they are always struggling to create the excellence the talk deserves. As trainers, we have heard thousands of talks and have found areas where we can coach and transform them into something special. Being able to see possibilities the client cannot see ensures we can add real value. Also, because we are outside of the system, we can challenge what is being offered. A subordinate will probably conclude they should not make any waves around the boss, but we are presentation professionals and we can offer our insights and perspectives freely.
The individual time with the speaker is simply gold. We can have extended hours running continuously and really work on every aspect of the talk, from the design right through to the delivery. Getting the visuals right is always a big point of improvement in the added sophistication of the presentation. Most senior executives in my experience still get this wrong. The most common issue is too much confusion on the screen. There are too many competing pieces of visual stimulation distracting the audience. Being able to clean up the visuals on the spot is so valuable because the speaker can see the difference immediately and it makes their job of presenting the information much easier.
Sometimes the logic of the flow can be improved to make the points clearer and more compelling. The author of the design can sometimes be too close to their material and everything makes sense to them, but to the uninitiated, it can lead to gaps in understanding which make the content hard to absorb. Having that unbiased coach there to challenge the presenter’s assumptions is an excellent opportunity to catch any problems before the audience hears the talk. There is often the problem of too much information for the time to present it and it is very hard to eliminate slides you have fallen in love with. The coach has no such restrictions and can help to slim it down to fit the time slot. Often the President’s’ speech is created for them by their staff. This can often lead to some pretty ordinary content being created, because the staff are not presentation experts. The coach can weigh in at this point and work on improving the content coverage to further increase the professionalism of the presentation.
The delivery piece is where the real magic occurs. There is so much power in doing the same presentation over and over and over again, polishing every small aspect of the talk to make it perfect or as close to perfect as possible. This is where you need time, because if it is forty-minute speech for example, doing a few repetitions really burns through the clock very quickly. The ability to recast a part of the speech and then elevate the next rendition makes the progress tangible and permanent. Usually the engagement of the audience part is neglected because the speaker is concentrating on the content rather than the delivery. This is a big mistake which the coach can work on getting the balance right. The audience won’t remember the details on the slides, but they will remember the presenter and how they felt during their presentation.
It is what we say and how we say it that is key. Small changes in cadence, word emphasis, pauses, gestures, posture and facial expression can have a dynamic impact on the way the audience receives the talk. Voice modulation is how we keep the audience with us and how we don’t allow them to escape through distraction. The repetition component is what we need to make this complex construct really work for the speaker.
If you ever have an important talk to give, don’t try to work it out by yourself – get a professional to work with you. Never forget, every time we speak in public, we are putting our personal and professional brands out on display. This is not something we can afford to get wrong, nor an opportunity to squander the chance to build both of those brands.
Most foreigner delivered presentations in Japan will be delivered in English and have a mixed audience of both Japanese and non-Japanese. There is the tendency to imagine, because it is in English, that any necessary Japanese cultural components can be over-looked. The presumption is the presentation can be delivered, just as it would be, for a foreigner only audience. Why would we imagine that? The Japanese audience members may speak English in their firms, but often the language capability will vary and very, very few will be operating at native speaker levels. If we are not clued in, we could lose a sizeable chunk of our audience.
The speed of delivery is usually the first barrier we erect, to keep our Japanese speaking audience from getting our message. We are speaking in English, so we assume we can speak as we normally would, without ever considering the needs of our audience. It is extremely rare in my experience to listen to a presenter who is speaking too slowly. In fact, I cannot recall anyone having that issue. The opposite, though, is the norm and unfortunately, I am guilty of this too. I get passionate about my subject and I start really leaning into it. Invariably I speed up. The cure for this is to keep in mind that too fast a speed will lose a lot of the audience and that I need to keep a slower pace than normal. Also, by using pauses, I can regulate the delivery in a way which will stop the speed from revving up.
Idioms are the nemesis of international understanding. I grew up in Australia, so we were bombarded with American and English television programming. In this way, we learned the dual languages and the idioms associated with them. One of the tricky problems I have is to deduce which idioms are international and which are purely of Australian invention. There is a surprising amount I found. I know this because the non-Australians I am speaking to go blank when I let loose with one of these little Aussie specials and I realise my message is not getting through. As a presenter in Japan, it is better to delete idioms entirely and find alternative methods of expressing the same idea.
Sporting references are the other barrier to communication. Australia is a very sporty nation, so we have tons of these too. Americans have their own favourites and many times I have to ask what they mean and I am a native speaker, so imagine how quickly you lose your audience of Japanese guests. It is better to just cut these out of the presentation delivery entirely and look for more easily accessible expressions to convey the point we want to make.
In Japan, in normal polite society, we know that looking someone straight in the eye isn’t done and we have to look at their forehead, or throat or chin instead. What about eye contact with our Japanese members in the audience – should we just ignore them to make certain they don’t feel too uncomfortable? There is eye contact and there is eye contact. Anything under 5 seconds is too short to make a connection and anything over six seconds is too intrusive. We can still engage our Japanese members in the audience with eye contact if we keep it within these bounds. When we look at audience members, we are creating a one-on-one personal connection which is very strong. We are saying, “You are the only person in this room and I am talking directly with you”. Japanese guests are not used to this, so when it happens, the impact is enormous and they really gravitate to us.
Here is a hint – don’t worry about the expression on their faces. Sometimes it can look like they are rejecting what we are saying, but in fact they are just concentrating hard on the content to catch it. What we see is their serious face, not their angry face, but it's hard to divine which is which for foreigners. I had my breakthrough moment on Japanese physiognomy in Kobe, when I was speaking in Japanese to a hundred salespeople about Australian education. Midway down on the left he was sitting there throughout my hour-long presentation, with the angriest look on his face, as if he was not buying one thing I said.
When I finished, he leapt out of his chair and hurried down the center aisle to where I was standing. I honestly thought he was going to punch me in the face and was getting ready to defend myself. To my astonishment, he started double pumping my hand and telling me in Japanese what a terrific talk that was and how much he learnt about Australia. Assume the Japanese guest is concentrating on what you are saying and don’t be put off what may appear to be a hostile reception to your message.
Don’t worry if Japanese don’t ask questions at the end. Often, nobody wants to be the first in anything, so they are waiting for someone else to go first. Also, there is a complex calculation going on in their minds about how they will be perceived by this question. Is it a veiled insult to the speaker, implying that they were not clear enough in their talk? Will others think they are stupid for asking this basic question? Shouldn’t they defer to others who are maybe older or more senior or with women, defer to men to ask the questions. If there are foreigners in the room, there is usually no shortage of people wanting to ask questions, but we should specifically encourage the Japanese to speak up.
We can say, “In my culture, asking questions is never seen negatively, it just shows an interest in the topic. I know Japan is different, but let me encourage our Japanese guests to ask questions they may have. If you would like to ask me questions after the talk, I will be here for about fifteen minutes and would welcome questions you may have”. This shows a great deal of sensitivity to those Japanese in the audience and they will feel much closer to you as the speaker.
There were three experts on the panel for this luncheon event. One man and two women. They were using microphones but that didn’t help in one case. A very well presented, professional woman was adding her insights and point of view on the topic, but I couldn’t catch what she was saying. My table was situated right in front of her but to no avail. The man had a strong voice, as did the other woman expert and I had no problem gathering in their contributions. This other panellist however was beyond my ken.
I was wondering about why this was the case. There were a couple of problems and one was microphone technique she was using. Most of us don’t use a microphone very often so we are not always au fait with the tech. Definitely her technique wasn’t working. Waving the microphone around while speaking defeats the purpose and the audio engineering. If she had held it a little higher, in the one spot and spoken across the mesh of the microphone, then we probably would have had a better chance of hearing what she was saying. Here is a hint – don’t wave the microphone around folks!
The other issue is she had a rather soft voice to start with. Many people have this attribute, which can be quite charming in a one-on-one situation, but generally doesn’t work all that well in a formal speaking situation. It is often the case with women speakers also I have noticed, but men too can be speaking up, but their voices are not carrying. I see it as a mindset shift which hasn’t taken place for the speaker, in order to be effective as a presenter. When we are sitting with someone, one on one, we don’t need to project our voice. They can hear us just fine. Having said that, I have noticed many Americans can be quite loud in these same situations, so the whole conversation is audible, if you are sitting close by. Being an Aussie, I guess that is a cultural aspect and probably Americans are not the only ones who do this, but I have noticed this aspect of their behaviour. I would see that as a plus though because it means they are better equipped to go from a one-on-one situations to speaking to a crowd and adjusting their volume accordingly.
If we are not used to using microphones and we are softly spoken, then we need to make some adjustments when we are presenting. Using the equipment, as it is designed, is a must. Speaking more loudly is also called for, but this is very difficult for softly spoken people to them, it sounds like they are screaming. I notice this in pour presentations training. I am asking some of the participants in the class to raise their volume and they adjust it only microscopically. They cannot imagine speaking more loudly and so they restrain themselves. In these cases, I turn to the rest of the class and I ask them if they think the speaker is screaming or speaking too loudly. They, of course, say no and I need to keep encouraging the presenter to go bigger with their voice range.
Why do they need to speak more loudly? Being a presenter is different to chatting with your mate or girlfriend over coffee. You are there to be taken seriously, your personal and professional brands are on display. We will make a judgement not only about you, but we will extend it to your whole organisation. If you are a dud, we think everyone down at your shop is a dud. If you are brilliant, we think the whole crew are brilliant. By bringing enough volume to the presentation, you lift your credibility, because it comes across as more confident and considered. Obviously, you also increase the odds of the audience actually hearing what you are saying as well.
We video the participants presentation and we have a separate coach in the review room analyse it and then coach them. When we play the video back, they can hear the first coach in the main room asking them to increase the volume. We ask them in the review room, “does that seem too loud or too crazy?”. They always answer “no” and they start to realise that they can get out of their comfort zone and improve their presentations, as a consequence of making a few small changes in volume delivered to the audience.
It is always a good practice to get to the venue early and practice with the microphone to work out the right distance and elevation from your mouth, in order to make sure you are going to be heard and appreciated. Getting it right doesn’t take long and will make a big difference in how you come across. When you are tool loud the equipment tells you straight away with the static you produce but being too soft has no warning signal.
In general, we buy confidence and presenters who speak with a strong voice come across as confident. If you don’t have a strong voice, at least try to speak louder than normal and if possible, always request a microphone to allow the tech to help you be understood by your audience.
When I exchange business cards in Japan, I select from the one designed for a Western audience and another for a Japanese audience. Often, I will hand one over to a foreigner and then a different one to the Japanese person accompanying them. This will draw a remark, “Oh, the back of the cards are quite different”. I like to ask the Japanese person what do they think is the difference when they compare the two? Some see it and for others I have to explain to them that the English one has the five core course we teach for the English version and the Japanese version has ten things we teach. The reason being that Japanese are data vampires and they cannot get enough information. For a Western audience, five things are about the maximum complexity they want to handle. Actually three is probably better for them, but I push it a bit. When I make this point about the data preference for Japanese, they respond with a nervous little laugh which says the “jig is up” and underlines the truth about presenting to Western and Japanese audiences.
This throws up a dilemma when presenting in Japan. Who do we prepare the presentation for – ourselves as Westerners, who like simplicity, clarity, brevity or the massively data hungry Japanese audience? The danger part in Japan is that when they prepare their presentations, they suit themselves and go all out for massive troves of data. Just to really accentuate the cultural differences, they decide the smartest thing is to put as much data on each slide as physically possible. To make it even more exciting, they leaven things up a bit with six colours and five different fonts. It is a total mess.
When we present we always have to begin with two thoughts – who is my audience and what is my main message for them. If we have a Japanese only audience, then that is easy – we can go bananas on the amount of data we offer. If it is a Western audience, we can be very zen like and chilled. If it is a mixed audience that is a bit more complex. What should we do?
Whether it is a Japanese or Western audience, we should absolutely not make the mistake of going crazy and putting up too much information on the one slide. The Golden Rule is one idea per slide and the clearer the access to the key information the better. Slides cost nothing to make, so we can split information across five different slides, rather than the typical Japanese approach, of cramming all of the same information on to one slide.
For a Japanese audience, we need more data than we may think is necessary. They want the references also to where the data came from, so we cannot miss that point, as it is critical for the credibility of what we present. Often audience members will check on what we say on screen and do it in real time.
I make a joke that data hungry people of any persuasion are comfortable and happy with three decimal places for numbers. That would include many Japanese in the audience. The usual Japanese approach though is to put the whole spreadsheet up on screen, even when there is a very small possibility that anyone seated in the room can actually see the numbers in the cells because they are so tiny. We can put the spreadsheet up on screen, like screen wallpaper, to give the presentation some credibility. We should then use animation and create a pop up cloud with a key number in it, which is overlayed on top of the spreadsheet. Usually in a spreadsheet, there will only be a few numbers we want to highlight, so we select those out and place them in the animated pop up cloud, in large font, making it easy to see. We can then talk to the numbers and make our point.
One of the best ways to satisfy a Japanese data hungry audience is to take a two step approach. Either have some additional physical materials prepared for distribution after the event or give them a URL, where they can access the data. This makes the audience very happy to get the information. Never distribute the data before your talk though. If you do that, everyone will be focused on the data and not on you the speaker. Hold it until the end and then make it available, so there is no competition with your message delivery.
One of the issues with data in Japan is that most official statistics are out of date by the time they are made available. Usually they are three years old, so that is a big disadvantage when giving presentations, because as we all know a three year Covid period has completely turned everything upside down. The only compensating factor is everyone suffers from the same fate with official figures. The better approach is to look for recent industry sector surveys or more current private sector information releases, by research institutes etc. It is very credibility sapping to see the speaker pop up data which is clearly out of date and expect us to believe what they are saying. It happens all the time here, but let’s not be part of that crowd.
When presenting in Japan, always remember you cannot satisfy the need for more and more data, but you can present it in a way which maintains your professionalism and allows your key messages to break through all the clutter.
I was reading a post on LinkedIn by an American lady, who spilt coffee over her blouse, just moments before she was due to give a key presentation to a group of executives. That got me thinking about how to handle these types of disasters which arise when we are presenting. Most of them are tech related – nothing works, it partially works or it suddenly stops working. Some disasters are down to the ambush presentations, for when we had no idea we would have to speak and suddenly we have to say a few words. Some are things like black coffee over your nicely pressed white blouse or business shirt and it is totally obvious to everyone.
The key to avoiding ninety percent of disasters is to get to the venue early and check the tech. If you get there early enough, there is a strong chance the tech geniuses on hand will be found and be able to fix it for you. Often, with early morning presentations, the tech wizards are not in the building and so there is no solution – you are solo! This is why it is always a good idea to print out your slides, as these are visible to you and form a navigation for you through the talk. If you don’t have access to the copy of the slides, then just sit down and write down the main key words for each chapter for the talk.
I was attending a Harvard Business School week long course on Leading Professional Service Firms and one of the professors gave a three hour long lecture with no notes. Well that is what it appeared to be, but the Prof was crafty. It was one of those lecture theatres with tiered seating from top leading down to the bottom, where the stage was located. As we were filing up the stairs out of the lecture theater, to go outside, I happened to notice a large piece of paper stuck to the back wall, with ten words on it. Those ten words were his lecture notes and only he could see them. It gave him the order and he just filled in the blanks with his talk.
We usually only get a chance to give our talk once and unlike the good Prof, we are not giving this talk every semester, so we don’t know the content cold. It doesn't matter. Write down the key points you want to talk to and then use the list as your guide when giving the talk. No one is going to jump to their feet and denounce you are a scoundrel and fraud because you are glancing down at your list. They are in fact relieved that you are not reading the whole text to them and are only finding your place, as you proceed with the talk.
Another thing is laziness. I am inherently lazy and this particular talk was a packed lunch and a passport away in distance terms, so lugging my laptop that far seemed like a chore to avoid. In a genius moment I thought, “I know, I will just take the USB and plug it into the host’s computer”. I was an idiot. What I didn’t consider was I use a Mac and they were using a different system and immediately the slide layout was thrown into chaos. Fortunately, I do what I advise and I got there early, so I had time to reformat the whole slide deck. I was sweating I can tell you and I got it done with fifteen seconds to spare!
Rather than being ambushed, I suggest that you never let that occur because you are always prepared to speak at any event, with either a question or a comment. We take anticipatory steps to protect ourselves. While you are sitting there, think what is a question you would like to ask and have that ready for the Q&A or in case some smarty pants MC decides to include you in the proceedings, without a by your leave.
If we have a personal presentation disaster such as the coffee incident, what do we do? This lady was vigorously trying to scrub the stain away, but it wasn’t working, so she had to present coffee stains and all. I wouldn’t recommend just carrying on, as if everything was normal. I would acknowledge what has happened and then carry on. Call it out and get it out of the way at the start. I would say, “My apologies for adding a coffee stain to today’s proceedings, but let’s get going regardless”.
If my brain wasn’t totally fried with nerves, shame and embarrassment, I might attempt some self-depreciating humour and say, “Today’s coffee stain on my shirt is sponsored by Blue Mountain from Kenya, it tastes great and wears exceptionally well. Now, let’s get into today’s topic”.
Humour is difficult at the best of times and being able to funny, when you have just spilt coffee all over yourself before a major audience is a big ask. If you can pull it off, make yourself the target of the humor, rather than someone else. Don’t say things like, “I would like to give a big shout out to the waiter for spilling coffee all over me just before I was ready to go on today”. Take responsibility for your appearance, deal with it, then ignore it and carry on with aplomb.
In the end, no one cares. Sure, you provided some light relief to their day, but they are all more focused on themselves, than on the fact you have coffee all over you. Do a professional job and focus on engaging the audience with your key messages and your personal and professional brands will be safeguarded.