Nine proven strategies executives and professionals in Japan and worldwide can use to master public speaking and influence with confidence

Why do business professionals need presentation guidelines?

Most of us stumble into public speaking without training. We focus on doing our jobs, not plotting a public speaking career path. Yet as careers advance, presentations to colleagues, clients, or stakeholders become unavoidable. Executives at firms like Hitachi, SoftBank, or Mitsubishi know that persuasive communication directly affects career progress and credibility.

Without guidelines, many professionals waste decades avoiding public speaking. The good news? It’s never too late to learn. By following proven principles, anyone can become a confident communicator capable of inspiring audiences and strengthening personal brands.

Mini-Summary: Public speaking is not optional in business careers. Guidelines accelerate confidence and credibility, ensuring leaders don’t miss opportunities.

Should you use notes during a presentation?

Yes, brief notes are acceptable. Smart presenters use them as navigation aids, either on the podium or discreetly placed behind the audience. Audiences don’t penalise speakers for glancing at notes—they care about clarity and delivery. The real mistake is trying to memorise everything, which creates unnecessary stress.

Professionals at companies like Goldman Sachs or Deloitte often carry structured notes to ensure flow without losing authenticity. The key is to avoid reading word-for-word and instead speak naturally to main points.

Mini-Summary: Notes provide direction and reduce stress. Reading word-for-word damages authenticity, but reference notes enhance confidence.

Why is reading or memorising speeches ineffective?

Reading entire speeches is disengaging. Audiences quickly tune out when delivery sounds like a monotone recitation. Memorising 30 minutes of text is equally flawed—it strains memory and removes spontaneity. Modern leaders need flexibility, not rigid scripts.

Instead, professionals should memorise key ideas, not sentences. Political leaders and CEOs alike rely on talking points, not full manuscripts, to stay natural and adaptable. In Japan, executives trained in Dale Carnegie programs learn to communicate with presence, not performance.

Mini-Summary: Reading or memorising word-for-word suffocates engagement. Focus on key points to remain natural, flexible, and credible.

How can evidence strengthen your presentation?

Audiences are sceptical of sweeping statements. Without proof, leaders risk credibility damage. Evidence—statistics, expert testimony, and case studies—adds authority. A claim like “our industry is growing” has little weight unless supported with 2025 market research or benchmarks from firms like PwC or Bain & Company.

In Japan’s cautious corporate culture, data-backed arguments are particularly vital. Numbers, trends, and customer case studies reinforce trust, especially during Q&A sessions where credibility is tested.

Mini-Summary: Evidence turns opinion into authority. Leaders should support claims with facts, statistics, and expert sources to maintain credibility.

Why is rehearsal so important?

Practice transforms delivery. Presenting to trusted colleagues provides feedback and confidence. But avoid asking vague questions like “What do you think?” Instead, request specifics: “What was strong?” and “How can it improve?” This reframes feedback into constructive insight.

At global firms, leaders often rehearse in front of teams or communication coaches before critical investor calls or town halls. Japanese executives, known for precision, benefit greatly from structured rehearsal before presenting to boards or government stakeholders.

Mini-Summary: Rehearsal reduces anxiety and strengthens delivery. Ask targeted questions to turn feedback into actionable improvement.

Do you always need visual aids?

Not necessarily. Slides are valuable only if they add clarity. Overloaded decks weaken impact, but visuals with people, trends, or key figures make content memorable. A simple chart highlighting one data point can be more persuasive than 20 dense slides.

Visuals also act as navigation, allowing presenters to recall main points naturally. At firms like Apple or Tesla, minimalist visuals emphasise storytelling over clutter—an approach business leaders worldwide can adopt.

Mini-Summary: Visual aids should clarify, not confuse. Use them sparingly to highlight key ideas and support storytelling.

How should professionals control nerves before speaking?

Nervous energy—“butterflies”—is natural. The solution is physical and mental preparation. Deep, slow breathing lowers heart rate and calms the body. Some professionals walk briskly backstage to burn excess energy, while others use pep talks to raise intensity. Finding a personal ritual is key.

Research in workplace psychology shows that controlled breathing and physical grounding improve focus. Japanese executives presenting at high-stakes shareholder meetings often use discreet breathing exercises before stepping on stage.

Mini-Summary: Anxiety is natural. Breathing, movement, and mental preparation channel nerves into productive energy.

Why should you never imitate other speakers?

Authenticity wins. Copying others produces inauthentic delivery and limits growth. Instead, leaders should develop their own voice through practice and feedback. Life is too short to be a poor copy of someone else.

Famous communicators like Steve Jobs or Sheryl Sandberg became iconic not by imitation but by honing unique, authentic styles. The same is true in Japan: executives respected for leadership presence stand out because they are genuine.

Mini-Summary: Don’t copy others. Develop a natural, authentic style that reflects your personality and strengths.

Conclusion: How do guidelines transform your presentation career?

Public speaking is not an optional skill—it defines leadership impact. By applying nine guidelines—using notes, avoiding reading, focusing on key points, backing claims with evidence, knowing more than you say, rehearsing, using visuals wisely, controlling nerves, and being authentic—professionals protect and elevate their personal brands.

Key Takeaways:

• Notes guide, but don’t read word-for-word.
• Memorise ideas, not sentences.
• Use evidence to back claims and build authority.
• Rehearse with feedback for confidence.
• Visuals should enhance, not clutter.
• Control nerves with breathing and energy rituals.
• Authenticity beats imitation every time.

Leaders at all levels should take action now: seek training, rehearse deliberately, and present with authenticity. Don’t waste years avoiding public speaking. The sooner you embrace it, the faster your leadership brand grows.

About the Author

Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results.

He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー).

Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews, widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.

Why enthusiasm is the decisive factor in leadership, persuasion, and presentation success in Japan and globally

Why is enthusiasm essential in business presentations?

Enthusiasm is the engine of persuasion. In leadership, sales, and communication, passion signals conviction and credibility. Without energy, even well-researched data or strategic recommendations fall flat. Executives at companies like Toyota or Rakuten expect presenters to not only deliver facts but to inject life into them.

A lack of enthusiasm is not neutral—it actively drains attention. In Japan’s post-pandemic corporate environment, where remote meetings and hybrid presentations are common, leaders who fail to project energy risk being forgotten. Conversely, those who speak with passion become memorable influencers.

Mini-Summary: Enthusiasm transforms presentations from lifeless reports into persuasive communication. Without it, leaders risk losing trust and engagement.

Can you be too enthusiastic about numbers and data?

Yes, and that’s where balance is key. In internal meetings—revenue updates, quarterly reporting, or client statistics—overt enthusiasm for raw numbers can feel inauthentic. But data doesn’t persuade on its own. Context, storytelling, and contrast bring numbers to life.

Instead of showing an unreadable spreadsheet, effective communicators use visuals, animation, and narratives. For example, a single key revenue figure, enlarged on screen with a compelling story, leaves more impact than a crowded Excel chart. Global consulting firms like McKinsey & Company and Accenture regularly use this principle to frame insights for clients.

Mini-Summary: Numbers without stories are dead. Leaders must animate data with context and narrative to persuade effectively.

What happens when leaders speak without energy?

Low-energy speakers drain motivation. Watching former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s press conferences illustrated how the absence of passion can make communication painful. His monotone delivery of critical COVID-19 emergency updates left audiences disengaged.

In corporate life, the same dynamic applies. Leaders who fail to bring enthusiasm become “energy thieves,” leaving their teams uninspired. Conversely, when presenters share passion, energy transfers to the audience—lifting morale, confidence, and trust.

Mini-Summary: Low energy kills influence. Leaders either inspire with enthusiasm or exhaust audiences with monotony.

How can business leaders find enthusiasm in mundane topics?

Not every subject excites naturally, but every presentation contains an angle that matters to the audience. Skilled communicators search for that thread—whether it’s how trends affect profitability, customer loyalty, or employee well-being. Dale Carnegie Training in Tokyo teaches leaders to reframe even humdrum updates into stories of impact.

Enthusiasm doesn’t mean shouting; it means showing genuine conviction. Executives can highlight stakes, contrasts, or future implications to capture interest. Even logistics updates, when framed as customer-impact stories, can resonate.

Mini-Summary: Find the human or business impact inside routine topics, and speak with conviction to make them engaging.

How can presenters inject energy into their delivery?

Energy is built, not born. Leaders must train, rehearse, and refine delivery. Techniques include varying pace, emphasising key junctures, and pausing strategically for impact. In Japan’s competitive corporate training market, firms invest in executive coaching to help managers avoid monotony and build presence.

Simple techniques—raising intensity during turning points, using stories, and changing tone—keep audiences alert. Professional speakers worldwide use rehearsal as their competitive edge.

Mini-Summary: Enthusiasm requires skill and rehearsal. Leaders must train delivery techniques to project energy consistently.

What’s the risk of neglecting enthusiasm in business communication?

The consequences are reputational. Every presentation is a personal branding moment. Leaders who consistently project enthusiasm are remembered as energisers. Those who don’t, like Suga, risk being remembered as uninspiring and quickly forgotten.

In Japan’s relationship-driven business culture, credibility and energy directly affect trust. Companies invest heavily in sales and leadership training because they know reputations are made—or broken—every time someone speaks.

Mini-Summary: Leaders who fail to project enthusiasm damage both personal and corporate brands. Energy is not optional—it’s strategic.

Conclusion: Why enthusiasm defines your legacy as a communicator

Every presentation is an opportunity to shape how people perceive you. Audiences remember how you made them feel more than what you said. If you want to influence decisions, inspire teams, and strengthen your leadership brand, enthusiasm is non-negotiable.

Key Takeaways:

• Enthusiasm transforms presentations into persuasive experiences.
• Numbers need stories and context to have meaning.
• Low energy drains audiences; high energy uplifts them.
• Even mundane topics can be reframed with conviction.
• Energy skills require training and rehearsal.
• Reputation and leadership legacy depend on enthusiasm.

Executives, managers, and sales leaders should act now: rehearse presentations, seek coaching, and commit to bringing visible passion to every communication moment.

About the Author

Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results.

He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー).

Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews, widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.

Artificial Intelligence and the End of Human Connection

Why AI companions, generative AI, and virtual “friends” risk replacing the skills that define humanity

Artificial intelligence has rapidly evolved from early chatbots like Microsoft’s XiaoIce to today’s generative AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Inflection’s Pi, Replika, and Anthropic’s Claude. Unlike the rule-based bots of 2021, these tools simulate empathy, companionship, and even intimacy. Millions of users globally now spend hours in “conversations” with AI companions that promise to be better listeners than human beings.

This is not science fiction — it’s already happening in 2025. And while the technology is astonishing, the implications are dangerous. By outsourcing empathy and connection to machines, we risk losing the core skills — listening, genuine curiosity, and human empathy — that hold families, businesses, and even entire civilisations together.

Is AI companionship replacing human empathy?

Yes — at least in practice. Generative AI is increasingly designed to meet emotional as well as informational needs. Replika, for example, markets itself as an “AI friend who is always there.” In Japan, where loneliness has become a public health issue, young professionals are turning to AI companions for attention they feel is missing from their workplace and personal lives.

The problem is that AI empathy is simulated, not felt. Algorithms generate patterns of sympathetic language but cannot experience human care. Believing that an AI “understands” us is a comforting illusion — but one that erodes our ability to seek and sustain authentic relationships.

Mini-Summary: AI companions simulate empathy convincingly, but they cannot replace authentic human care. Overreliance on machine “friends” risks hollowing out human empathy.

Why are AI companions so attractive after the pandemic?

The rise of AI companions is tied to loneliness and isolation in the post-COVID era. Remote work in the US, Japan, and Europe disconnected people from daily office conversations. Hybrid workplaces made interactions more transactional. Many now feel “connected but alone” despite using Zoom, Teams, LINE, and WhatsApp.

AI steps into this vacuum. ChatGPT or Pi will never check their phone mid-conversation. They give us undivided “attention” and immediate responses. For those starved of recognition, this feels irresistible. Yet the comfort is artificial. True human connection is unpredictable, messy, and demanding — but it is also what makes it meaningful.

Mini-Summary: Pandemic-driven isolation created demand for “perfect listeners.” AI meets that demand, but only with simulation, not sincerity.

Have humans lost the skill of listening?

One reason AI feels so compelling is that human listening is in decline. In boardrooms, executives multitask during meetings. Friends split attention between conversation and social media. Parents scroll while their children talk. Listening — the foundation of trust — is being treated as optional.

AI thrives in this context. A Replika or Claude “chat partner” never interrupts, creating the illusion of deep attention. But the more we outsource listening to AI, the less we practise it ourselves. In Japan’s consensus-driven culture, poor listening weakens harmony. In Western markets, it undermines trust in teams and leadership credibility.

Mini-Summary: Declining human listening creates demand for AI’s simulated attentiveness, accelerating erosion of the skill across cultures.

Why is it easier to chat with AI than with people?

AI interactions feel simpler because they strip away complexity. Text exchanges with AI resemble messaging with a friend, but without risk. Messages can be edited before sending. Tone of voice, body language, and subtle cues don’t need interpretation.

Younger generations, already conditioned to prefer text over speech, are especially drawn to AI chat partners. But convenience carries a hidden cost: weakening social skills. If leaders, employees, or students practise conversations only with AI, they will find real interactions — with clients, colleagues, or family — increasingly difficult and draining.

Mini-Summary: Talking to AI is easier because it avoids human complexity, but long-term reliance undermines social and professional communication skills.

What is missing from today’s human relationships?

We are more digitally connected than ever. With Slack, Teams, LINE, WhatsApp, and WeChat, humans can contact each other instantly. Yet connectivity does not equal connection. What’s missing is emotional depth: attention, empathy, validation.

AI is engineered to simulate these needs endlessly. But a machine cannot feel sincerity. It cannot truly recognise your worth. The danger is that people mistake artificial validation for real human recognition, leaving them emotionally unfulfilled while thinking they are connected.

Mini-Summary: Today’s deficit is not connectivity but emotional depth — something only genuine human relationships can provide.

How can leaders and professionals protect authentic connection?

The solution is not banning AI, but doubling down on human skills. Dale Carnegie’s timeless principles are more critical in 2025 than in 1936:

• Be a good listener. Give people full attention. Encourage them to talk about themselves.
• Become genuinely interested in others. Authentic curiosity builds trust across cultures and markets.
• Make the other person feel important — sincerely. Recognition must be real, not simulated.

For executives at firms like Toyota, Rakuten, or Amazon Japan, this is not abstract advice. In a hybrid workplace, leaders who practise deep listening and genuine recognition will build stronger, more resilient teams than those who lean on technology to do the emotional labour.

Mini-Summary: Executives must actively practise timeless human skills to counterbalance AI’s seductive but empty simulations of connection.

What is at stake if we rely too heavily on AI?

Civilisation itself. Societies are held together by empathy, listening, and trust. If these skills atrophy, replaced by simulations, we risk becoming efficient but emotionally hollow. Japan, where social cohesion depends on mutual obligation, and Western economies, where contracts depend on trust, both stand to lose.

This is not speculative science fiction — it’s already visible in rising dependence on AI companions. The more we rely on AI for emotional fulfilment, the less capable we become of providing it for each other.

Mini-Summary: Overreliance on AI companions threatens the very foundation of civilisation: empathy, trust, and authentic relationships.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence will only grow more persuasive, with generative systems marketed as better friends, mentors, or partners. But we cannot outsource empathy and listening to machines without profound consequences. Civilisation depends on the skills only humans can provide. Leaders, professionals, and citizens alike must resist the illusion of AI intimacy and recommit to the timeless practices of genuine listening, interest, and recognition.

Only then can we ensure technology supports — rather than replaces — what makes us fully human.

Why rehearsal, timing, and delivery shape your reputation as a professional speaker in Japan and beyond

Why is timing so critical in business presentations?

The single biggest mistake in presentations is poor time control. In Japan and globally, conference organisers run tight schedules. Going overtime is seen as disrespectful and unprofessional. Conversely, trying to squeeze too much content into too little time leaves the audience frustrated and overwhelmed. Leaders at firms like Toyota or Rakuten expect speakers to stay on time, not sprint through slides like “deranged people.” A presentation that runs forty minutes when you had an hour is forgivable; a talk that overruns its slot is not.

Mini-Summary: Time discipline in presentations signals professionalism. Overrunning damages your personal brand and your company’s credibility in Japan’s business culture.

What happens when speakers mismanage time?

When a presenter announces, “I’ll need to move quickly,” they reveal poor preparation. Audiences infer: if you can’t plan a forty-minute talk into forty minutes, how can you manage a multimillion-dollar project? Reputation damage extends beyond the individual to the entire organisation. In competitive markets like Japan, the US, and Europe, this kind of slip erodes trust and can cost business opportunities.

Mini-Summary: Rushed, overloaded talks erode trust. Stakeholders extrapolate poor time discipline to the presenter’s overall competence.

Why do rehearsals matter more than you think?

Most leaders convince themselves they “don’t have time” to rehearse. Yet rehearsal is where professionals discover misalignment between content and allocated time. In my experience delivering Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training programmes, presenters nearly always start with too much material, not too little. The solution is cutting ruthlessly before stepping on stage. Rehearsals let you refine, simplify, and focus on impact — rather than embarrass yourself with speed-reading slides in public.

Mini-Summary: Rehearsals reveal excess material and allow refinement. Skipping practice causes rushed, incoherent delivery that undermines executive presence.

How does rehearsal improve delivery, not just timing?

Once timing is fixed, rehearsal shifts to performance. Business presentations are performances — polished but authentic, not theatrical. Leaders who read from a script signal insecurity and lack of mastery. Rehearsal allows executives to internalise their key points, so the audience sees confidence, not desperation. In Tokyo boardrooms and at global investor conferences alike, polished delivery builds gravitas and trust.

Mini-Summary: Rehearsal ensures smooth delivery. Executives should appear confident and persuasive, not reliant on scripts.

What role does video feedback play?

In training rooms, we record participants so they can see what the audience sees. Video feedback is humbling but invaluable. You catch distracting habits, vocal weaknesses, or pacing errors you’d otherwise miss. Replaying live presentations helps refine delivery across markets. Whether speaking to Japanese stakeholders or Western boards, professionals who rehearse, review, and improve demonstrate credibility.

Mini-Summary: Video feedback exposes blind spots. Reviewing performances builds stronger delivery across diverse business cultures.

What is the ultimate standard of professionalism?

True professionals prepare, rehearse, review, and deliver within time. They treat every presentation — whether to staff, shareholders, or industry peers — as a performance shaping their reputation. In Japan’s high-context culture, small lapses in timing or preparation send big signals. Internationally, executives with strong presence are trusted to lead. Are you seen as a polished professional, or as someone who exposes flaws by failing to rehearse?

Mini-Summary: Professionalism in presentations means mastering timing, rehearsing delivery, and safeguarding your reputation.

Conclusion

Getting the timing right is not about clocks — it is about credibility. Leaders who rehearse, respect the schedule, and refine delivery project authority in every market. Those who don’t risk reputational damage far greater than the value of any single presentation slot.

About the Author

Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results.

He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー).

 Why Japanese Leaders Struggle with Global Executive Presence — and How to Overcome the Barriers

What does “executive presence” really mean for Japanese leaders?

For global business audiences, executive presence is not about title or position, but about confidence, clarity, and persuasion. International companies such as Toyota, Rakuten, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals want their leaders to be concise, convincing, and credible on the world stage. Too often, Japanese executives equate presence with “perfect English.” In reality, the bigger challenge is projecting leadership gravitas — the ability to command attention and trust — even when English is not flawless.

Mini-summary: Executive presence in Japan is less about language mastery and more about projecting leadership confidence and persuasive clarity in global forums.

What mindset issues hold Japanese executives back?

Two major inhibitors dominate: perfectionism and cultural humility. Japan’s “zero defect” culture, admired worldwide in manufacturing by firms like Sony and Toyota, spills into presentations. Leaders fear making even small mistakes in English, so they often stay silent or read scripted speeches. Perfection kills spontaneity. Added to this, Japan prizes modesty over boldness. In contrast, Western executives are expected to speak with assertiveness, drawing on traditions from Athens, Rome, and Churchill’s wartime speeches. Without training to reset these mindsets, Japanese executives rarely demonstrate the commanding presence international audiences expect.

Mini-summary: Japan’s perfectionism and modesty discourage bold communication, limiting executives’ ability to project leadership presence internationally.

Why is English not the biggest barrier?

English fluency is often cited, but it is not the core problem. Countries like China, Korea, and Germany produce leaders with strong executive presence despite English being a second language. The real issue is confidence and delivery. Reading from a script in flawless English still fails to inspire. Audiences in New York, London, or Singapore want leaders who speak authentically and persuasively, not perfectly. Training in mindset flexibility and delivery can bridge the gap faster than language study alone.

Mini-summary: English is not the decisive factor; confidence and delivery style matter more than linguistic perfection.

Why is Japan’s history of public speaking so different?

Unlike the West, Japan has little tradition of mass oratory. Samurai leaders gave orders from behind guarded walls, not rousing Braveheart-style speeches. Public speaking only began taking root in 1875, when Yukichi Fukuzawa opened the Enzetsukan (Speech Hall) at Keio University. Compared with Greece, Rome, or America’s political speeches, Japan’s history of oratory is very recent. Even today, cultural norms discourage standing above others while speaking — a visible sign of status that requires apology. This background explains why confident public speaking is not deeply embedded in Japanese business culture.

Mini-summary: Japan’s short history of oratory and cultural discomfort with status make confident public speaking a relatively new skill for its executives.

Can Japanese leaders develop executive presence?

Absolutely. At Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training, we see Japanese executives transform into persuasive international presenters once they shed mindset barriers. Claims that “the Japanese way of speaking is different” are often excuses masking lack of skill. Universal presentation principles — clarity, storytelling, audience engagement — transcend borders. With practice, Japanese leaders can command global stages just as well as peers from the US, Europe, or Korea. Executive presence is a trainable skill, not an inborn talent.

Mini-summary: Japanese executives can absolutely learn global-standard presentation skills; presence is a trainable, not innate, leadership quality.

Why does this matter for Japan’s global future?

The gap between Japan and other Asian nations in global presentation ability is stark at international conferences. Leaders from Korea, China, and India increasingly dominate global forums, while Japanese executives too often remain quiet. This lack of executive presence undermines influence, credibility, and leadership brand. If Japanese leaders embrace training, they will build trust, close communication gaps, and strengthen Japan’s voice in international business. As globalisation accelerates, mastering executive presence is one of the last frontiers for Japan’s competitiveness.

Mini-summary: Without stronger executive presence, Japanese leaders risk falling behind Asian peers; mastering it is essential for Japan’s global competitiveness.

Conclusion

Executive presence is not a luxury skill — it is a global requirement for leadership. For Japan, overcoming perfectionism and cultural humility in presentation is critical. International business rewards clarity, confidence, and persuasion. With the right training, Japanese leaders can stand on equal footing with peers from across Asia, Europe, and the US. The result will be greater trust, stronger communication, and a more powerful Japanese leadership presence worldwide.

I was confirmed into the Anglican Church when I was twelve years of age.  I remember it was the first time I ever wore a tie in my life. Prior to that, every week I had to ride my bicycle to the church after school and do bible studies with other kids with the Minister in order to pass the test to be able to confirmed.  My parents were not religious at all, but I guess because Christianity is such a central component to our belief systems and literature, that they wanted me to get the basics.

Years later I discovered Zig Ziglar, one of the most famous modern day sales trainers.  He was raised in the Deep South of America where bible studies is very big.  I have read his books and watched his videos.  I am fan.  I noticed he was an incredible communicator.  I also noticed that a lot of his sales stories where like the parables he would have read in his “red letter” bible, that is where the words attributed to Jesus are written in red.  Australians are not particularly religious like Americans are, but I did recognise the power of these parables in communication.  I don’t mean the actual quotation of the parables themselves, but the storytelling structure.

The parable structure always has a learning component wrapped up in the story being told.  Often in business, we want to achieve the same thing for our audience.  We might be giving a “persuade” speech rather than simple “inform” speech” or we may be calling for the audience to “take action” rather than just “entertain” them. 

The parables are always from real life, rather than being a confection created for effect.  This makes it easy for us to identify with the story.  When I mentioned going through the confirmation process as a child, I am sure many readers went through a similar experience, including those who are from Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist religious belief systems.  Our real life stories make it easy to connect with our audience, because they can understand or emphasise with what we are saying.

The parables are also very easy to understand.  The message is crystal clear.  Do this and things will be good.  Do that and things will be bad.  This simplicity is what makes the storytelling so effective.  Zig Ziglar was a master of telling his stories which each had a lesson there for us in sales to absorb.  They were from his experience or the experience of others from the real world, not from the “how it should be world”. 

This is the danger when we become speakers.  We pontificate from on high, from way above the clouds, as if we were superhumans who never made a mistake or had a failure.  The ego has to be strong to tell a story against yourself.  We have grown up supersensitive to being criticised and so it is like kryptonite, we avoid it completely.  Criticising yourself sounds crazy, so we only talk about what a legend we are.

Zig understood that audiences love a good redemption tale. Of course we like to hear how to do things so that they go well, that parable is always in fashion.  Interestingly though, we often feel distant from this model story of bravery, perseverance against the odds, intelligence, strength and wisdom.  We naturally aspire to those things, but they can feel like they are a million miles away from where we are at this moment.  Now failure, disaster, train wrecks all feel much closer to our reality and of course we want to avoid those.  Parable stories on what no to do are much more popular than the ones on what we should be doing.

When things go pear shaped, don’t miss the chance to take a note on that for a future talk.  The events may feel radioactive at the time, but get it down on the record, so that you can retell it when the pain has subsided.  Particularly include the characters involved, the extent of the damage and the depth of the heroics or stupidity involved.  Don’t be limited to your own disasters.  Comb through the media and books for other people’s disasters, which can then be trotted out as a parable for doom and gloom. 

 Storytelling master Zig Ziglar copied the parables, probably without even giving it a second thought, because it was so much a part of his cultural upbringings in Yazoo City, Mississippi.  As presenters we can find our own blue ribbon stories of triumph and catastrophe.  We can wrap these up in simple, true renditions of reality that our audience can identify with and easily recall.  The parables are well remembered for a reason – they work as a storytelling structure and we can adopt it for our own talks too.  In ten minutes, I bet you can come up with at least two or three good incidents that have parable like qualities, which can then be fleshed out into mini-stories of business good and evil for an audience.  Give it a try!

Whenever I hear that Jesper Koll, CEO of WisdomTree Investments Japan,is going to give a talk here in Tokyo, I want to attend.  I have heard him speak before and he is very good, so my anticipation level of another great presentation is high.  I am not alone in thinking like this and his talks are always packed. This underlines why being able to present at a professional level builds your personal brand.  The basis for a professional presentation is receiving high level training and then getting a lot of practice to hone the craft.  You might be thinking, “well I don’t get that many opportunities to give talks, so the frequency index is a bit low for me”.  Fair enough, but you can get the training and that is the starting point to get the speaking spots.  All professional business speakers did a lot of speaking for free, before they ever got paid.  In business, we will have to give excellent talks from the very start and then at every opportunity, to build our reputation. This is why the training needs to come first and the frequency becomes a consequence of the training results.

For those who are not in the “established reputation” group, which obviously is the majority, there are things we can do very easily to join them.  While we are working in our companies, there will be chances to give updates, reports, represent the section, etc., and this is where we need to start building our reputation. Fortunately, there is rarely a queue formed on the right to give these talks.  Most people hate speaking in public, because they have no clue what they are doing. They just bumble along, shuffling forward like the army of the dead reluctant presenters.  Good, keep bumbling.  That means we can get the opportunity to volunteer our services instead.

When the top bosses see you give your report and your slides are crystal clear, well presented and your delivery is really excellent, you will be noted as someone who can represent the firm.  It may not happen quickly, but don’t worry, those very same abilities as a competent presenter are also the requirements for leading others.  You are likely to be promoted in your firm because you are seen as a skilled communicator, someone with persuasion power.

Rising through the ranks opens up more possibilities for giving presentations.  Often the big bosses themselves hate presenting too and will be very happy to throw you the speaking spot.  Grab it every time.  Once you get into the public arena, other will start to notice you.  More invitations will come. I have never asked Jesper about this, but I will bet he wasn’t an overnight success as a speaker. I am sure he took years to polish his delivery. As you wise up to how the system works, you will start creating your own chances. You will be nominating yourself to give pertinent talks, on some worthy subjects for the local burghers.  Don’t let “imposter syndrome” hold you back.  Remember that 99% of people giving business presentations range in skill from average to rubbish.  You have every right to be out there and because you have received the training, you are automatically in the top 5% straight away.

Picking topics which are hot is a no-brainer.  This is where your copy writing skills are called upon to draft the gripping blurb advertising your talk.  Don’t rely on the hosts to do this for you.  This is your brand we are talking about here and you must have total control over how you are represented to an audience. This is what the people will see and on that basis they will attend, until such time as you are well regarded speaker and people will turn up to hear whatever you have to say regardless, because they are fans. 

This is what happens for me when Jesper’s name is bandied about as a speaker.  I just go straight to the signup page and register, without reading the finer details, because I know it will be good.  The other dimension is that not everyone will be able to attend your talk but many, many more will see the notification. They will start to associate your name with a particular topic.  In Jesper’s case it will be Japan’s economy, because he is an expert economist and that is what he talks about.  Your name in lights as an expert on a topic is part of building an audience and personal brand for the future.

When we get to the delivery stage, we can also build anticipation.  You are introduced by the MC, who is absolutely quoting from the brilliant introduction of yourself, which you prepared in advance.  I say “absolutely” because you need to nobble the MC beforehand and give firm instructions they follow the script and don’t go off piste. It should be brimming to overflow with credibility and this starts to build a positive anticipation in those who don’t know anything about you as yet.

When the MC introduction is finished and you are on stage, don't start immediately.  Just hold the proceedings for a few seconds, which by the way can seem like an eternity and then start. If you want to see an anticipation build of stupendous proportions, then watch the video of Michael Jackson, when he performed at the Super Bowl in 1993.  He didn’t move a muscle for one minute and thirteen seconds.  At that point, all he did was change his head direction to the left. He then held that new pose until the one minute thirty two mark and then he began his performance.  It takes a huge amount of guts to hold an audience for that long.  Well folks we are not Michael Jackson, so we can only hold our audience for a short time, but we should still hold them in order to build that anticipation.

Keep close the idea of creating anticipation in the mind of your audience and develop your presentations accordingly.  If you start this way, you can anticipate a lot of success for your personal and professional brands.

We normally think of omnichannel in relation to the medium being used to contact buyers.  We can also use this idea when thinking about planning our talk.  We automatically revert to the brain when we start this exercise.  Our logical, rational, analytical mode is needed but that is not enough for audiences.  We need heart, value and sex appeal for our messages to resonate.  We tend however to get stuck on the first rung of the planning ladder, the intellectual angle. We all know though that we are emotional creatures, running around justifying our emotional choices with a veneer of logic.  Our talk need to access all of our human instincts.

We need our brain to be working well. Logic is required to make the argument make sense to our audience.  It means we need to be piling on the evidence, proof, data, statistics and testimonials etc.  The navigation of the talk should be logical, so that it flows like a good novel, making it easy for the audience to follow where we are going with this content.  I have mentioned before a talk I attended, where the visiting VIP just rambled through this maze and mist of an esoteric discussion, peppered with his vague musings, which was totally impenetrable.  It lacked structure, logical flow and clear, concise communication.  It was totally self-indulgent. To this day, I still have no idea what he was on about, but his personal reputation and his organisation’s reputation were both shredded that day.

Some members in the audience will be analytical types who love the logic, the detail, the nitty gritty, the evidence and they will be happy to see it.  They will be calibrating everything we say and running it through their mind looking for inconsistencies, gaps, flaws and mistakes of fact. We will win this group over if we are well organised, however they are not the only personality type in the audience. We have to go omnichannel to appeal to other personality types.

Some will be more swayed by their hearts.  We need to get them in touch with their emotions and feelings during our talk.  Novels and movies are emotional engagement masterpieces in many cases.  We are drawn into the characters in the story and what happens to them.  I am a pretty logical guy, but I remember being captured by the heroine in the Japanese television drama Oshin.  Her rise from crushing poverty to running a massive retail empire was a true story, which appealed to my logical brain, but her travails were all pulling at the heartstrings.

We do not have multiple weeks like a television show or three hours like a movie or hundreds of pages in a novel to emotionally engage our audience.  We can have some elements of the human drama of what we are talking about.  Because we are in business there is absolutely no shortage of drama which we can relate.  There are the full spectrum of characters to draw upon as well, from amongst our colleagues, subordinates, superiors, suppliers and clients.  Everyone loves a gory tale of corporate value destruction, factional bloodletting spitting out winners and losers and the dirty deeds done dirt cheap by business nasties.

Another instinct is the gut and this is where we are appealing to value for money.  Is what we are talking about bringing concrete value to the audience.  Have we proffered some information or insight, which was previously unknown to them?  Are we making their business or personal life substantially better?  Are we tuning into the conversation going on in in the minds of the audience and suggesting questions which they want answers to and then magically unveiling the solutions?  The “what is in it for me” question is always the uppermost thought in an audience’s mind, when they sit there listening to us pontificate about a subject.  I attended a talk by a big shot executive from one of the largest companies in the world.   She was talking about personal branding, so she pulled a good crowd.  However, it instantly became apparent that she was talking about how to brand yourself within a mega monster of a company like hers, when the audience was full of punters from small to medium sized enterprises.  There were zero take-aways and zero value on offer that day.

The last omnichannel is sex appeal.  Is your topic sexy, will it fill the seats?  The title is always a key. A lot of thought needs to go into the best shorthand description which will grab attention.  Sometimes we need a provocative title to break through the daily detritus filling the minds of our potential audience members.  “How to” titles also work because we are flagging you will learn something if you attend. The delivery is another aspect of sex appeal.  We have to be excellent in giving the talk, looking for every opportunity to engage with our audience.  We want them thinking, writing down our stuff and often we have to branch into edutainment.  I am not good at snappy repartee, quick wit, zinger one liners or being a skilled raconteur.  I can tell stories though, which are interesting and insightful, which seems to get me by.

When we sit down to design the talk, we need to be asking ourselves, “have I got all of the omnichannel touchpoints covered for this talk?”.  We know people are quite various in how they absorb information and in their interests.  We have to do our best to appeal to as many people as we can in the one sitting.  In the end, it is the planning starting point which matters most.  If we plan to incorporate these four omnichannel     elements of brain, heart, gut and sex appeal, then we will be more successful.

Usually when we have an opportunity to make a presentation, we get busy thinking about what we will talk about.  The organisers may have set some rails by specifying the theme of the event or they may have asked us to speak on a particular topic.  We are busy and often we start with creating new slides and scanning previous presentations for slides we can recycle.  This is a poor strategy.  What do we bang on about to our staff – plan the event or the project before you get started on the nitty gritty details. However, we neglect our own sage advice when it comes to presenting.

Part of the planning process should involve boiling the key message down to a nub that cleverly, succinctly and concisely summarises the whole point of the talk.  Before we go there though we would be wise to consult others for ideas.  It is a bit odd isn’t it, because we are always recommending collaboration and crowd sourcing of ideas for projects.  How we seek those ideas though is a bit tricky.

Bounding up to someone for your presentation and suddenly saying , “do you have any ideas for this talk I am going to give” may not work all that well.  Teamwork featuring excellent levels of collaboration is a concept, a sacred concept in most firms, but rather undefined.  What is the environment for collaboration?  Are people’s ideas welcomed in your workplace?  Are we able to go outside the workplace and source broader networks for ideas?  Do we have trustworthy networks in the first place?

I had to give a keynote speech to a relocation industry conference in Osaka.  I called my contacts working in that industry and asked them about their issues, headaches and challenges.  I have never worked in that industry and neither had anyone in my company, so I needed that broader network to help me.  The irony was that after all the work I had put into crafting that piece de resistance , Covid put the whole event to the sword. I never did give that talk. It would have been brilliant of course!

Jokes aside, the idea of involving others is a good one, because we only know what we know.  “Two brains are better than one” is ancient wisdom, but how often do we avail ourselves of outside input.  I was getting my book “Japan Sales Mastery” translated and was struggling for the best title in Japanese.  My friend Tak Adachi and I were having lunch and I mentioned my problem.  He said why don’t you just call it “Za Eigyo” or “The Sale”.  My son, later said to me why don’t I drop the katakana for “Za” from the title and just use “The” from English, to become “The Eigyo”. 

This was a smart idea because I am an Australian writing in Japanese about selling in Japan, so the title combines both languages, to differentiate the book as a how foreigner would look at the world of sales in Japan.  I would never have come up with those ideas on my own, so it demonstrated the value of collaboration.

The problem is we all recognise this in theory and we should be applying it to our presentation preparations, but we turn the whole thing into a solitary affair.  We emerge from our cave, brandishing our slide deck and away we go.  Getting more input is a better road to take, but there are some caveats.  People we consult on the spot, will give us the very shallowest of ideas. We need to set this up, explain the theme and then fix a date a few days later, to allow them to digest the theme and work on some ideas.  We are looking for diversity of views here and are not going to make any snap judgments.  We should listen quietly – no interrupting, jumping in over the top of them or ending their sentences.  We then thank them and privately reject, modify or incorporate their ideas.

If we ask them to give some feedback on our ideas, always frame the response.  We want them to tell us what they like about it first and then tell us how we could make it even better.  Confidence is a key aspect when presenting and that includes the preparation phase as well.  This whole effort doesn’t have to take a lot of time, so we are not going to be caught in a time crunch and have to rush things, to be in time for the talk.  More ancient wisdom says we don’t plan to fail, but we often fail to plan.  We can incorporate more ideas into the preparation phase, if we simply plan for it.

Being interviewed by the media can be a high risk affair, depending on the publication, the journalist and the business zeitgeist of the moment.  These types of interviews come up relatively rarely in business.  More common are panel discussions at business events hosted by Chambers of Commerce and more recently interviews on podcasts.  I have been on both sides of the microphone, so let me share some observations which may help you prepare for your interview.

Chamber panels and podcasts are usually not “gotcha” interviews, as we will encounter with some journalists doing media interviews.  Generally, we are going to be treated well and it would be rare that the interviewer really went after you.  Having said that though, we have to expect the interviewer to want to dig down deeper into something you have said.  This can be of two basic varieties. 

One is a high level statement you made where the context and detail is obvious to the speaker.  This may not be obvious to the audience though, so the interviewer will seek more detail and clarification.  In this case, that is not a problem, because we have the depth of mastery of the subject.  The other variety is a statement that may be accepted wisdom or it might be something we have said without giving too much thought to it.  This is when we will get into trouble, because as soon as the interviewer starts to dig in, it becomes plainly obvious we don’t know all that much about it and out pours fluff instead of substance.

The answer here is to talk about things you have experienced, read about in detail, have researched deeply or where you have listened to experts.  This sounds obvious, however we don’t know where we will go with the questions and we can be drawn to stray into areas where our intellectual coverage is pretty thin.  There is nothing wrong with honesty.  Just say, “I don’t have much to say on that subject because I am not an expert in that area. However something I do feel passionate about is…”. Don’t just end it with telling the audience you don’t know much, because we are starting to damage our personal brand. Avoid leaving the conversation hanging in the air with us having admitted we are babbling on about stuff we don’t know too much about. Immediately segue into an area where we are knowledgeable and talk about that.

Always seek the questions in advance.  With media people they will do that, but often they have a couple of silent assassins ready which they will hit you with unexpectedly, to throw you off balance, to gain their “scoop”.  Business panels and podcasts are usually not like that.  Generally, for panels, they will let you know, in general terms, what is the broad discussion they are looking for.  In the case of a panel, it is unpredictable where the conversation will move, but at least there are broad rails bounding the subject matter.  Again, it always better to say you don’t know, than trying to snow the organisers or the audience.  Instead make a comment about some aspect you do know well and preserve your expert status.

For podcasts, you should expect they will have a set list of questions and you should get those in advance.  If the interviewer says something like “I let the muse guide me”, then I wouldn’t recommend joining that podcast, unless you are massively confident about the subject matter.  Generally, there will be prior episodes, so you can get a sense of whether you are in the presence of real genius or a total nutter.  Often there will be a pre-meeting, to go through the episode theme and for them to get a sense of what sort of a guest you will be.  You can also get a sense of who they are too.

Prepare for the questions, but understand you won’t be able to read from notes.  The pace will move too fast for that.  You can glance at your notes, so it is better to have them arranged for easy reference, if you indeed need to do that.  Just having mentally calibrated the questions is usually enough.  Remember you are there because you know about the subject, so it will be easy for you to speak about it.

That is often the real problem.  We do know a lot about the subject and we talk for too long and say too much.  Media interviews are an area where the more concise you are the safer it is.  Panel discussion hosts don’t like guests who want to hog the limelight, so they will unceremoniously cut you off, effectively signalling to the audience that you lack self-awareness. Podcast hosts may just edit the hell out of you.  There is a balance, but being concise comes across a lot better than rambling.  If what you say is a bit too circumspect, the interviewer will draw you out further.  If you hear yourself talking too much, then you probably are, so you need to conclude your remarks on that point and stop.

Rehearse your remarks based on the questions.  Remember these are public occasions and just as you would rehearse for a public speech, you need to do the same for the interview.  This will help you to trim the fluff from your answers and polish them into succinct, clever responses which will shine a positive light on you.  This is just as much your personal brand as giving a keynote speech.  Your fellow panelists or rivals on other podcasts, won’t take this step. Think of these occasions in this way and you will definitely come across as a star.

One consistent issue which often pops up within companies requesting our training is achieving persuasion power with colleagues, bosses and subordinates.  Being unable to convince others to follow your requests, ideas and suggestions is highly frustrating.  Often the issue is how the topic is approached.  In this “time is money”, no patience, miniscule concentration span, twenty four/seven scramble, people drive you to get to your point.  If you are giving a presentation the big boss might bark out “Story, get to the point”.  We are taught at business school to start with the punchline and get that into the Executive Summary, right at the front of the document.  That is fine except it is ineffectual when presenting in person.

The punchline may be an excellent idea – “let’s increase the marketing budget by $1 million to fund campaigns to coincide with the end of Covid”.  The problem though is that the punchline is naked and has no protection attached.  As soon as we offer a statement, we suddenly transform our neutral audience into a raving band of doubters, sceptics, naysayers and critics.  Fair enough too, because we didn’t land the punchline properly.  Comedians don’t start with the punchline.  They set it up, they build the mental pictures for us so we can see the scene in our mind’s eye.  They plug in plenty of context, add interesting characters, nominate a location and secure the build up in a temporal frame for us.

When the punchline is unveiled it is congruent with the set up, makes a lot of sense and we laugh.  Why on earth serious, well educated business people would imagine they can just throw the punchline out there, with no context, background, proof, evidence, data and statistics is a bit of a mystery.  But they do just that and then get cut to ribbons by the baying crowd of non-believers.

Our communication skills have to be good enough that briefly, we can build the basis for the punchline. If we do a good job, the members of the audience are all sitting there thinking “we should fund a campaign to coincide with the end of Covid”, before we say anything about it.  The lead up has been so well constructed that given the background, the best way forward occurs to everyone as the most obvious thing needed.

We have to keep it brief though.  Storytelling is a big part of this, but these are “short stories”, not War and Peace tome like equivalents.  If we labour the point or go too long with the background, some grumpy attendees are bound to tell us “get to the point”.  So we need to have enough context, supported with tons of evidence, which draws out the needed next step. When we explain what comes next, everyone feels they already thought of that answer by themselves.  This is guaranteed to get agreement to the proposal.

The way we get to the structure of the talk is to start with the action we want everyone to agree to.  Having isolated out the action we investigate why do we think this?  What have we read, heard, seen, experienced something, which tells us this is the best solution.  There must be a reason for what we are recommending.  All we need to do is capture that information and add in the people they know, a place they can see in their mind, put it all in a time frame and definitely add in data, evidence and proof to back up what we are saying.

We start with the background and then we reveal the punchline but we don’t stop there.  Recency is powerful, so we want to control what is the last thing our audience hears.  We top it all off with stating the benefit of the action.  The action/ benefit component must be very short.  There needs to be one clear action, so that everyone can understand what we need to do.  Also, while there may be many benefits, we only want to mention the most powerful one.  If we keep piling on the benefits we begin to dilute their power with too much detail.  Clarity must be the driving ambition here.  If we put it into mathematical terms then 90% of the time we speak should be devoted to providing the richest context possible and 5% each for the action and benefit.

If we are doing a good job then by the time we blurt out the punchline the audience will be thinking “that is old hat, I knew that, that is obvious”.  If we can engender that reaction then we have done our job well.  Brief but powerful, clear and convincing - these should be our objectives.

What Japanese Presenters Get Wrong

Clients have some common problems with their Japanese leaders.  I know this because the same requests keep coming up.  This is across industries and companies and it is consistent.  Usually Japanese presenters are excellent at assembling lots of data and information.  They can really pack a lot into a few slides.  When they present it is like a waterfall of wonderous content, just flowing forth, without much structure or clarity.  Somehow the bosses have to work out the key points for themselves, because the staff’s job focuses on accumulating hoards of data and then putting it all up on screen.  The presenter is almost invisible, has low energy, speaks in a quiet voice you can struggle to hear and blends well into the wall paper. This doesn’t work so well in international meetings and Japan looks weak and ineffectual to the rest of the far flung company world.

We are battling two giants here.  One is the educational system and the other is Japanese culture.  I earned my Masters Degree here in Tokyo, so I have seen up close and personal what a high school education prepares you for and what universities do with that raw clay.  An argument could have been made, prior to the advent of the internet, that the ability to memorise vast quantities of information and regurgitate it on command was a serious capability.  We can find any thing very quickly today thanks to search engines, so having to memorise gobs of stuff isn’t as important as it once may have been.

I see it in my son’s education when he was at international High School here.  They were required to have laptops and everything was done online.  His generations’ issue is there is too much information. How do you find the best and correct data, how do you sort the wheat from the chaff?  Young people are digital natives, but they are all drinking from the firehose of all data every recorded, sitting just a few clicks away.

We teach our students to start at the end.  Define in as short a sentence as possible, the most important key message you want to impart.  This is not as easy as it sounds. You have to be brutal with yourself.  You have to eliminate all the nice to have, all the interesting to have and refine it down to the must have.  Just throwing up a lot of data on screen doesn’t require as much thinking, as refining the data into the gold nuggets for the audience.  Discerning the key message then allows us to build the structure for the argument and to align the necessary evidence in order to be convincing to our audience.

The first words coming out of our mouth have a powerful role.  Everyone seems easily distracted today, have miniscule concentration spans and are quickly bored.  So we need to say something that really breaks through that wall of indifference and grab their attention.  There is no point launching that blockbuster opening in a squeaky, unsure, timid little voice.  People will be flying for their phones to escape you.  No, we need a strong voice, standing or sitting tall if online, when we kick things off.  We have to be oozing confidence.

“But Story san, my English is so poor, I have no confidence”.  This is another trope we often hear.  Here we have Japanese perfectionism, no defect, no errors and no mistake culture colliding with the Education Department’s failed efforts to teach the population English.  Don’t accept that excuse.  No one cares about linguistic perfection in business meetings, except the Japanese staff when they have to speak in English.  Give them the “no grammar needed” escape jail card for the meetings, to give them permission to speak without fear and let the rest of us work out what it is they want to say.  We are used to this and are all pretty good at it.

Just being able to isolate the key take away and deliver that in a confident manner will be a revolution to business meetings where Japanese have to present.  Not having to wade through all the dross to understand the key point will be a relief.  Having one idea per slide will be a life saver for everyone – make this the iron rule for Japanese presenters.  This forces the selection of only the most important information to be shown.  The result will be a much clearer messaging effort and greater clarity around what exactly is that message.  Confidence sells the message, so the delivery has to be sold in that manner. 

Rehearsal is critical for Japanese speakers and so is coaching.  This applies to whatever language they are presenting in, because you can guarantee the issues will be present in both languages to a great extent.  When giving feedback to anyone, only look at two elements and tell them what they are doing well and then tell them how they can do it even better.  This will build confidence and create a momentum that will maximise capability.  What does all of this cost?  Nothing, so let’s get to it.

Once upon a time, we taught public speaking and presentation skills in a class room, with tons of people all seated together, right next to each other.  We moved to teaching everything LIVE On Line since February 2020, so what has been the difference?  Surprisingly, not as much as we expected.  The one big difference is the lack of opportunity to employ full body emphasis when presenting, because everyone is mainly sitting in front of a screen.  You can use a standing desk, but even so, the camera will cut you off at the thigh level, so we are not getting the full body power.  There are a few tricky things about gestures when using fake backgrounds, which by the way seems to be standard now.  What are the things that stand out most in the online presenting environment?

Smiling is definitely one which has disappeared, when people are on screen.  I don’t know why that is the case.  Perhaps we are more self conscious in front of a camera?  Or is this now such a serious business world that smiling is out of fashion?  Think of any online meeting you have attended recently and ask yourself was anyone smiling when they made their comments or gave their reports?  I was teaching a class on presenting skills online recently and what a difference it made when people would smile during their talks.  Not every subject lends itself to smiling of course but there are bound to be good news in there somewhere and that is the time to trot out that big smile of yours.  It is congruent with the content of the talk, so it works.  It is also such a connector with the audience, it really drives up the engagement factor with an audience.

We have all been doing these online meetings for 18 months now, yet most people still haven’t mastered the medium.  I know it is difficult, because the camera lens is 10 centimetres above the faces on the screen.  However, take a look at the eye line of the participants in the next meeting.  How many are framed in the screen so that there is a half body showing and their head is at about two thirds height on camera?  Many will still have their heads cut off and they are arranged at the very bottom of the screen, like they have been decapitated.  Or they will have the camera lens angle shooting straight up their nostrils – not an attractive look that one.

When we get the camera lens at eye line and we speak while looking at the camera, we are now using the medium as it was designed.  The camera can bring us into the world of the viewer and we can be speaking directly to them through the lens.  When we are looking down at the faces on screen we have broken off eye contact and we seem like we are looking down on everyone.  It is the equivalent of giving a face to face speech without ever looking at your audience, in fact you are speaking to the floor, the whole time.  Now I have seen speakers actually do that, but it is totally ineffective.  The same with the online world – talk to the people through the lens and you will get your message across much more impressively.

We mainly use our voices when presenting online.  Yet what about gestures?  Gestures can support what we are saying by bringing more physical energy to the point.  If you have framed yourself properly then you can use your hands on screen.  There are a few best practices though.  Firstly, don’t wave your hands around, because the fake backgrounds will disappear them at certain points. So, hold your hands at between shoulder and head height, so that they can be easily seen and hold the gesture rather than trying to move it too much.  Also, if you want to show some item on screen, use your own body as the shield and show it in front of you. The fake background won’t be able to disappear it on you when you do it this way.

Most people I see online, are using the same speaking voice range they use all the time in the in-person world.  When we are presenting we are no longer a part of the audience – we are on stage, be it in a venue or online.  That means we need to bring a lot more energy to what we are saying, in order to attract the audience to our message.  When we are online, we also need to compensate for the fact that the camera will sap 20% of our power and we will come across as having less energy that usual.  You may have noticed that most people speaking online sound like they are on “downers”.    We need to get that voice energy up and start directing at it a key words we want to emphasise in our sentences.  Not every word in a sentence has the same value, so we need to pick out key words and phrases and make them hot, by hitting them harder.

Most online presenters have a long way to go with this medium. The experience gained over the last year or so, hasn’t improved them, actually. They are still making fundamental mistakes.  These can be easily corrected and it just takes greater awareness and some practice to get it right.  So let’s think again about what we are doing here and how we are doing it.  Apply these ideas and you will immediately be in the top 1% of online presenters, simply because everyone else is clueless, hopeless and way underpowered.

Video is tricky. However, it looks so simple.  You just stand in front of the camera and give your talk.  I don’t know why video saps twenty percent of our energy when it is actually broadcast, but that seems to be the accepted wisdom.  That means that just speaking normally into camera will now look a lot less energetic.  Getting the delivery to be fluent is also a challenge.  Either we do it free style or we use a teleprompter.  Both have their challenges.  What do we do with our hands?  This is an interesting one, because the camera lens seems to have some magic power to reduce our gesture self awareness to zero, until that is, when we see it played back in all its gory glory.

I broadcast three TV shows on YouTube every week, so I am doing a lot of video work.  My first weekly TV show was kicked off nearly four years, so I have gained a few insights over that time.  I am not from the media world or have any background in television.  I am a typical businessman who got into this by accident and so it is all pretty much self taught through exposure, practice and repetition.  Yes, I have the advantage of being a High Impact Presentations instructor for Dale Carnegie, but presenting to a live audience and doing it on video is totally different.  Everyone has discovered this fact since we all moved home, to spend a lot of our time in Zoom meetings or their equivalent.

I also teach people how to present to the camera and I have noticed a few things.  Invariably their energy is too low.  They are transferring their usual speaking volume to this medium and it doesn’t work.  They appear lifeless and boring.  No problem, speak louder, right?  That is what I thought too, but I noticed a lot of people find that daunting.  For them speaking with 50% more energy feels like they are screaming.  Remember we are subtracting 20% immediately to counter the camera lens energy deficit, but on top of that they need to bring even more energy to the talk.  If I ask for 50% more energy, invariably I will get about a 10% increase.  This is why having an instructor or coach is handy, because you can’t easily work this out by yourself.

Gestures seem to be another area of mystery.  What do I do with my hands?  The most common choice is to do nothing with them.  This is a big missed opportunity to bring physical power to support your verbal message.  I have found there is a 15 second window to hold the same gesture.  More than that and it become weaker and weaker and more and more annoying.  The gestures need to be coordinated with what we are saying, so that they are congruent.  If what we are saying and the way we are saying it don’t align properly, then our audience gets distracted.  Once upon a time, the distracted audience would be by focusing on our voice or our apparel.  Now it is on their phone.  For half body video composition, we need the gestures to be held between rib height and the head height, so that they can be easily seen.  For some curious reason, a lot of people hold their gestures at low waist level and apart from being difficult to see, this bit usually gets cut off in the editing process.

What we are doing with our face also is important.  Having one facial expression may be very energy efficient, but it looks wooden on video.  Our face should be showing what we are talking about.  If results are good, then look happy.  If they are bad, then look concerned.  If you ask a rhetorical question, then look puzzled.  I think you get the idea.  One thing the camera doesn't like is when we drop our chin down, while we are talking.  It looks like we are talking down to our audience, we also look very constrained.  So we need to keep that chin up the whole time.   Try it for yourself and you will be amazed at the difference it makes, to how we come across to our audience.

If we are just speaking off the top of our head, then we had better be pretty good or the video will be butchered in the editing process, as we have to stitch all those corrected mistakes together.  It becomes very jerky in the final version, which is super distracting from our message.  Zooming in and zooming out at these edits makes it appear less choppy, but you still don’t want too many of these to have to contend with. 

Teleprompters can fix this and a bit of adjusting for font size and speed is needed to find the right balance.  The secret here is to only look at the left side of the screen as the words roll up.  Otherwise, you will find yourself reading from left to right and on screen you will look like you are reading it.  This rather defeats the purpose doesn’t it.  Have a look at my shows on YouTube and see if you can tell I am reading it off a teleprompter?  Remember, our peripheral eyesight is good enough to focus on the left side and still read the words which are on that same line off to the right.

Video is a different game and we need to make this medium a winner for us.  Try these hints for yourself and your image and impact will be much improved.

Too smooth politicians, silky salespeople, urbane company thrusters all set off alarm bells.  We can meet impressive people and we can meet impressive looking people.  Over time we have learnt how to plumb the difference.  The world of presenting is made up of the top 1% who know what they are doing and the 99% who have no real clue.  The 99% group are often card carrying sceptics, who have finely tuned radar for anything that looks different to what they know.  Also, by definition this clueless 99% are our audience when we present.  Are we in danger of turning them off if we come across as too professional?

This is certainly the case in Japan.  Standing out and being outstanding are not welcomed here.  The most insightful cultural norm in Japan is captured in the traditional wisdom of “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”.  Owning the auditorium, dominating the podium, being a powerful stage presence are all “nail sticking out” issues.  Looking supremely confident, being Mr. or Ms. Smooth, operating at a high level, are all viewed with suspicion.  We have a similar idea in the West. When we meet a “smooth talking salesperson” we get worried about them taking our money.

Japanese culture appreciates humility, harmony, group consensus, not putting yourself forward and modesty.  Hello to all of our American fans out there.  This Japanese viewpoint is absolutely the formula for not getting ahead in aggressive, competitive societies.  Interestingly enough, as an Aussie, I think this Japanese approach is close to our cultural norms too.  In Australian parlance, someone who “big notes” themselves is a self aggrandising, big talker and they won’t get very far Down Under.  A Donald Trump telling everyone how rich he is, how smart he is, would be impossible for an Australian politician to replicate.  As presenters, we operate within the bounds of our cultural rules and limits.

So how do we do a professional job of presenting in Japan, when the whole ethos is against the display of high levels of professionalism?  There is a difference between being very professionally prepared and being a boring oaf on stage.  Talking about yourself, except in terms of self-degradation, is out.  That means we frame what we say about ourselves from a more humble lens.  We do design a blockbuster opening though, to capture audience attention.  We do set up the flow of the talk, so that the navigation is simple and easy to follow.  We do provide evidence to back up any assertions we make.  We do prepare two closes, one for before and one for after Q&A.  We do rehearse numerous times to perfect the content, polish the cadence and make sure we are on time. In other words, we are a total professional in the way we prepare the presentation.

The friction points arise by the way we carry ourselves.  I have lived here for 36 years and I have never seen a Japanese presenter stride confidently to the podium or the microphone.  They walk slowly and hesitantly to the stage centre, stooping, wearing the greyest of the grey clothing, so they can be as boring as possible.  They open up immediately with a series of apologies, to establish that they are not superior to anyone in the audience, even if they are. 

I can’t see me doing any of that when I am presenting.  I will be a little more conservative in my dress, only because I don’t want a pocket chief or tie or shirt ,to compete with my message.  I won’t be bounding up on to the stage like a panther ready to devour my audience.  I will walk tall, with subdued confidence and go straight into my opening, without any time wasted on getting the tech right.  There will be no microphone thumping because I will have tested it all before the event started.  I won’t be fiddling around to get my slide deck up, because I will have someone else doing that for me, while I use those first few vital seconds to engage my audience.

I won’t be making any faux apologies for my poor preparation or poor public speaking ability, because I will be moving straight into explaining the value the talk will bring to the listeners.  I won’t be making flamboyant gestures or utilising any thespian artifices.  I will be business like and focused on helping people through the messages I am delivering.  The way I deliver the talk will be congruent with the content.  It won’t feel slick, but it will feel competent and that is what I want, in order to have my messages accepted.  I won’t attempt to be sardonic, cynical, use any idioms or try to be an amateur stand up comic.  By Western standards, I will come across, as an understated expert in my topic.  By Japanese standards, I will come across as a confident, but business like person, dedicated to their message for the audience.  I will have threaded the needle between the two extremes and that will be a good result.

English versus mathematics?  Easy choice for budding engineers at High School and for when they get to University.  Science is logical, knowable, understandable.  Presenting seems to have little in the way of science and more art involved, so best avoided.  Actually they do a pretty good job of avoiding it, until a certain stage in their careers.  These days clients want to talk to the engineers, so they have to front up and visit the buyer with the salesperson.  If the counterparty is another engineer, then the code is in place and everyone is fine.  Line managers, decision makers, CFOs are different beasts and more difficult.  Even more annoying is the client conducts beauty parades to decide which company’s engineers they are going to select.

This is where the skilled engineer who can present in a skilled way eats everyone’s lunch.  One engineer mumbles, rambles, doesn’t look confident and is struggling with basic coherence.  The other is clear, concise, in command of the material and making the key points like a legend.  Well, the choice for the buyer is made pretty easy.

In other cases, the engineers get promoted and have to represent their section to the senior leaders in the company.  This is often when we get a call.  “Can you help us please.  We have a great engineer leading the team but his communication skills and presentation skills are dismal and the senior leadership have tasked HR to fix the problem, by finding a training company who can help”. 

This sounds good but it is often a difficult task.  The major issue tends to be a lack of awareness around the importance and value of presenting.  These skills are soft skills rather than the hard skills, which their profession demands. They can see them as a bit “fluffy”.  Presentation skills are very much in the eye of the beholder too, so opinions can vary regarding what is a good presentation.  This lack of agreed, concrete measurable aspects can be an anathema to engineers.

Fluffy or otherwise, persuasion power is a real thing.  This requires good skills in the design of the talk, the gathering of evidence and in the delivery.  Design here means does the talk flow logically resulting in a clear conclusion, that is credible, because of the evidence assembled to support the main argument. 

Ace engineer or not, if we start the presentation with a lot of fiddling around with the tech, there is a strong chance our audience is distracted and reaching for their phones to find something more interesting to do.  We have to know that this is the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism and attention spans are functioning at microscopic levels.  No matter how brilliant our evidence is, we will have lost many in our audience in those first few vital seconds, as we establish that first impression between speaker and listener.  Online is even worse because now everyone is granted a free license to multi-task in the background and ignore the speaker.

Our opening has to be a gripper, such that the audience want to hear more, they want to know where you are going with this presentation.  We must speak clearly and confidently.  Easier said than done for laconic engineers, who are not prone to speaking a lot.  Also, not doing a lot of presentations or probably, avoiding to do presentations, has left a confidence vacuum that is filled with nervousness.  Sounding confident to an audience when you are not requires a level of thespian ability, which is usually beyond the grasp of hard skill trained engineers.

Rehearsal is the saviour here and lots of it is required.  We don’t want to spend all of our time building the slide deck.  The delivery is what sells the message and that relates straight back to the fact we have to buy what we are saying first and then communicate that belief to the audience.  If we don’t understand the power of persuasion, we are likely to fluff off the rehearsal component of making the speech professional.

I have never been able to trace this supposed Japanese saying but it does sound good, “more sweat in training, less blood in battle”.  Let’s make our mistakes in practice, get the talk timing right, work on the cadence, the order and the delivery.  If we have the right mindset, then good things will happen and all of these other pieces of the puzzle will fit into place nicely.

Everyone is getting very swish with the tech these days, as we spend more and more hours in online meetings.  Consequently, we are more and more likely to find ourselves in a breakout room to discuss a topic.  When we first started doing this March 2020, as we ran our first LIVE On Line training, we discovered some disconcerting things about the medium.  In many cases they were disparate individuals from different companies and also sometimes disparate individuals from different sections of the same firm.  Initially, we found sending people who didn’t already know each other into breakout rooms perplexed them. For the breakout room captives, there was no hierarchy, no psychological safety and no trust.  Many times, three people in a breakout room would just sit there for three minutes and say absolutely nothing to each other. 

We learnt we had to set up some social order and ground rules for them.  We needed to tell them that a certain person will be in charge of the reporting for the group. That person will keep a record of the points raised and we also nominated another person to lead the discussion to create the points. This left everyone else to be a contributor, with the expectation they would do just that and respond to the leader’s request for their opinion.

We also found that groups were unclear about the exact point they were discussing.  We may have believed we explained it perfectly well, but often they were not sure what to talk about.  Part of the reason was that when they heard they were going into a breakout room with strangers, their minds stopped listening to the instructions.  Now they were focused on who would be in the group, how would they be perceived by strangers and how would they be judged for what they said in a public arena.  With all of this front and centre in their minds, the details of the question had receded into the background.

So we asked for a green check or a show of hands, around who understood what was happening.  We would then call on some of those people to tell us the protocol for the breakout room and repeat back the question or issue they were going to discuss.

The third thing we found was that we had to enter each room and just check that there were no questions.  If there were none, then we would leave them to it and move to the next room to check.  Surprisingly, even with all of this formatting going on, we would still enter a room to hear stone cold silence, with no one playing their designated leader role.  If this was the case, we would become the leader and get the conversation going amongst the participants.

I thought this was just Japan, but lately I have joined a study programme run by a global online education organisation.  We were sent off to breakout rooms and it became obvious that most of the people participating from all around the world, really hadn’t a clue how to interact in that situation.  Part of it is language, as English was not the mother tongue for some of the participants.  However, many of the factors which applied in Japan were also in evidence around shyness, lack of hierarchy, being judged and trust.

So, if you are sent off to virtual oblivion in a breakout room, here are some tips on how to get the most out of the situation.  Seize that initial shy silence and be the one to introduce yourself and say where you are from.  Next, talk about how much you are looking forward to learning from the other members of the group.  “ I am not an expert in this area and so please give me feedback, if what I am saying makes no sense. Also, let’s all take full advantage of this chance to help each other grow.  So, who would like to get us going and give a comment on the question?”. 

That takes about thirty seconds to explain.  If nobody feels sufficiently comfortable yet to kick things off, then you lead with your prepared comment.  I say “prepared comment”, because before this session you have gathered your ideas into a series of bullet points, which you can easily to talk to.  You are not trying to wing it and make stuff up on the fly.  Being prepared is much better than trying to be a spontaneous genius.  And the rest of us can tell the difference.

By being active and asking questions of others in the group, people start to feel more comfortable and free to express their ideas.  It is a good idea to praise people’s contributions, by saying, “Great insight there, referring to XYZ.  Could you go a bit deeper on that point please, I am keen to hear more”.

When you speak, be concise, clear and please don’t try to hog the airwaves.  Say your piece and then ask others for their ideas and comments.  In this way, your reputation as a person of value goes up and your humility is noted and appreciated.  No one enjoys the blowhard who wants to spend the majority of the time making sure everyone else has to listen to their voice.

“That has to come out”.  “Why?”.  “It might offend women in the audience”.  “But this example is totally in context with what I am saying”.  And so it went on.  This was my first bruising encounter with cancel culture.  Living in Japan this third time since 1992, I have been outside the cancel culture debates sweeping America.  Until now.  The speech I was going to give would be videoed and go global, including to America.  Perplexed, confused, insulted – these were the emotions I was confronting upon hearing I had to make that specific change to my speech.  It got me wondering about our ability as presenters to present our thoughts in public.  What does this mean for the future of public speaking?

Living in Japan, I had vaguely heard of cancel culture.  I understood it to be mainly centred on Universities where students were confronting their Professor’s ideas and comments they disagreed with.  I had read in the media about youthful tweets and social media postings coming back to haunt the authors many years later.  I cannot say I ever expected to be cancelled. 

The offending item was an image objectifying women in Japan.  A photo of a maid café young lady done up in a frilly miniskirt in fact.  At her request, I took my anime besotted teenage daughter to visit a maid café in Akihabara when she was visiting from Australia a number of years ago.  The image in the photo corresponded with the outfits I saw being worn by the staff, so the image in question was congruent with the maid café experience.  That is to say it reflected a reality, a truth, we can see any day of the week in Akihabara.  Apparently, such a confronting picture would be too much for women located outside Japan and in particular those living in the USA.

The speech topic was on Diversity and Inclusion in Japan.  The main issue here is gender inequality, although sexual orientation has become more prominent lately.  The context of this speech was that the comment by ex- Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori about women on boards talking too much, can be traced back to the Confucian idea of a woman’s place in society being there to serve men, throughout all stages of their lives.  The maid café photograph was an example of how these women are being objectified to serve male fantasies in the modern era and therefore, there is still a long way to go for women in business to achieve gender equity here in Japan.  The photograph was totally in context with the text and was not supporting the objectification of women, in fact the precise opposite.

So, being told it had to be removed was incomprehensible to me.  I argued about the photograph being in the context of the text and that the central argument I was making made it all congruent.  This next pushback  was the snapper for me:  “Women seeing the photo alone would be offended.  There was the danger they would not pick up on what you were saying in the video and may misinterpret your meaning”. 

“Wait a moment.  You are saying they are not smart enough, intelligent enough to discern the context of what I am saying and therefore the photograph and that paragraph have to be cut?”.  That struck me as being totally chauvinistic and condescending to women.  By now you will have worked out I was having this conversation with another man.  He reported back to me that he had discussed it with some female leaders in that organisation and the consensus was that I couldn’t include it.

 Here is the dilemma we have to face – do we agree with this cancel culture putsch or do we stand our ground.  I felt this was a matter of free speech, free expression and I really struggled with whether I should buckle under this request for removal pressure or should I fight. 

If I remove it, unintelligent people win.  If I refuse to go ahead and recuse myself on the basis of the principle of free speech, unintelligent people win.  If I fight, then I create powerful enemies and get bogged down in the cancel culture wars.  Where is the line regarding what is acceptable and what is not?  Who is the arbiter of the line location?  How do we deal with committees making these decisions?  Are they representative of the masses or are they wannabe oligarchs calling the shots?

I removed it.  But I have felt very uneasy about that decision ever since.  I have so many thoughts flying around in my brain about this cancel culture issue and I cannot get them to fly in formation as yet.  This was an eye opener for me.  I often make the point that we speakers and presenters live in the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism.  It would appear we are also living in the Epoch of Cancel Culture.  What do we do?  Pick our fights?  Assemble the barricades on principle on every occasion?  Fight or fold?  I folded, but I regretted it. 

What about you?  When the cancel culture brown shirts turn up, what is your plan?  “What is that you say, no plan”.  Time for all of us who speak and present to make a plan, I would suggest.  If you have any bright ideas on resolving this enigma, please let me know!

Our event speaker was a well-coiffed and well appointed senior executive in one of the world’s biggest corporations.  The topic was on building your personal brand. A good crowd had turned out to pick up some pointers.  Anticipation gradually turned to disappointment though, as the talk unfolded.  The slant taken was how to project your brand “within” this gargantuan monster. How to climb their thousand foot high greasy pole.  As with other luncheon speaker events, you had a chance to meet people beforehand and then engage with your table mates over the meal.  I reflected that I had “worked the room” pretty thoroughly, combing the ranks of the assembled professionals for any potential clients.  I noted that none of them worked for a mega beast even close to the size of this colossus, so the speaker’s sage advice didn’t quite hit the mark.  How could that be, I thought to myself?

Who Is In The Room?

One of the big mistakes for a presenter is not understanding who is going to be in the room.  At what level should you pitch your content?  Are they experts, amateurs, dilettantes?  These days it may be hard to get the full list of who is coming, because of privacy concerns, but usually you can at least get the company name and their positions. If our speaker had done that, then hopefully the speech may have taken a different direction and would have become more relevant to those who took the trouble to attend. 

Our Purpose Is?

We need to make a decision about what is the purpose of our talk.  Are we here to inform, entertain, inspire or persuade?  Responding to the organisers request for a talk on a certain topic doesn’t determine the purpose.  We are given the overall theme and analysing our audience, we know now what angle we should select.  In this previous case, it would have been to “inform” and in that sense the speaker got it right.  The relevancy bit was completely missing though, but at least the purpose was correct.  An inspire speech will be totally different to a persuade or entertain speech.  Think back to the presentations you have attended. Could you recognise the event speaker’s approach or was it just a jumble, a catch all effort?  I am putting my money on “jumble”.

First Three Seconds

We have three seconds to grab our audiences’ attention and create a positive first impression. It has to be powerful enough that they don’t seize their phones and escape from us to the siren calls of the internet.  Why three seconds?  Over the last five years I have been asking participants in our presentation classes, how long does it take you to form a first impression of someone new.  The answers used to range from five minutes to thirty minutes.  When I ask that same question today, they tell me three seconds, five seconds, fifteen seconds.  It is shocking how little time we actually have, so our opening has to be well planned and well executed or we will have lost the room.

The Age of Distraction and The Era of Cynicism. 

Audiences are quick to judge, slow to trust and fast to flee from our presentation. We need to have a blockbuster opening. Something that will stop them in their tracks. However, what do we see presenters doing with those first few vital moments?  They are not actively engaging their audience because they are head down, hunched over their laptop, fumbling with their slide deck to get it up on screen. They are doing other amateur things like pounding the microphone asking “can you hear me down the back?” At the next presentation you attend, count the number of first impression killers the presenter is exhibiting.  Have they managed to capture your total attention from the very first few seconds or are you reaching for your phone?

How To Begin

Rules number one and two of presenting are rehearse before you give the talk and never practice on your audience.  Rehearsal is such an obvious point, but it almost never happens with business presenters.  This one thing will change everything about how the talk is received and how you will be perceived.  Get there early and check all the equipment. No microphone thumping please!  Also have someone else load your slide deck for you, if it can’t be primed ready to go.  We need to be 100% present with our audience, so reduce all friction impeding that result. 

Begin by picking out someone in your audience half way back and around the middle of the venue.  Make direct eye contact with that person and for the next six seconds speak to them, as if you were the only two people in the room.  Then at random, move to the next person and just keep repeating this six second process for the entire presentation.  Why six seconds?  Anything less and it doesn’t give you enough time to engage that person one on one.  However, continuously staring at someone burns into their retina and becomes too intrusive.  We want to directly engage as many people as possible in the time we have, so our engagement time split is important.

Wrap Your Information In Stories

We want our message to be fondly recalled, savoured like a fine wine and fully imbibed by our audience.  Many speakers, particularly technical presenters, have deluded themselves into thinking the data is all. They believe they get a free pass on needing to be a proficient and professional presenter, because the quality of their information trumps everything else.  Not true. The audience will remember two things – you and the stories you told.  Sadly none of that cool data you have cavalierly tossed up on screen is retained. 

They will remember you as someone they would like to hear from again or not.  The data wrapped up in stories is the way to make sure your key points are heard and remembered.  Today, we have to overcome all the other competing things going on in audience minds, while they are sitting there listening to us.  Even if they are enjoying your talk, some in the audience have no shame about flourishing their phones to do some multi-tasking, surfing the internet, while taking in your points.  Stories stop them in their tracks and they will switch back to us.  Here is the snapper though, how many speakers have you heard use stories well or at all?  If it is so effective, why are speakers just droning on about the details?  They just don’t know and it shows.

The good news is that the speaker proficiency bar is so low, we can easily shine by just avoiding some of these simple mistakes.  We make it hard for ourselves unnecessarily. We want to be a gold medal winner, but finish up being a prize dud.   The choice is yours, so which will you choose for your next presentation?  Why not go for being a winner, a presentations Olympian, every time you speak.

This is horrible.  Man, this is so bad, what were they thinking?  I am watching a video of a leader asking for some major changes to the organisation’s finances and he is doing a woeful job of it.  They have a dedicated Coms team, there are talented people in the leadership group, so I am asking myself how could this train wreck come to pass?  I was also thinking, “you should have called me, I could have saved you a lot of wasted opportunity with your messaging”.  Too late now, the video is out there for all to ignore.  This is a classic case of people who don’t spend any time appreciating the importance of communication and presentation skills, suddenly going for the big ask and then falling flat on their face.

It was serious subject, a heavy subject and the background chosen for the video was given zero thought.  When you are asking for a truckload of dough for a project, you want the background oozing with solid credibility.  You need to look Presidential, capable, considered and trustworthy.  That lightweight scene setting wasn’t given much thought but the talking head only occupies a small part of the screen.  Having people moving around in the background distracts us from the key message.  No one thought about that either.  They should have told those people to buzz off for ten minutes, so the video could get done.

The camera saps twenty percent of our energy.  If you are a low energy leader, you can come across as cadaverous.  You need to ramp up the speaking power.  If the message requires convincing people about spending more money, then you really need to amp it up, to come across as confident, considered and competent.  The body language, gestures and voice modulation need to be on point.  Hitting key words is a must, as are carefully thought through pauses.  We need these to allow the audience to absorb what we have just said.  Rolling thoughts over the top of each other leaves the viewers lost.

The camera is also unforgiving.  If you can’t hold its gaze, then you look like a shifty Souk merchant trying to sell us some dodgy, dud stuff.  You have to look straight into the camera barrel and keep looking at it the whole time.  You don’t want to be sitting too close to the camera when you are doing this though.  A massive close up of your dial isn’t going to work for most people, so better to back up a bit.  It also allows for gestures to be used and more importantly, to be seen.

Looking away, looking down and looking at your notes are a no no.  If it is an important occasion, a key topic, the big ask, then do what the world’s leaders have learnt – use the teleprompter.  You need to refine the script and then read it, word perfect, while looking straight into the camera lens the whole time.  This takes some practice, some effort in the preparation, rather than just pulling up a chair and free styling in front of the camera for a “once over lightly” approach to a serious subject.

I will never forget a gorgeous young American woman I saw on YouTube.  She was the complete package.  She was teaching people how to use the teleprompter.  However her eyes were obviously reading across the screen left to right following the text.  You don’t want that.  You need to be able to zero in on the lens and read the text at the same time.  That takes some time to get right.  You also have to play around with the teleprompter speed setting as well, to find the right cadence for your talk.

There were no gripping stories to give us hope. Just a dry rendition of what he wanted to tell us.  The visuals were not clever.  Cherry picking the minimum damage case smacks of the carnival barker and snake oil salesman.  Show us the real numbers, so there is more honesty about the proposition here for us to consider.  He was trying to be too clever by half and failing miserably.

Our errant, non-persuading persuader really murdered the message.  Once it is done, it is out there.  His personal and professional brands both took a massive hit thanks to that video.  His messaging missed the mark and I doubt people will be persuaded to join him on his programme. 

I am not super opposed to his offering, I get it, but I am vaguely insulted by the lack of professionalism. If he can't get this right, how can I expect he can get anything else right.  It is the remaining coffee stain on the pull down tray in the aircraft when you board, that gets you worrying about whether they can actually do a professional job on engine maintenance if they can’t get this simple thing right, why should I trust them with complex things?

There is no excuse for this exercise in bungled communications.  In this day and age there is so much information available on presenting skills, it is staggering.  For example, in my own case, I have broadcast over four hundred pieces on the subject, for free, over the last years.  Don’t allow yourself to become part of the casualty ward of failed suicidal persuaders and communicators inflicting mortal harm to their brand, through lack of awareness and preparation.  Get the training now, so that when it is time to step up and be counted, you can carry it off with aplomb.

It makes sense to be authentic when presenting, because this is the easiest state to maintain.  As someone wise once noted, “if you are going to be a liar you need a stupendous memory to keep up with who you told what”.  Presenting is something similar.  Maintaining a fiction in front of an audience takes a lot of skill.  In fact, if you have that much skill, why worry about faking it in the first place?  Well, there is a place for fakery when presenting, but we need to know when is appropriate.

We know that the way we think about things influences how we well we do.  Imposter syndrome is a common state of mind though amongst people, across a broad range of situations.  You might write a blog and put it up on your website, or waffle away on Clubhouse or pontificate to an audience, live or online.  But who are you to talk about this subject? Are you saying anything worthwhile or just regurgitating what far cleverer people have already said?  Do you really know this subject?  Is your experience valuable or even relevant to others?  Are you really qualified to give advice to people running far bigger organisations that your own?

Looking over that list, it can be enough to scare you off emerging from the deep depths of your comfy comfort zone ever again.  So, we have to create a positive mindset that “yes”, we have every right to address this subject area, even if we feel a fake when compared to other more famous or clever people.  The funny thing is they suffer the same imposter syndrome too, relative to their illustrious peers.  Academics, for example, are generally a put upon group, because they have to publish their research to get ahead in their careers.  When they publish it, they are now exposing the weaknesses of their intellectual process, their inadequate research ability  or their dubious writing skills, to the entire expert community in their area of defined speciality.

Confidence warrants confidence.  If we sound and look confident, most people are likely to ignore the emperor has no clothes and is not perfect.  They will be carried away with our enthusiasm for our subject, with our passionate belief in our findings and our commitment to share the knowledge. The problems crop up when we become nervous speaking in front of others.  Normally, we are quite even keeled and confident, but with all of those beady sets of eyes drilling holes into us, we start to wobble.  Suddenly, our imposter syndrome fears come flooding forth and soon our usual cool, calm, collected façade is torn to shreds, as we are exposed as a self doubting, insecure, fake.

Now how would the audience know we are a fake?  Well, we very helpfully tell them, by saying daft things like, “I am rather nervous today”.  Or “I am not very good at presenting”. Or “I didn’t have much time to put this presentation together and I am afraid it won’t be very good” and any other of the motley collection of dubious, sympathy seeking, self-serving, cop out proclamations.  Do us all a favour and keep all of this imposter syndrome stuff to yourself.  Here is a secret - we all want you to succeed.

If you are nervous presenting then fake it, such that you appear at least “normal”, rather than being reduced to a quivering tower of jelly on stage.  If your knees are knocking from the nerves, then stand behind the podium until you feel more comfortable to walk around.  If your hands are shaking and you have to hold a microphone, use both hands and draw it on to your chest, so that your body secures the erratically jiggling instrument.  If your throat is parched, then have warm, room temperature rather than iced water, close by and drink it when you need it.  The iced water constricts your throat and you don’t want that, so forgo the usual venue offered beverage and request the no ice alternative.  If you begin to speak and instead of a mellifluent note, out pops a constrained, awkward, embarrassing squeak, then clear your throat and try again.  If you stumble on the pronunciation of a word, try again. If you get the speech points order mixed up or miss one, then fake it and keep going, offering not a hint of anything untoward occurring.

If you act enthusiastically, you will become enthusiastic.  If you act confidently, you will become confident.  Yes you might be nervous, but as Winston Churchill said, “if you are going through hell, keep going”.  That is the point. No matter what happens, the show must go on and that means you must keep going.  If it is a disaster, then dust yourself off and climb back in saddle.  As the Japanese saying goes, nana korobi ya oki (七転び八起き) - “fall down seven times, get up eight times”.

When I read this quote from Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon from 1971 that “ a wealth of information would create a poverty of attention” I thought about its ramifications for presenters.  Today, we are firmly swimming against a King tide of information overload, so Simon’s dystopian prophecy has come to fruition.  This is the Age of Distraction for audiences.  They are gold medal winning poor listeners and yet we have to present to them.  We know that storytelling is one sure fire way to snaffle their attention and yet that path is littered with landmines.

Very few business presenters tell stories at all in their talks.  They are enamoured with their high quality content.  Which usually means the results of surveys, research or data collation.  Data is rarely strong enough to linger long in our memories.  This is  because usually there is a ton of data, each morsel, each three decimal tidbit vanquishing the one before and so on and so on, until we recall nothing, as Simon predicted. 

Business presenters imagining their data is enough are fooling themselves, because their messages are not breaking through that wall of distraction and that poverty of attention.  For the few who do tell stories they are freelancing, going free style with no structure.  They just relate what happened.  What is the point of the story?  Is the delivery getting the key messages in front of the audience in a way that they will remember it?  Are the listeners seeing any relevance for themselves in this story?

Where do we start with the story?  Do we get straight to the point, do we go to the key take away?  “Hey, get to the point”. We often hear this from bosses and we mistakenly follow that direction with our storytelling.  Why is it a mistake?  We have to grasp the fundamental difference between writing a report, where we start with the conclusion we have reached from our analysis, otherwise known as the “Executive Summary” and giving an oral presentation.  When we launch forth with our recommendation, we open up the flood gates of rampant critique.

Many who are listening start thinking that we are wrong, have misfired with our analytical findings and have failed to account for important alternate considerations. Why do they react like that?  We have put forth our main point completely naked and unprotected, so that is all they have to go on.  In the sequence, our explanation of how we came to this conclusion follows next.  Critically, the critics are not really listening now because they are consumed by what they think is wrong with it, so the justification portion gets lost for them.

We should instead begin with our context, the background which has informed our conclusion, based on the data and experiences we analysed.  We need to populate this context with people they know, places they can see in their mind’s eye and lodge it in a temporal frame which the audience can process. 

The genius of this approach is that while sitting there listening to us warble on, the audience are racing ahead and reaching their own conclusions about the insights to be gained from this context.  Given a certain set of circumstances, there are a limited number of conclusions to be drawn and the chances are very high, that they will have reached the same one you did. When you announce it, the listeners mentally say to themselves “that’s right”.  Bingo! 

Now instead of facing an audience of doubters, one uppers and thrusters, you are dealing with fans of your work.  The key is to make the insight download very concise.  When we teach this formula, invariably people want to jumble a number of insights together and run through them.  Each additional insight dilutes the power of the one before it and so on.  It is critical to select the strongest, best insight and only pull the velvet curtain back to reveal that one.

The final step is to take the context and the insight and then package it up and place it on a silver tray for the audience to take home with them, when we outline the relevance to them.  Although we have produced an insight, it is an inert outcome.  What does that insight do for us, how can we use it, where will this be valuable for us, when can we apply it? When we receive the insight wisdom with that relevancy formula attached, it makes sense. We feel attending the speaker’s presentation today was time well spent.  We got something worthwhile which will help us navigate the future that little bit better and more easily.   Again, this has to be done very concisely, for the same reasons discussed about explaining the insight.

So the formula is context, insight and then explain the relevance.  If we mix it up we are making things hard for ourselves, so resist any calls to get to the point, by being forced to put up the insight like a sacrificial lamb about to be slaughtered.  Hold it in reserve until the scene has been set.  Sherlock Holmes and Poirot, great fictional detectives always revealed the baddie’s name after giving the background of the crime.  It is a well tested, tried and true formula for storytelling, so try it.

The largest meeting venue in the office complex was big enough to handle hundreds of people and it was packed. This presentation involved all the senior heads of the Department going through their strategies for the coming year. One after another, we took to the stage and spoke about our areas of responsibility. I was one of the five who spoke. My turn came after a particular colleague who was a numbers wiz, a brainy technical expert. He didn't like the way I presented. He went around telling other colleagues I was all style and no substance. I just laughed when I heard that flat earth comment.

Over the years. I have heard versions of the same idea. These comments weren't necessarily being directed at me as a put down by a sharp elbowed thrusting colleague, but toward the activity of presenting in general. There's a fundamental misunderstanding of presenting in play here. Of course, the material has to be high quality, valuable, and insightful. That is a given. If you don't have that basic requirement covered then what on earth are you doing presenting at all? Instead, you should be sitting in the audience, listening to people who know what they're talking about and be kept away from the dais.

My evil colleague at the all team presentation was reacting to the flagrant contrast of his pathetic presentation skills on stage with mine. There was nothing wrong with my content, my substance, because I was representing the Department and so the materials were reflecting the results gained and the plans for the next year. What he didn't like was being upstaged by someone who could command the room, engage the audience and deliver clear messages in a professional way. Nothing he could ever be accused of, so he went for the personal down to assuage his own inadequacies and perceived loss of face.

As we climb the ladder of our career growth, we will be placed in situations where we have to represent our team or company and make professional presentations. It is almost inescapable. If we cannot even grasp the importance of mastering the nitoryu（二刀流） or two sword method of going into business battle with both high quality content and high quality delivery, then we wouldn't be moving very far up the totem pole within our organizations.

I was coaching a senior executive in a multi-national organization. Recently when I asked for the three most important things to be gained from the one-on-one training, the first mentioned was quality content. Uh oh! I had an alarm bell go off in my head because quality content has to be a given. I asked to see the slides to be used for the presentation to the big boss. Uh oh! On the first slide there was lots of content. In fact, a veritable forest of content hiding all the key messages. The other slides were all the same, overwhelming amounts of visual stimulation diluting the points which we were meant to absorb.

I suggested that each of these slides be broken up and the same information be spread over three slides. If there was a need to show, a build or a contrast, then only show the left slide of the slide at first. Then grey that information out and bring up the middle of the slide and so forth and so on. In this way, we funnel our audiences’ attention to just the section we want to highlight and cut down the distraction. This executive was open to the advice and actually told me what I was looking at was the “slimmed down version of the deck.” My mind boggled, wondering what the original looked like.

While my mind was under assault from this revelation, another bomb was dropped. Today, all of their presentations are being done online. Okay, fine, however, this executive’s colleagues, who are also senior leaders in this massive organization, do not switch on their own cameras when they present. That little morsel just stopped me in my tracks. What?

I get it. Because you are presenting slides, the platform relegates you to a tiny box on screen and does the same to your audience. Does that mean though, as a leader in the organization, you lead by turning off the camera? Getting people who are working at home engaged during business calls is tough enough, without fostering a no camera culture of hiding. There is a slippery slope here to the wondrous joys of multi-tasking in the background of calls and no longer paying attention to what is being said or shown during the session.

Yes, we are trapped in a tiny box, but we have to do our best with what we have. We need to look at that camera lens, get the lens right up to eye height and use 20% more energy than normal to work in this visual medium. These are absolute basics. And beyond that, we need to be using gestures and even more energy to engage the audience.

Let's master nitoryu presenting and be strong on content and delivery quality. No matter the limitations of the medium we are employing. If we are leaders, we have to set the pace and the standards. There are no excuses.

I listen to some podcasts on writing, trying to better educate myself on the craft.  I was hopeless at English at school, so the rest of my life has been a remedial fix in that department. Fundamentally, these podcast authors are aimed at fiction writers, rather than non-fiction scribblers like me.  A lot of what we do in business on our dog down days may seem like we are living a fiction, when the numbers are not there or the results are dragging their sorry backside along the ground.  Despite these self-recriminations about our situation, we are in the non-fiction storytelling business for business purposes, not for winning literary or public oratory awards.  What are some of the elements we need to consider when deciding, “right, time to get a bit more serious about storytelling in my presentations”.

Welcome to the one percent club of presenters, who actually incorporate stories into their business presentations.  Usually getting into the top one percent in any professional field is diabolically difficult, but here we have an open field in front of us, devoid of worthy competitors. They have all stayed at home. That is the type of field I like play in.

Now are we going to tell a deadly boring or basically dull story?  Are we going to lose our audience’s attention? Are we driving them to their phones for escape to the internet, to get away from us.  Have we forced them to search for something more interesting, better suited to while away their time?

What would make for an interesting business story?  We need personalities to come to life in this story, preferably people the audience already knows.  These might be executives in the company or people from the rank and file.  Something happened and they were involved.  We need to describe them in such a way that the listener can visualise that person in their mind’s eye, even if they don’t know them.  We need a location for our central characters in this story.  Where are we?  Which country, which city, which building?  We don’t need a riveting recounting for the fans of Architectural Monthly, describing the building in deadly detail, but we need some remarks to set the scene.  Are we in a massive skyscraper, are we downtown, are we in a restaurant?  What season are we in?  Is it blazing summer now or deep snowy winter? Just when are we experiencing this incident? How long ago was it?

We need drama. Yes, I know there is a lot of drama in business and we are up to our armpits in drama on a daily basis, but that is what makes it so appealing.  People know about their own dramas well enough, but they are superbly curious about yours.  Maybe yours is worse and that puts their regular meltdowns in perspective.  Maybe your drama is a dawdle, compared to what they are being served up every day, “you were luuucky” they think. Check out Monty Python’s Four Yorkshireman skit, for a humorous masterclass on great one upping someone else’s problems.

Something bad is going to happen, unless something else happens instead.  This is the fare we get fed from television and movie action dramas all of the time, so we know the format. The damage will be great to the firm, an individual’s career, the survival of the business, etc.  Even if you have some great news to relate, set it up from some bad news dramatic context.  No one really relates to perfect people.  We can’t identify with those who are blessed with great everything and glide through business, untouched by any blood and gore.  We want to hear about the struggles and eventual success. We need a tale of hope, a saga of eventual success, an overcome all odds story of ultimate triumph.

At the end we want a punchline that teaches us something. Give us some guidance on what we should do, genius ideas on what we could do, hints on the possible.  The climax has to be soaring, elevating, buoying us up, encouraging us to bear the pain of the present. We all want hope for the future in these grim times.  Obviously, the delivery has to match and we need a crescendo call to action at the end, something to have people leaping out of their chairs and punching the air, ready to run through fire.  Okay, I got a bit carried away there.  I have never seen that happen to date in any business presentation. But we do need a finish that becomes a start for the rest of us, a trigger to go forward, bursting with a lot of heart.

Let’s tell our business story so well, that everyone remembers the point we were making and they remember us, as someone they would enjoy to hear from again.

Presentations have become tediously monochrome.  The speaker speaks, the audience sit there passively taking it all in.  After the speaker’s peroration, they get to offer up a few questions for about 10 to 15 minutes or so and then that is the end of it. With the pivot to online presentations, the fabric of the presentation methodology hasn’t changed much.  We sit there peering at the little boxes on screen, hearing a monotone voice droning on. We listen to enquiries from others submitted beforehand or we may actually get an open mic opportunity to ask our questions directly, although that has been rather rare.  We may be directed to the chat to make our question known to the organisers.  The formula is basically the same and has been the same since our antediluvian origins.

Why can’t speakers vary their presentations to sometimes include more interaction?  Why does it always have to be the same format?  Obviously, we have to pick our moment to go off piste.  The audience composition, the topic of the talk and the organiser’s latitude for doing something different, will be factors for consideration.  One of the tricky aspects of asking questions of your audience is getting people to contribute and to do so in a way that they can be heard by everyone.  The obvious answer is to have a team of your people armed with handheld mics, which they can ferry at warp speed to the individual asking the question.  Here is a word to the wise.  You should choose who you want to question, but also allow some free styling as well. Events where the guests are seated at round tables are great for this and long rows of schoolroom type seating are not.

We are not switching the presentation to a continuous dialogue with the audience – that is a different type of presentation altogether.  I am talking about livening up a standard presentation with more interaction with the audience.  The reason you select the people is because it allows you to control the affair more closely.  It is also more surgical.  You know who is in the room and there may be some people who are very well informed, articulate and confident.  That type of individual would be a prime target.

We have five arrows in our question quiver.  If we want a yes or no answer then the Closed Question is ideal.  It might be regarding a fairly macro question, that would have relevancy for everyone in the audience.  “Should Tokyo continue to pursue the holding of the Olympic Games this year?”, would be an example. In this case, we can ask the entire audience the question.  We can ask for a show of hands as to whether they agree with the point or not?  I have been to some events where two sided paddles have been distributed to each seat beforehand, with one side saying “Yes” and the other “No”.   A simpler method is just ask those who agree to raise their hands, then after that, ask those who disagree to raise theirs. Everyone can clearly see the survey results immediately in real time. 

The Open Question cannot be answered by a “Yes” or a “No” and requires an actual answer. “What do you think about ….”, “How do you feel about …?”. This is why selecting your interlocutor is a good idea.  If you select one of the punters at random, you may be putting someone on the spot. Next thing they are spluttering away lost and wholly embarrassed. They will hate you for it forever.

If only you are selecting the people, then there is the suspicion you are using sakura or stooges in the audience, whom you have cunningly planted beforehand.  So it is also wise to open the floor up as well to those brave and informed enough to offer their opinion.  Don’t worry if no one goes for it, you have at least demonstrated your embrace of true democratic ideals of free speech.

If the opportunity presents itself, we can ask a Follow-Up Question to take the discussion down a few more layers for deeper insight.  Often people will give a high level answer and it is more interesting to get them to go further with their thinking, experience or detail.  We have to be careful this doesn’t become a dialogue though between some person in the audience and the presenter. The danger is everyone else is sitting there bored out of their minds and feeling excluded.   Probably one of those follow-up questions per talk is about the right distribution.

From within these dialogues, we can take a person’s viewpoint and Floodlight it to the entire audience.  We can ask those who have had a similar experience to raise their hands.  Now we have switched from the micro discussion between two people to a macro level of involvement of the whole audience.  This is a good way of overcoming the feeling of exclusion by those listening.

We can also go the other way and Spotlight a question.  Someone made a point and we can then call out someone else in the audience for their experiences.  We have to be careful we don’t ignite a war of words between the members of the audience.  Rather than call for their opinion or views or evaluation of the previous speaker’s comment, we should ask what has been their experience.  This will keep the potential fireworks contained for the most part.

One thing to note is when we ask people for their comment please have patience.  Once we ask the question, don’t expect an immediate answer.  People process these issues at different speeds and so if there is a silence, let it hang there for at least 15 seconds. Don’t jump in unless you have to, in order to allow that person to gather their thoughts and respond.  If they are obviously lost, then rescue them and give them a question which they can easily answer to save face.  We need to select people carefully and if it is not the best selection, then we have to have a Plan B.

Questions have potential to engage with our audience and create more interaction.  We must plan it carefully though, because it could lurch into a train wreck.  Planning and good preparation are the keys.