I was reading an interesting LinkedIn post about how at the start of your presentation in Japan you need to have slides on your background and credentials to get the trust of the audience.

Let me quote from the post, so that you can get the flavour: “Most of the presentations I’ve seen by Japanese professionals tend to start with a detailed profile of the presenter’s career and professional accomplishments. Yes, a lot of these slides are information heavy and (no offence but) not aesthetically pleasing, but the average Japanese user is thinking “this person has many qualifications. I trust this person.” It’s not their fault, but Japanese people culturally tend to be wary of foreign brands and companies. The best you can do is try to break that barrier by listing all your accolades and making it clear that you are a trustworthy professional”

This post has attracted a lot of discussion so far and I added my two bobs worth as well.  The point being made was that Japanese doubt what they are being told unless they trust the person making the presentation.  Fair enough. The suggested way to gain that trust is to provide a lot of data on who you are, what you have done, where you have worked etc., at the start of proceedings. The author noted that, “a lot of these slides are information heavy”. I disagree with this approach if you want to engage your audience.

First impressions are critical and the first one minute of our talk is the decider for a large portion of the audience.  My biggest concern isn’t that they won’t trust what I am saying.  Today, we all have to worry that they will vote with their hands and grab their phones to escape from us to the internet.  They stop listening to our message.  It would be extremely rare that a Japanese audience would have people actually get up and walk out while the speaker is presenting.  I have never witnessed that. No one is that bold or rude.  Rather, they will just grab their phone and disappear in plain sight, right in front of you.

My suggestion in the LinkedIn thread was to try to get that biographical detail into the blurb advertising the talk.  We could also have it as a handout, which the audience can reference.  The idea of telling people who you are and why they should listen to you is a good idea.  This is especially so in this Era of Cynicism and fake news and I don’t see this as solely a Japanese issue. My suggestion, though, is to not waste the start of the talk with this type of heavy background detail.

We are vying with so many distractions in the minds of the audience sitting in front of us.  We have to grab their attention right from the start.  That means not tinkering around with the slide deck if we are switching it across from the previous speaker or from the host’s introduction.  We should get someone else to load up our slide deck, so that we are free from the start, to engage our audience. 

There are two favourite strategies I apply.  One is to find some really shocking statistic or piece of information which will scare the pants off the audience.  We all react to fear and loss, more so than gain and greatness. I saw one the other day in the Financial Times.  There was a statistic that from 2010 to 2020, Japanese companies on average were paying over the odds to acquire foreign companies to the tune of a 34% premium. Also, between 1990 and 2014, twenty-five percent of Japanese M&A acquisitions were failures and had to be written off.  This compared with only 5% of US deals ending in failure. 

If I was using this information, I would start, “Japan should immediately halt doing foreign M&As. Demographics are driving Japanese businesses to go offshore and buy businesses, but this strategy is super high risk. Japanese buyers of foreign companies are overpaying an average 34% premium to acquire businesses, but one in four fail and they are losing their investment. Are you ready to lose money too?  Let’s find out what they should do”.

With a start like “Japan should immediately halt doing foreign M&As”, and a finish with “are you ready to lose money too?  Let’s find out what they should do”, no one in a Japanese audience will be focused on my credentials.  They will be worried about losing the investment and attracting potential blame if things go wrong.  My aim was to seize their attention and that opening will do it.

As far as gaining credibility goes, I need to back up my statements with provable facts and data.  Statements are just opinion and the audience needs to know where I am getting this information.  In this case, the Financial Times is owned by the Nikkei and is considered a reputable journalistic source.  Our main body of our talk needs references to proof of the points we make to sustain our argument.  This is where we prove our credentials as a speaker, because we show we are an expert who have assembled the needed information to back up what we are saying.

The other technique I like is to tell a story.  By the way, a personal story is the best.  It needs to take the audience with me back to the point when I discovered this truth I am telling them. By taking them back to the context, they will probably draw the same conclusion I have reached based on the same data.  If I have it, I might relate the gory story of a foreign M&A deal that nearly bankrupted the Japanese company and weave in the FT statistics.

If you still feel you need a biography slide, then please, please, please make it able to be understood in two seconds. Don’t force people to wade through the slide deck swamp you have created on screen.  Just include the strongest points to gain the credibility you feel needed. Absolutely don’t make this your first slide or the start of the talk.  Get the attention grabber opening working first to grab the audience and then you can unveil your most powerful credentials. Pour on the proof in the main body to get acceptance of you and your message and deliver the talk competently. This protects your personal and professional brands.

 It was a big affair.  Many supporting organisations had promoted this expert dual speaker event and the large audience filed into the prestigious venue.  I was sold on the advertising too.  I was intrigued by the pairing of topics and according to the blurb, the speakers’ backgrounds looked the money. The MC kicked things off and handed the baton off to the first speaker.  Things went off the rails immediately.  The initial thought was the microphone wasn’t on, but sadly it was.  The speaker just wasn’t on. 

This was a rookie tech mistake. I didn’t expect to see that from a very senior guy in his sixties.  Here is a side note for the rest of us - always get to the venue early and test the microphone set up.  Often the venue sound system is also a problem and there need to be changes made to the volume controls to get more out of the system.  It was a good reminder to me to not trust the given equipment as it is.

 Also, often in business venues, the people organising the talk are great at moving tables and chairs around, but less expert when it comes to the getting the sound system to work properly.  This was an evening event, so the tech people have long departed and we amateurs are the only ones remaining. That is why we need to get there early and check everything before we are ever handed a microphone in public and expected to perform.

This gentleman’s frail, wispy, low energy voice was speaking to us, but I really struggled with hearing what was being said.  I was sitting in the front row, but even at that distance, the voice volume being generated was insufficient to follow the thesis being presented.  For the next twenty minutes, I had no idea what he was saying.

Actually, it was worse than that, which was already bad enough. Our speaker was an expert from the finance sector and had held many leading positions here in Japan, including Country Head and President of a number of big name brands.  You would think with a resume like that, he would know better, but he  spoke in a monotone. 

This meant that each word was delivered with exactly the same strength as every other word in his sentences.  Now we all know that words are not democratic.  Some have more importance and prestige than others, and so need to be lofted above the hoi polloi.  We need to hit those words harder or alternatively much softer to create variation.  This variation is a simple pattern interrupt, which is what keeps the listeners with us.

 The problem with a monotone delivery is it has no pattern interrupt and so makes the audience sleepy. That is precisely what happened to me.  I couldn’t for the life of me follow what on earth he was saying, so I became drowsy.  The speaker was not an English native speaker and so there was a slight accent. However, he has spent almost the entirety of his career in international finance, so his English was very good and not an issue for him to deliver this talk. This foreign language aspect is definitely not an excuse. I am convinced he would have delivered the same talk in his own language, in exactly the same way.  This is how he speaks in public, period.

He also spoke his monotone sentences in long bursts, sans pauses.  I have this trouble too when I speak in Japanese, because I tend to speed up.  This means that the words become jumbled and are hard to dissect.  There are no “brain breaks” to allow us to digest what we have just heard.  When you combine an accent with a fast clip, it makes it more difficult for the audience to follow you.  When I speak in Japanese to a public audience, I have to keep telling myself to slow down and inject pauses, to help the crowd stick with my message.

Combining all this with a complete lack of energy made his speech a serious pain.  Speaker energy is infectious.  We create an electricity in the room which envelops our audience and transports them to the place we have decided to take them in our talk. When a speaker doesn’t project energy, the audience has to mount their own energy sources to get involved in the speech.  If the talk is gripping, even if the speaker isn’t generating a lot of ‘ki” (気) or intrinsic energy, we can meet them in the middle and stick with the talk.  But a wispy voice, devoid of energy, speaking in a monotone, with an accent, is the coup de grâce for a public speaker’s reputation, no matter how senior they may be or how grand their resume is .

 The other two weapons in the public speaker’s arsenal were also sheathed.  He was using a podium to hold his notes.  This meant that the height of the podium came up to his waist level, hiding his body from the audience.  You often see speakers resting their laptop on the podium when they are using slides.  In both cases, you don’t need to stand behind the obstacle.  With slides you can have a slide clicker and stand anywhere you like.  Just using his notes, he could have stood to the side to use more of his body language to bolster his words.  It makes such a difference and you will notice how much the next time you see a speaker come out from behind the podium.

Eye contact wasn’t being employed either to engage the crowd.  He wasn’t trying to connect one-on-one with the audience, as he could easily have done.  When you stare straight into one eye of an audience member for around six seconds, they really feel the close connection with you.  For them, it seems as if time and space have been suspended and it is just the two of you in the room, having a private conversation.  It is so powerful and as speakers, we definitely want to employ our eye power. 

Gestures were also absent.  Part of the problem was he was holding the microphone in one hand and resting his other elbow on the podium, thus ensuring the free hand wasn’t being used, either. What a wasted opportunity. The vortex of voice, body language, eye contact and gestures all zeroing in on the audience members, one by one, is what makes a speaker have real impact.  That much concentrated energy coming at you is irresistible.

Now here is the rub.  He has been working away for over forty years and he has always been like this.  That means he has been destroying audiences with a toxic regularity stretching over decades. It was obvious he was totally oblivious to how much damage he was doing to his personal and professional brands.  His time past cannot be reclaimed, and that is sad.  What is even sadder is he will keep going like this for the rest of his career.  Don’t squander your working years like he has – get the training and make presenting a powerhouse support for your career and brands.

I hesitated to use this title, because it smacks of click bait, doesn’t it?  To hell with it, live dangerously, I say! What flagged this question for me was an article in the Financial Times by Anjli Raval about Wall Street earnings calls.   She mentioned that researchers from the University of Bergen and Said Business School analysed the question-and-answer sections of earnings calls from 2993 American listed companies between 2010 and 2019. 

They were looking at a term I had never heard of before, called “uptalk”.  This is a common thing with women, who sometimes end their sentences with a rising intonation.  It comes across as open, friendly and not being domineering or pushy.  All good.  However, it also can sound as if they are not convinced of what they are saying. That rising tone sounds like the statement is morphing into an unstated question conveying uncertainty.

The research showed that whenever they used this uptalk element in their speech, male analysts made less buy recommendations when female CEOs were doing the earnings calls. The academics noted, “Analysts respond negatively when female executives use unexpectedly high levels of uptalk”.  The study showed that this did not apply when men used uptalk in the earnings calls.

Raval also captures some dilemmas facing women executives when she writes, “They must be vocal but not deemed ‘shrill’.  They must be confident but not perceived as arrogant; empathetic but not so much that is shows weakness; they should smile and be enthusiastic to not appear ‘threatening’ or ‘hostile’ (words rarely used for male counterparts). And they shouldn’t complain”. Whew.  That is a tricky path to navigate for female executives.

What about Japan?  In my experience, there is definitely an expectation here about how women are supposed to speak.  Television panels, talk shows etc., here usually feature the woman as a charming appendage to the male.  He is the expert and the center of attention.  Her job is to not say much, listen intently to what he is saying and make him look good.

I should point out though, that sounding hesitant using “uptalk” style of speech is a fixture of the culture in Japan, for both men and women.  It is a means of sounding polite, humble and non-aggressive. These are welcome attributes in a country which values social harmony.  Having said that, I feel there is greater pressure on women here to restrain themselves in what they say and particularly in how forcefully they say it.

Infamously, ex-Prime Minister Mori, when he headed the Japan Olympic Organising Committee, complained about women wanting to talk too much at the meetings. That caused a huge furore and very, very reluctantly, he resigned his position after holding on to it until the bitter end.  What I think he was saying was that the women on the committee should sit there and listen to men like him, and say nothing.  They should be guided by the senior males in the room, so their opinions weren’t required.  “If you need an opinion, I will give it to you” type of approach. 

Ex-Prime Minister Aso is also a reliable source for faux pas regarding the place of women in Japanese society.  There is even a dedicated section on Wikipedia titled “Controversial Statements”.  I wonder how many Japanese people listed in Wikipedia have such a dedicated section?  In 2014, he talked about women who didn’t give birth being “problematic”.  In 2018, he said “there is no such thing as a sexual harassment charge”.  January 2024, he called Foreign Minister Yōko Kamikawa, aged 70, an “obasan” or old lady, and commented that she was “not particularly beautiful”. 

By the way, he is 83, light years distant from being handsome and grew up with a massive array of silver spoons stuffed into his mouth. Being male, his looks don’t enter into any calculations. In that same speech, he also said she was a “new star and could inspire new stars to emerge in politics”.  Some serious mixed messaging going on there from Aso.

 So should women in Japan even bother with public speaking, given the male dominance of business here?  There are many excellent foreign female speakers here like Helen Iwata, who is a friend and a graduate of our High Impact Presentations Course. She is really skilled and teaches public speaking for women.  What about skilled Japanese females?  I am sure they must be out there somewhere and maybe I have missed them over the last 39 years living here. In reality, I don’t see many female executives giving public speeches and I am struggling to think of someone who would be a really good role model? 

 I quoted Raval earlier on the difficulties for women to navigate the right tone when speaking. Japan is no different and perhaps even less open to the idea and certainly less tolerant as well.  What we see in our classes, though, is that there is no problem for women to become excellent public speakers.  That, I believe, is the difference.  Regardless of gender, when we get the training, we know how to navigate all the obstacles to getting our message across. 

What often happens, though, is women in business are left to work it out through trial and error.  In companies, men get the training quota, and the women don’t. You need regular speaking spots to make that trial-and-error algorithm work.  Executives in Japan just don’t get to give that many speeches in a year. Also, the number of speaking spots for women here is a lot less than for men.  It will take female executives a long time to work it out by themselves.  I suggest women in business (actually everyone!) get the training, so they can speed things up, improve the process and secure the needed outcomes.

 Pasedena, January 31,1993. Michael Jackson performs at the Super Bowl.  He suddenly pops out of the smoke on to the stage and strikes a dramatic pose facing right.  He holds that pose for one minute and eight seconds, not moving a muscle.  He makes one change and looks left. He holds that same pose for another 20 seconds before he takes off his sunglasses and then starts singing and dancing. Imagine a whole football stadium with nearly one hundred thousand fans there and a viewing audience of 91 million.  You have to possess tremendous guts and self-belief to hold that monster crowd in the palm of your hand and stand there motionless for over a minute.

This is an extreme case and none of us would dream of walking up on to a stage in front of a business audience and just standing there motionless and not speaking for over a minute.  It would be considered weird and we would lose credibility with the crowd.   

What could we do though to build some anticipation for the things we are saying? Often, when we are nervous we speak too fast and too much, so there are no breaks to allow the audience members to digest what we are saying.  It is like the rolling breakers in the surf, each one crashing over the top of the previous one.  We crush our audience with our information, as it hits them in waves and overwhelms them.

I saw a demonstration of great anticipation many years ago at a business presentation.  The speaker was not on the front of the stage when he was announced.  There was a pause of around twenty seconds after that and then when we heard his voice he was nowhere in sight.  The reason for that was he was at the back of the hall behind us and he started speaking out of our vision.  People were craning their necks and looking around for the source of the voice.  Slowly, he made his way to the front and continued his talk.  It was quite effective to build some anticipation and to differentiate him from just about every other talk we had attended up the that point.  It also worked in a business context and wasn’t considered weird or strange.

Usually, when the speaker is announced they head for their laptop on stage and start playing around with it, to get the slides up.  Once the slide deck is visible they start their presentation.  No anticipation going on here, only annoyance on the part of the audience for the delay in getting proceedings underway. 

What if we switched things up a bit and made sure we were not the one doing the mechanics on the slide deck? We can get someone else to organise that for us and make our way straight to the center of the stage.  In this way we are creating our first impression as a professional.  Rather than starting immediately, we could hold the audience in anticipation of what is to come.  Not for over a minute, like Michael Jackson, but 15 seconds is quite a long time to hold them there before we start. 

When we do this, our opening has to be a blockbuster because we have built the expectation by driving up the tension from the beginning.  A very mundane greeting such as thanking the organisers for the chance to talk will not suffice.  We need an opening that is so powerful, that the audience is now fully concentrated on us and are eager to hear more of what we have to say.  It could be a quote, a statistic, and fact or a story.  Whatever it is, we have to make sure it really connects with the audience.  The worst thing to do is build up audience expectations and then let bring everyone down.

Doom and gloom is a great content piece and superior to hope and a bright future.  We are more moved by fear than we are by gain, so appealing to everyone’s risk averse nature is a good place to begin.  For example, we hold the crowd for 15 seconds than unleash, “In the next ten years the very fabric of Japanese society is going to be torn and shredded”.  At about the ten second mark, they are wondering what is going on and why we are not starting straightaway. That pattern interrupt followed by such a brazen headline, will have the whole room hungry for the explanation.

It depends of course on the theme of your talk, but look for something seriously gloomy and scary to kick things off.  That “fabric of Japanese society” start could lead into a talk about the breakdown of cultural harmony here as poorly educated foreigners from third world countries flood in to fill the jobs Japanese can’t or won’t do.  We could talk about consequent rising crime, the spread of drugs, intra-foreigner tribal violence and a whole host of other scary topics.

During our talk, we can slightly elongate our pauses for effect.  Great comedians are known for their comic timing.  They have memorised their script and their talent is in the art of the release of the punchline.  We have to take a page out of their book and look for the pause, before we lower the boom with our release of the various punchlines, we have arranged for the topic.  Some major ramification or danger sign or new development or whatever we are focusing on for the presentation. 

Generally speaking, we need to be hitting some high point every five minutes in the talk to keep the audience with us.  That means being able to use pauses and hitting key words or phrases like a maestro.  The pause creates the vacuum for the key word or phrase to fill.  If there is a pause both before and after, it really lift the power of the word or phrase we have chosen. Those variations in tone and strength is what creates the interest on the part of the audience, to keep listening to us.  A monotone delivery or a single constant voice strength delivery are too boring to keep the crowd with us. 

We can learn from Michael Jackson’s guts and adapt the idea to our business world.  We grab everyone’s attention and we keep the delivery in a business context which only adds to our personal and professional brands.