How much is too much? For the expert, the boundaries on this equation can be quite broad. For them, we are only tapping into the very superficial elements of this worthy subject. They have so many layers at their disposal and they can go to exquisite depths of complexity and nuance, within a heartbeat. When they are addressing the great unwashed, the best laid plans can go astray.
I was one of the great unwashed, turning up to a complex subject in search of some better understanding and education on the topic. The expert’s temptation is to try to cram as much material as possible into the talk and show both their tremendous expertise but also the depths of the beauty of the topic. They are at the “art” end of the scale, while the punters in the room are more at the utilitarian end. The bombardment of the depth of materials can cause brain whiteout, as our cerebral capacities are severely challenged by the concepts, the data and the complexity of the delivery. Concentration spans take a hiding and we start to fade.
That was happening to me. We all turned up at night-time after completing hard toil down at the salt mines, so as a group, we were already mentally taxed. Naturally, a complex topic attracts experts in the field, who want to attend the talk to steal from the presenter’s materials or concepts and to gauge how big a threat they are as a competitor. This emboldens the presenter to turn on the expertise faucet and to go deep on the subject to justify why they are the one standing up in front of everyone and presenting, and not one of these other experts in the crowd.
Tonight’s expert also made the typical mistake of pounding us with slides, which were packed to the gunwales with information. We are talking beautiful slides, but so dense. If you were in the front row, you had a shot at being to read the detail, but anyone else would have been struggling, because of the density and small font sizes being employed. He also needed, like a lot of experts, to break his own slide into three or four slides.
Slides are free, by the way, so we don’t have to be parsimonious about their usage. It is better to have one idea per slide than lots of slides with too many ideas on each individual slide. Having complex configurations rarely works because the scale of the font and the micro-detail has to become too small, to fit it all in. Yes, he kindly supplied the slides after the event, but as a presenter, this is too late. We have to deliver our message in that moment, with that crowd and get to them then and there.
He made the mistake of suggesting we could stop him whenever we wanted to during his talk. I don’t recommend this, because you can so easily lose control of the time, because there are now no limits. When you have presentation followed by the Q&A there is a time allocated for the later for a reason. When we mix it up we are in danger of being distracted from our message or having to spend too much time on a relatively minor point to satisfy that questioner. It is also a free for all, with who can ask questions and suddenly you can get into a group debate about a point. This is very exciting, but it destroys your time allocation for the presentation and like him, race through the last 10% - 15% of the slides to finish on time.
One thing he did very well was to come across as an expert without being a pain and a know-it-all. He could phrase certain things which said, I believe this to be true based on my current knowledge and experience, but I could be mistaken. This is quite artful because he is making himself a small target. When you come across as “I am the expert here” then you invite people to want to prove otherwise and bring your ego down a peg or two. He did a good job being the legitimate expert and creating no enemies in the room.
As I have stated many times, it is always a good practice to get the list of who is coming to gauge how expert the crowd will be and also to get there early to suss out the interests of various people in the room. Actually, he didn’t do either of those judging by his late arrival and his high-level approach in presenting his information. I believe in these cases you can demonstrate sufficient expertise to convince the room you know your stuff without having to beat everyone into submission with a relenting “death by powerpoint” performance. He could have shown less and had just as successful a presentation. Less is more, as we say and a handy thing to remember if you are ever asked to give a presentation as an “expert”.
When we are giving a public presentation, it is rare that we will be given carte blanche by the organisers to promote our product or service. That type of blatant self-promotion is frowned upon and your reputation in the market will be negatively impacted. Great, but I want to sell more stuff. How can we promote ourselves without seeming to be breaking the boundaries of common sense? The hero’s journey is a popular Hollywood trope and it works equally well for us when presenting.
Let’s begin with laying out the situation in the market and at this point we are describing what has gone before and what has been accepted as normal. Now we need to raise the stakes and jack up the tension for the audience, so that they feel what they are hearing is worthwhile. We all love a warning about some impending disaster, because we feel more protected and bettered secured to weather the changes. Most of us respond more easily to addressing our fears than maximising our opportunities. As they say in the newspaper world, “if it bleeds, it leads”.
Changes in the market can be good of course, but we need to zero in on the negative consequences of the coming changes. We need to lay out what could go wrong and try to tie this back to the interests of the audience. If they feel this isn’t going to affect them, then they have a minimal commitment to doing anything about it. This obviously requires some pre-research about who will be in the audience and what they are interested in. That should be standard procedure for any speaker.
Storytelling at this point is a powerful tool. We can use the example of another organisation and what happened to them, because they weren’t able to respond fast or thoroughly enough to the changes. We need to set the scene and put the story in a timeframe based around a season and a place. If we can introduce characters into the story who they will know, even better. Our object is to transport them to the scene which they see in their mind’s eye.
If we can come up with a villain, all the better. It might be an actual person or it could be a circumstance or a piece of technology. ChatGPT is performing wonders for a lot of writers at the moment, as they blast our screeds of text full of doom and gloom and impending disaster. It makes for graphic reading and we are all aware that this is a pivotal change but we don’t quite know the ramifications as yet. That is enough to grab the interest of the audience. This is a gift which will keep giving for a long time and so look for a constant flow of commentary on this subject.
After we have engineered a good dollop of fear to spread into the hearts of our audience, we need to relieve that tension with a way out. Now, we cannot just pound away with the negatives, because that causes the audience to lose hope. We have to balance it out with a way forward. At this point, we may refer directly to a solution which already exists and which is available. That pivot though, is in danger of crossing the line of self-serving promotion. It is better to talk about current research and progress in addressing the issue. The fact that you have identified the problem and that you are actively addressing it, tells everyone you are the one to go to for help, when they need to work on fixing this issue.
Referring to your research finding is much better than referencing the product or service. It elevates the discussion to a point where your credibility is sky high and yet there is no feeling of a bait and switch going on here. You lured the audience into this venue with a sexy presentation title and then when you had them assembled, you switched in a massive commercial for your product or service. We don’t do that. This is where the latest findings, complete with convincing statistics etc ., come to the fore. You are not seen as someone organising this presentation as a group prospecting exercise. Instead, you are seen as delivering a neutral exploration of things everyone should realise. People like to know about a problem and even better, they like to know there is a solution at hand or under close development. When we outline the manner in which the problem will be dealt with, it gives off a tone of scientific breakthrough and we like science more than we like being sold to.
Being able to describe the likely events we will face and also the likely solutions is comforting for people and they are keen to hear the detail. That engagement is what we want as the presenter and we love it when everyone is hanging on our every word. That is a rare event, of course, but if we craft the story well, then that is a distinct possibility. We can paint a word picture of a future state with which everyone can identify. The outline of a better future leaves everyone feeling relieved. The journey from fear to freedom is important and we finish on this note, so that the whole presentation apparatus is felt to be positive and worthwhile. We have sold them on our solution, without anyone feeling they were being sold.
This last week I saw two speakers who were presenting, but both managed to do so with absolutely no presence. They could not command the room and they were both hard to hear. One was hosting an event with experts assembled, there to gain more knowledge. The other was leading the opening of a prestigious event to a very large audience in a big ballroom. I don’t think there was any great self-awareness going on with either speaker. They had divorced what they were doing, from how they were being perceived doing it. When we stand up to present, we are putting our personal and professional brands on the line in public and we have to be aware of that.
The speaker hosting the expert event spoke very softly and was hard to hear, even in that relatively small room. There was no energy behind the words, no pacing, no highlights, all lulls and no crescendos. Some female speakers don’t change gears enough when they have to speak in public and don’t project with enough vocal strength. They often have soft voices to begin with, but they need to switch gears and ramp up the volume and power. Speaking with staff or with friends allows for a soft voice, because of the situation and the proximity involved. Speaking to a group is an entirely different animal and has to be approached with a professional attitude and to realise this is a speaking spot which requires a different mindset.
Our speaker didn’t employ eye contact with her audience and this was a big missed opportunity. In such a smallish room, our eye contact can be very powerful and can personalise the talk so much more. It has the effect of drawing the audience in toward the speaker and creating the feeling that the presenter is talking directly to each of them. This engagement level is very high and makes the message accessible to the audience and that is what we want isn’t it – to get our message through.
Gestures were also missing. She was using a microphone and that tied up one of her hands. Also the audio set up hadn’t been checked prior to the event. I know that, because the speaker box wasn’t amplifying her voice very much at all. A non-working microphone with a softly spoken person is a problematic combination. If she had used gestures, even with only employing one hand, it would have driven home her points much more powerfully. Her body language was also non-existent, so there was no feeling of attraction, charisma, or presence when she was presenting. Sadly, we were just left with a soft voice, which was hard to hear.
The gentleman tasked with leading the toast at the large event was struggling with the roar of the confab down the back, as he tried to get everyone’s attention and get proceedings underway. Clearly, he had no idea of how to tame an unruly gathering and just stood on stage looking lost. This is extremely damaging to your personal brand, because it reveals you are clueless as a leader. Standing up on stage looking lost isn’t a great brand builder either. I had met him previously and he is a well-educated, capable, intelligent guy, but he revealed he was totally clueless on what to do with his responsibility for that evening. He is rather short as well, so he cannot use his frame to impose order on the crowd and get them to shut up and listen to him. There is a reason a lot of leaders are often very tall. Unfortunately, I am not in that group either.
Regardless of our size though, we all have the opportunity to use our voice to still the madness. His choice of voice volume was for a close proximity, one-on-one conversation situation, as opposed to addressing the masses. What he should have done was to speak very, very loudly to command to audience to pay attention. Usually one outburst is never enough, because the alcohol is flowing and so is the conversation. People just pay no attention whatsoever to the proceedings and that in turn, means they pay no attention to the speaker. Maybe others can suffer that indignity, but we cannot have that occur when it is our turn.
He needed to keep repeating “Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention” in a loud voice, until even the most wayward conformed to shut up and listen to what was going on. In my experience, it usually takes three or four renditions of this very loud opening to get people to quieten down.
His remarks when he finally got the room down to a low white noise background hum, were not well prepared and were not interesting. He should have considered that his audience had many representatives assembled and used that to get people excited about the evening. He invited the different groups representatives to come up on stage, but then he did nothing with them, so their presence was irrelevant. He could have introduced each representative and then easily encouraged all the members of that organisation to give them a big cheer. This sets up a competitive spirit which makes the occasion more fun and interesting. He could have made some comments about the significance of the gathering and pump up the activity’s importance. None of that happened and quite frankly, I cannot remember anything about what he said, because it was not gripping. Remember, we are competing with the food and drinks and so we have to make it worthwhile for the audience to give us their time.
His talk had no presence and he and his talk have already disappeared into the mists of time and both are already totally forgotten by everyone who was there. He could have used this occasion as a platform for his personal and professional brands, if he knew what he was doing. Clearly, he didn’t know what he was doing and the opportunity was completely missed. When it is our turn, we need to seize the moment and plan the talk so that it is a triumph and not a fizzer.
The best personal branding is to say something useful and interesting in a compelling, professional way. That is a snap right? Maybe not. What constitutes useful and interesting will vary, depending in who is in the audience. If we pitch the content complexity too high, we may be over the heads of our audience. They will take nothing away, because they are lost and they will hate us for making them feel dumb. If we pitch the complexity too low, they may become insulted. They feel we are purposely speaking down to them, to emphasise our own genius ability.
I have seen this occasionally where a speaker has taken no notice of who is in the audience and gives the talk the speaker wants to give. Ironically, one of those speakers was talking about “personal branding”. Unfortunately, the context for the speaker was her own massive global organisation. She was intent on branding herself to stand out internally in that grandiose world of big egos. If she had looked at the guest list for that speech, she would have realised straight away these were small to medium-sized companies and mainly people not yet very advanced in their company’s echelon. I surmised that her speech was more for bolstering her resume with the title of "public speaker" than providing useful advice on how to create an individual brand for the audience. Her own personal brand was utterly extinguished after forty minutes of her nonsense. The lucky thing for her was that only those gathered in the room put a line straight through her name, to eliminate her as a professional “public speaker” and self-promoting “personal branding expert”.
Regularly check the guest list to see who has signed up and then adjust your talk accordingly. Usually the organisers will share that list with you, but even if they are rather bolshie about it and won’t for so called “privacy reasons”, then get there early and meet people. In Japan, because we all use business cards, it is very easy to find out the rank of the person and the industry they are representing. On the fly, we can alter the complexity of the pitch for our topic and tailor it to the level of the audience.
Useful, valuable, fresh, differentiated, rare information is a big attraction for the speaker. We think that because what we have to say is so valuable, that the information itself will do all the heavy lifting for us and we can get a free pass on the professional delivery bit. Not true. I saw this trotted out recently with some visiting high-powered speakers. I realised later that the talk we received in Tokyo was actually a dry run for them, for a speech they were going to give later in the Kansai region. The ultimate intended audience were experts in the field and so the talk was pitched deep in terms of detail density. The audience assembled in Tokyo, including me, were the great unwashed and not very expert regarding this area of speciality. We needed a different version for us, but the speakers didn’t care about that. They were selfishly giving the talk they wanted to give. We were not their target audience and were just the patsies for their practice run.
What also surprised me was the unprofessional way they presented their information. Obviously, their company’s global headquarter team had prepared the slide deck for them, so it was beautiful, properly fitted out and branded etc. It was also obvious that the slide designers were not public speakers, because the beauty part was there, but the messaging part wasn’t. When you litter a slide with too much unessential text and then add insult to injury by making the text font too small to read easily on the screen, you are killing the messaging.
Their industry is awash with data and so naturally we had to have a lot of graphs to illustrate the numbers. That would be okay if they had observed one simple rule – one graph per slide instead of two or three. The graphs were also drowning in a sea of micro accompanying text vying for our attention. The numbers on the graphs were simply too small to read, so the points were lost on the audience. This is not how a professional presents their information. The speakers were oblivious to all of this, because they thought they were cleverer and much better paid than those in the audience and that we should lift our game to keep up with them.
I am positive they were being better paid than those of us in the room listening, but so what? They were there to impart a brand image for themselves and their company and they failed on both counts. I doubt the Kansai version for the expert audience went any better. All the same flaws we were presented with here in Tokyo, would have been transported by Bullet Train down there and given the same treatment. Their personal brands were diminished and also that of their firm. Remember, we judge the entire company on the quality of the people we meet from the firm. If we meet really capable, smart people we generously apply that idea to everyone down there. If we meet a dud, then we assume they are all duds down there.
Certainly have great information. The key is to make sure the way it is presented is suitable for the audience in attendance. Also, it must be presented in a way which invigorates the message, not emasculates it.