“Greg is all style and no substance”, my erstwhile colleague happily told everyone who would listen, while I was on stage.  It was an occasion where each Division Head presented to the entire company on what they were doing and where they were taking their part of the firm.  He had preceded me and immediately felt his own inadequacy as a presenter, seeing me work the room.  His preferred option was to attack, to stitch his pathetic, wounded ego back together again.  When his remark was relayed to me later, I just outright laughed.  Not a shy, timid, embarrassed laugh, but a real “that is so pathetic, it is funny” laugh.  He obviously had no clue then and I would guess he still has no clue today wherever he is. Unfortunately, I have run into several versions of him since that time.

In these cases, the speaker is grappling with what they see as a two-dimensional choice between being “content heavy” and using “spurious techniques” to deliver the talk.  I was watching a group of engineers giving their talks to inspire the audience to vote them on to the committee of a prestigious volunteer business organisation.  If I listed up their firms for you, everyone would know them, because these were the representatives in Japan of serious brand name companies.  Initially, I was sold on the brand power. Sitting there, I was expecting some excellent five-minute talks on why they should join the committee.  They were mostly shockers, barely able to string two sentences together and seemed to me incredibly dull candidates for consideration.  Their technical education had not prepared them for this eventuality and it showed.

We also get this phenomenon in our High Impact Presentation Course classes, where the speaker is wedded to their content and just dismisses the importance of the delivery component.  Somehow, in their mind, the incredible quality of their information is all they need to be a successful communicator.  The latest statistics, in-depth findings from recent research, industry white papers, buyer surveys, referencing scientific papers etc., are seen as the Holy Grail for being an effective speaker.

It was hard enough for this concept to survive before, once the internet made the access to information and free information at that, so widely available.  When I was at University, the library stacks housed the limits of possible knowledge and the choices were made simple.  For my son, his educational experience has been different. He has spent his time trying to sort out which bits of the information from the internet firehose are the most relevant, as he drowns in readily available data.

Now ChatGPT and all the other AI driven information sources have made instant information and data more of a commodity than ever before in human history. Yes, some of it is fake news, like that dodgy American lawyer who recently used AI to do his research and it created legal cases and precedents which were completely fictitious. Reflect, though, that we are at the starting point of the AI charge and these systems will only get better.  Why do we need to be impressed by the fact you have data, when we can easily access it ourselves?  Insight based on the data is the value pivot we speakers need to make to elevate our content to make it powerful, relevant and attractive. We still need to deliver it in a way however which completely resonates, engages and persuades our audience.

There is an opposite problem, though. This is the fluffy talk delivered with tremendous verve and vigour.  I saw such a speaker, who was very good with the delivery. At first blush, it seemed impressive as a talk.  When I sat back though and reflected on what he was telling us, it was only then that I realised that his actual content was totally unremarkable. My metaphor is that the value of his content was more like drinking the warm froth on a beer, rather than enjoying the cold body of the refreshing craft ale, on a humid Tokyo summer day. 

So we have to be more than just one dimension.  We need to be both good at talking and good at content.  That changes our perspective about what is our role as the speaker.  When I tested ChatGPT on putting together the outline of a talk on leadership in Japan, it did a workman like job.  It wasn’t remarkable stuff, but if you were someone who wasn’t skilled in this creative activity, it would provide you with a base from which to further refine the content.  Even if it produced something truly brilliant, you still have to get up on your hind quarters and deliver it to the audience.

You can read it to me, of course, but in that event, just send it and I will read it for myself, so I don’t need you hanging around.  Much better would be studying how to be a competent speaker who can bring the content to life.  This is all knowable by the way and there are few mysteries involved.  Hard work in rehearsal with proper coaching will lift 99% of the speaker dross we are assaulted with in business to a much more digestible and impressive level.  Eye contact, voice modulation, gestures, body language, pacing, pauses, emphasising keywords and phrases are some of the key basics which we can and should master.

Getting the content to sing is our goal and we do this with the idea of building our personal and professional brands.  Regardless of what you do, you are affecting your personal and professional brands anyway, when you present, for good or bad and we must never forget that.  Given the choice, we should aim to bolster the quality of the content with an excellent delivery, based on coachable skills.  Make that the goal and you will never go wrong.

I gave a speech recently to a room full of managers, some foreigners and some Japanese.  It was an internal talk and the purpose was to get the leaders motivated and get their mojo going, after having been hammered by three years of Covid.  They recently passed across the feedback and it was quite confusing.  Some said, “love the passion, dynamism” etc., and some said, “too loud, too strong”, etc.  What do you make of this?  What I made of it was, judging by the faces when I was presenting, the vast majority of people were accepting of the energised style. For a small minority, it was too powerful. Okay, so what are we supposed to do with this feedback?

There are four purposes for our presentations.  In business, the Inform style is the most common one, where we provide extensive information about project updates, results, introducing new policies, and explaining overall strategic direction.  There are the Impress presentations. where we are selling our organisations’ capabilities and credibility.  We are trying to boost the brand of the firm and to encourage buyers to select us a trusted partner.  Entertain speeches are often given before the festivities or as a classic after-dinner speech to put everyone in a positive and happy mood. Then there are the Motivate talks, where we want the audience to take some action.  We have a powerful belief in what we are suggesting. Say we had the cure for cancer, through a particular regime, we would broadcast this far and wide and with a missionary zeal to convert people to the path we say is the right one.

The speech I was giving was in the Motivate category.  They had suffered a downturn in motivation and zeal and my job was to restore that commitment to the cause.  Naturally, this type of talk is going to feature a lot of energy, passion, commitment, belief.  My audience was a mixed group from all different divisions within the organisation, so there was a big spread of personality types.  The Amiable personality type is rather muted, reserved, self-contained.  I would guess the “too strong” comments came from people in this group.   

Should I have toned it down to suit this group?  I don’t think so. My mission was to motivate and to inspire, so energy and passion were needed for that purpose.  Clearly, some people didn’t respond to that. As speakers we have to try and seek the acceptance of the majority, rather than the minority.  You quickly realize that it's impossible to please everyone and be everything to everyone.  Do I want to spend my valuable time giving talks to Milquetoast audiences or do I want to talk to people who want to fired up? Clearly, with my personality, the latter is the correct answer.

So how dramatic can we be as a speaker?  I certainly added dramatic flourishes to my talk with varied voice modulation and big and powerful gestures. I used my facial expression to drive home points, used movement, where needed, to underline a key point.  Was it too much?  Clearly for some it was, but did I get my message across? Did I break through the clutter occupying the minds of my audience? Did I stir passion in those who wanted to be fired up again?  Yes, I did and if I was to give that talk again, I wouldn’t change anything about how I delivered it.

 When we speak, why would we give equal emphasis to every word in a sentence?  Each word has a different value and the way we deliver the talk should correspond to that unique value.  If there are keywords in that last sentence of mine, I should hit them harder or much softer than the other words, to highlight them, making them standout, elevating them above the others.  For example, I could highlight key words and phrases like this: Each word has a different value and the - way - we - deliver the talk should correspond to that different value.  When I use these phrases “Each word”, “the way we deliver” and “different value”, I need to highlight them by using speed and strength - either slowing down or speeding up, going hard or going soft.

When delivering the sentence, I can add more dynamism to the phrases with gestures and body language.  The combination of the word delivery, the appropriate gesture and the overall body language come together for a very dramatic combination of emphasis supporting the message, which will break through and grab the attention of the listeners.

What we want to avoid is sameness – all strong or all soft.  Either is guaranteed to have audiences leaping to grab their phones to elude us and succumb to the magnetic force field of the internet. We want them to get our message, so we need to mix it up and keep them with us.  I often use the example of classical music – it has tremendous variance and that is why we keep listening.  Our talks should have ebbs and flows, crescendos and lulls.

There are plenty of people delivering “Johnny One Note” boring, grey, uninspiring talks, so we don’t need more of those.  Try to seek micro areas where you can bring a bit of pizzazz and flair to the talk.  Not constant across the whole talk so it becomes tiring, but add flashes of drama and sprinkle these into the speech, to keep your audience with you.  Trust me - it is a lot more fun when you do it this way.

TikTok, Reels and all of the other super short form visual media are creating a nightmare for presenters.  Twitter started things off with the very limited number of words allowed per tweet, forcing people into tiny corners of the mind.  The trend toward short form rather than long form has meant that audiences are getting trained to absorb information in tiny little blocks.   

What happens though when we have a forty-minute presentation?  The audience become restless and their minds start to wander, because they are not getting mini-hits every minute.  The ubiquitous mobile phone with that drug like mainliner effect straight to the internet enables them to escape from us immediately.  They leave us for the lure and charm of something more interesting to pay attention to.

Is this going to get better?  “No” is the answer, so what can we do about it?  One thing I notice when teaching our High Impact Presentations Course is that presenters make things more difficult for themselves by offering up additional distractions to the audience.  There are a range of these, so let’s go through some of them.

1.     A soft voice

Speaking to a colleague or a friend up close and personal doesn’t require a lot of voice projection, so we tend not to raise our voice when speaking in these situations.  Presenting though is a different occasion. It requires us to engage our audience to keep their attention.  Adding volume to our voice sends out a strong vibration which commands attention to what we are saying.  We sound more confident and credible to the listener.  Coaching class participants to up the ante on voice projection often bothers them, because they feel they are screaming at their audience.  When we play back their video of their presentation they realise it isn’t too loud and in fact they see they are coming across as capable and competent.

2.     Pointless gestures

Any gesture maintained for longer than 15 seconds immediately becomes irrelevant and annoying to the audience.  This is a simple enough guideline, but we sometimes find the class participants may be using one hand to gesture, but they have completely forgotten about the other hand. They have parked it somewhere across their body, adding zero value to the proceedings.  We want our gestures to help us highlight words and ideas, such that they rise above the noise and register with the listener in support of our message.  If the hand is floating around somewhere and not being used, just “turn it off” and let it hang by your side, out of trouble. 

3.      Wooden faces

Professor Albert Mehrabian’s research has helped us to understand the importance of congruency when we speak.  His central thesis is that what we are saying has to match up with the way we are saying it.  For example, how many times have you seen the speaker maintain the one facial expression throughout their talk?  In that talk though there were probably areas of good and bad news.  Good results, disappointing results, opportunities, challenges are all being reported, yet their face doesn’t reflect any of that. Congruency would mean a smile or a happy face for good results and opportunities and a serious face for bad results and challenges.  Mehrabian found that when we are not congruent, the audience gets distracted by how we look and sound and they are only hearing the message 7% of the time.  That means 93% of the time what we are saying is not connecting.  That type of poor result should definitely warrant a “serious” face.

4.     Twitching and swaying around

When the body starts swaying around, we are setting up visual competition for our message.  The knees and hips are circling around as if to some soul music groove. Our eyes are drawn to the movement and we tune out the message from the presenter.

In addition, many participants will wander around on stage moving forward and then moving back to the same spot.  What was the point of the movement?  Actually it had no point and all they are doing is distracting us from their message. 

Sometimes the speaker will adjust their feet to face one side of the room and then do a little soft shoe shuffle, to move around and face the other direction.  All of this is competing with the words coming out of their mouth.  We have this wonderful thing called the neck and it can rotate enough degrees to allow us to plant our feet in one spot and yet be able to look at the audience members to our extreme left and right sides with no difficulty whatsoever.

5.     Rambling and using filler words

Puzzling audiences with the point of what you are saying is guaranteed to lose them in a split second.  I was listening to a podcast the other day and the guest was rambling away and for the life of me I couldn’t get the point of the message and I lost interest immediately.  Ums and Ahs and other filler words are another turn off as the speaker struggles to string two words together.  We abandon ship and desert the messenger.

The presenter’s job is only going to become more fraught and we need to lift our game as communicators, if we are going to have any hope of getting our message through. Let’s purge ourselves of these distracting habits we have accumulated and clean up our act.  The good news is all of the other presenters out there will change nothing and we will look like rock stars by comparison.