Watch Others To Learn Presenting

When we are the thick of things we have trouble observing ourselves. Public speaking is really pushing many people right out of their comfort zone, so the stress levels are massive. They feel they are heating up, their breath is getting shorter, their tummy feels rather bad and their throat is parched. It is very hard to be an objective observer of your own performance when you are mainly preoccupied with survival. This is where being an observer of others is very handy.

Our High Impact Presentations Course uses this technique in depth. While we are up there presenting our classmates are watching us like a hawk for two things. One is to discover what we are doing that is good. The second is looking for areas where we could do better. You will notice I didn’t introduce any ideas about things they could critique about our performance. This is looking into the past, it degrades everyone’s confidence and creates a negative relationship between the participants.

When we are not in class though there are many chances for us to observe how others present. Obviously when we attend events with a speaker we can take the opportunity to hone our observation skills. The vast majority of attendees are there just to hear the speaker and learn something from the content. They are not mentally pulling the whole operation apart and analysing it. Well that is precisely what we should be doing.

Did the speaker attempt to connect with the audience before the event? Did they reference something said by one of the attendees to build a bond with the audience and break down the barriers? How was the introduction? Usually this is done by the hosting organization’s person. Was it obviously something that person put together and therefore was a pretty half baked affair or was it an all dancing, all singing warm up for the main act?

When you are presenting always prepare your own introduction. Don’t make it an essay, keep it brief and focused on the high points. Don’t allow anyone else to represent you during the talk. Send it before you speak or hand it to them on the day. Either way, try to get them to stick to the script. What you have written will always be a lot better than anything they come up with.

How was the speaker’s opening of the talk? Were they fiddling around with the tech and discussing it with the audience before they got going? Did they say stupid things like “can you hear me?” as they are tapping the microphone, because they hadn’t bothered to check earlier when they arrived.

Was the first sentence something which grabbed our attention and made sure we kept our hands off our mobile devices? Could they break through all the clutter in our minds as we worry about yesterday, what happened today and what we need to do tomorrow? How did they open? Was it straight into an interesting story? Did they say something surprising or informative? Did they open with a question which got us engaged in the theme of the talk? Look for these techniques and then consider what you need to do to grab audience mind share when you are a speaker. Today, there is so much more distraction and competition for limited time, miniscule concentration spans that we have to really be on our game, in that environment.

Once they got going was it easy to follow where they were going with this presentation? Did it hang together? Was it logically well constructed so we were brought along with their argument and we were persuaded? Did they shift gears every five minutes or so to maintain our interest? Were they using their eyes to engage us one by one, their voice to have modulation to maintain our interest? Were they using their body language to add strength to their argument?

How did they wrap it up? Did they loop back to something they said at the start? Did they use a quotation from an authority figure? Did they summarise the key points?

Did they handle the Q&A like a pro? Were they paraphrasing what had been said so everyone could hear it. Were they using cushions to buy themselves thinking time. Did they have a second close ready to go so that they could make sure their key message was the last thing the audience heard and remembered, regardless of what came up during the Q&A?

So as you see, we are going to be kept pretty busy when we attend someone else’s talk. By checking for these things we are programming into our minds the importance of being properly prepared before we get up and talk. Don’t let the chance slip by to work over someone else’s efforts to insulate ourselves from the typical errors and to make our talk a triumph, based on learning from the foibles of others.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

How To Be Confident When Presenting

The Mochizuki Room of the High Performance Center Akasaka opens up and today’s class members gradually file in, finding a seat, hanging up their winter coats. They mostly don’t know each other, so there is a little bit of nervousness in the room, as they start meeting their classmates and their instructors. At the outset, we ask them to set a vision for the training. It is written in the present tense, but the timing is set 6 months in the future. This requires a bit of mental gymnastics. That means it is not written as, “I will do something or other” but “I am”, as a form of expression. It assumes they have achieved some outcome and that is was a big success.

They have to project forward to a point where they will be giving a future presentation and they have to describe how successful it was, as if it really happened already, even though it is in the future. Next we ask them to imagine after that successful presentation, that they are the last to leave the room. As they are walking out of the building following the crowd, they can hear some of the attendees of their talk discussing their presentation. We ask them to nominate what are the three attributes they want to hear used to describe their presentation, from those who have just heard them speak.

When we ask our class participants for High Impact Presentations Course what are some of the attributes they want to have referenced as presenters, the word “confidence” comes up in almost 99% of cases. Other attributes include: clear, interesting, professional, fun, motivating, impactful, logical, valuable, passionate, interesting etc. Why is confidence the most widely sought after attribute?

We know that confidence sells the message. Someone who doesn’t look confident about what they are suggesting is rejected right then and there. If you can’t believe it yourself, then why should we believe what you are saying. This reaction makes sense doesn’t it.

Confidence also presumes a positive mental state. Speaking in front of others can be contemplated as a negative. Perhaps at school they gave a report and classmates laughed at them, crushing their confidence forever. Maybe they presented their tutorial paper at University and they were diced up by their classmates. Somewhere in their past there may be a recollection of the intense shame, humiliation and despair they felt when they have to present in front of others.

Usually a lack of confidence is associated with nervousness. Being nervous is one thing and putting yourself in that state is another. We are all trained to avoid pain and unpleasantness. Knowing you will become very nervous if you have to present in front of others, automatically has us looking for the escape route to avoid that situation. We know what is coming and we don’t like the look of it. Having the adrenalin coursing through our veins, our breathing feeling constrained, the blood draining away from our major organs releasing a queasy feeling in the pit of our stomach is not a state we want to enter into if we can avoid it.

That was me too. I avoided public speaking for decades, because of my lack of confidence. Was I half smart enough to go and get some training to overcome these fears? No. I did nothing but sweat and tremble in trepidation that I would have to speak in front of others. I passed up on opportunities to build my personal and professional brand and to promote my organisation.

This is the point – we are not confident because we don’t know what we are doing. Any task we have never done before or which is technical and requires some degree of training is going to make us nervous about doing it. Public speaking is no different.

Like these attendees of the High Impact Presentations Course in the Mochizuki Room, we can all overcome these fears of insufficiency to the task, by getting the training. They learn how to deal with fear, with the fight or flight syndrome all speakers have to face. They learn speaking structures that will enable them to prepare any presentation format. When you can just pour the content into the right format, life gets a lot easier. Understanding the point of the talk is another simple but key element. Am I here to get action, to entertain, to inform or to impress? Learning how to design the start and finish of the talk, how to properly design the slides for the talk, how to analyse the audience to know how to present the talk are all the basics we need to know.

When you add in the personal coaching from the instructors it all starts to improve. You only get positive feedback, so your delicate nervous state is not totally upended. You get specific things to work on and lots and lots of practice. You hit the magic marker. This is when you learn how to switch the focus from yourself and move to focusing on your audience. It doesn't happen immediately but it does happen. Once you do that, all the fears about speaking in front of others, which is all about you by the way, disappear.

This is when you can start to notice the impact of what you are saying is having on your audience. You can see the impact because you are watching them like a hawk, never taking your eyes off the audience and you are using your eye power to engage them one by one, throughout the presentation. People nodding approvingly really boosts your confidence and you start to enjoy the process.

With training, you never fear the Q&A. This is when the event potentially becomes a street fight with no rules. When we are speaking we have control of the time, the agenda and the content. Q&A can see questions which have nothing to do with the topic, severe critiques of what you have just said and someone’s own diatribe on a subject they hold near and dear. You cannot control this but you can control your response. When you have been trained you can weather any storm and can become bulletproof against any attack. Trust me, this knowledge makes you very confident when presenting.

So get trained and increase your confidence when presenting. It is that simple. Once you have done it, you will kick yourself as to why you didn’t get the training earlier. It makes you happy to get the skills but sad to think of how much time and opportunity you have lost for no good reason. Better late than never though, so let’s get going!

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Having More Presence As A Speaker

Two different presenters and a big occasion. The five star hotel ballroom was packed and a lot of attention was being given to these two leaders, both new to their roles. Presenting is a cruel world. It has no respect for position or pedigree. Like the first presenter, you can be a big shot at your mega company, but unless you have the goods, no one will be impressed and in fact you will damage both your personal and company brand. In the case of the second presenter, you might be a VIP and in Japan this is a big deal and pretty good, because of the way everyone fawns over you. The gloves come off though when you get up on stage to do your presentation. If you are a dud, average, mediocre or uninspiring, then the sheen on that old VIP status starts to look a bit dull and tattered.

If the big shots are having trouble, how about the rest of us? How do we have a presence on stage when we speak? I teach our High Impact Presentations Course and do a lot of one-on-one Executive Coaching for presentations. Often, I hear the request from the participants and from the executives around how to have more presence when on stage.

It is true isn’t it. The vast majority of people we meet in life have very little presence. Why would they suddenly be transformed into a presenting god at the podium? It is the same inside companies. The Japanese executives are often requesting help with having more “executive presence” when they are attending large, high level, internal meetings. Part of it is language skills in English. Part of it is cultural – be humble, play yourself down, don’t stand out, be respectful of those older or more senior than you in the room. Part of it is a complete lack of training.

When we present there are three levers we need to pulling on hard and they are the words, our voice and our body language. The words obviously relate to the content and it has to be excellent. If what we are saying is boring, obvious, unremarkable or insignificant, then don’t expect to be carried from the hall on the shoulders of your supporters, as they parade your triumph along the cobbled streets to the town square.

Japanese presenters need to lose their obsession with linguistic perfection. The audience just doesn’t care. So what if a grammatical mistake is made or a word mispronounced? In this multi-cultural, global, matrixed world, native English speakers are used to hearing non-native speakers mangle the English language. Actually they don’t have a problem with it, because they are used to it. We correct what is being said, inside our minds and connect the dots, so we can follow where the speaker is going. We are doing this without conscious thought because it has become so standard and natural.

The voice is a powerful instrument. This is where we need to rise to the occasion. A presentation should be delivered as if we are having a fireside chat but at a volume and strength, that is made for the public occasion. We keep the intimacy, but we elongate the vocal range. We are creating variety and are staying as far away from a monotone delivery as we can get. Japanese language is a monotone, so it is handmade for putting the audience to sleep. Even in Japanese though, we can use variety in speed and power in our delivery to give us sufficient vocal range to keep the punters awake.

Body language includes gestures, posture, eye contact etc. The hidden key to having more presence really requires skills in this area though. I have been training in traditional karate since 1971. I also did ten years of taichiquan before I had to stop when I came back to Japan. In both cases, called chi in Chinese and the ki in Japanese, there is magical energy in the body. All martial arts are devoted to harnessing that power.

Does this mean you have to take up martial arts to be a speaker and tap into the energy source. I don’t believe so, based on our ability to coach people to have more ki when they present. The amateur presenter is consuming all the energy within themselves. They haven’t worked out that you have to project that energy into the audience. They miss this because they are focused on themselves and what they are doing, rather than being focused entirely on their audience.

Here are a couple of simple things to adopt from now on whenever you have to present. I will condense 47 years of training down to key points. When you speak, look straight into the eyes of the individual in your audience, for about six seconds, before moving your gaze on to the next person. Keep this up throughout, with no wavering. Also, do it in a random fashion so that it cannot be predicted. Cover all areas of the room, front, back, left, right, middle as you look at individuals.

At the same time as using your eye power, project your energy to that person.   Imagine it was like an energy laser beam you were projecting to the people sitting in front of you. Use your voice to shoot the words out to these people you are looking at. Gestures add power to the words. Combine your body language together to direct more presence to the person you are speaking to.

All of this is taking place at the same time. What it means is that you are directly 100% of your attention to one person at a time when you are speaking. Many speakers are looking everywhere and nowhere when they are talking. Instead use this total power direct into the audience.

By the way, in a big hall, the 20 people sitting around your target person, will all feel your attention is being directed toward them. What the audience feels is your full energy and power when you present.

This is what they mean by having “presence”.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

How To Come Up With Speech Content

Their request arrives. “Would you please give a presentation to our group?”. You check on what they would like you to talk about. Usually, the answer is a bit vague. The content will not be so finely or specifically designated. It may cover a broad subject area or they may mention what people usually speak about or they might just throw it back to you completely. Okay…. So how do we come up with a speech title and description?

We need both to be decided rather early because they want to promote the event and get the message out about the coming talk. That is a pain for a procrastinator like myself. I now have to think! The problem is that you need a snappy title that will attract an audience. People in marketing and advertising get paid a lot of money to come up with these brilliant little gems but we are doing it ourselves. It can’t be too long, has to reflect the content of what we will speak about and it has to have a hook that will grab attention. Copywriting is a finite skill and we are usually rank amateurs. We need a title and supporting text that is going to get people motivated to turn up.

We need a theme though first and so how do we choose that? While we were discussing the request to speak, we should take the opportunity to enquire about their target audience. Are they hard-core professionals in this area, dilettantes, aspirants, fans or rent-a-crowd? What is the age and gender demographic? Once we know who we are going to be talking to, we can start to consider the subject we will choose.

Now we may have many and varied interests, but our subject guide should be what will be of the greatest interest to the largest number of punters in the audience. Obviously it has to cover an area which we can actually speak on, but our personal devotion shouldn’t be choice. That talk content will be fascinating for us and perhaps lost on the audience members. Having honed the choices down to one, we now consider what is the punch line of the talk.

This punch line is also known as the close of the talk. Ironically we don’t start with the title, flag the key things to be covered and then start to build the slide deck. We start with the finish and work our way backwards toward the title. As we roughly form up the content we start to get ideas about a possible title. The title can be straightforward and descriptive, like this piece or it can use other hooks. If we think about how the content will be found by search engine algorithms, it is best not to use something too illusive and arty. Speaking gigs are advertised somewhere and they do get added to your personal search results, so we should maximize that chance we are given.

The title can also be fascinating, such that people will want to hear all about it. Sounds good but this is not that easy to do and as mentioned, copywriters are trained to get the words right. We are amateurs in that regard. We can spend some time tossing around various title possibilities until we find one we like. The point is to toss around a number of them rather going for the first one to pop into our brain. Think of the title from a potential audience member’s point of view. What would grab their attention and hold their interest.

The supporting description is usually only a few paragraphs long so we have to again be working hard wordsmithing the content. This is not where we spell out the content we will cover, like an agenda in a book. This part needs to be crammed to gunwales with value from the audience viewpoint. We need to be telling them what they will get out of this talk, how it will help them. We don’t have so many words to do this in, so we have to hit the high notes hard.

There will also be a short bio about us to explain why we have the authority, capacity and expertise to talk on this subject. It is not a job CV. It again should be a powerful couple of sentences that reeks of “expert”.

Once we have done all of this we can start working on the detail of the talk and getting the slides together. If we take our time to plan this way, we will give a much better talk, have a far greater impact with the audience and be regarded as a quality expert in our field.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Presenting: Good Is The Enemy Of Great

I was recently reminded of this point about a good presentation being the enemy of a great presentation. Two speakers with a tonne of business experience gave their talks, one after the other. Both were very confident, quite competent and rather boring. By most people’s measure they probably did a “good job”, but they could have been great instead. What was missing? The neglected elements are what makes the difference between being great rather than just being good.

One of the speakers used notes and did a pretty fair attempt of looking at the audience rather than concentrating on the text. This is not easy. You have to read the content, then reproduce it from memory, as you are eye balling the audience. If you think this is a snap, just try it.

Did he need to have a written text? Actually no. He could have talked to his key points, given he was highly articulate and experienced enough to do so. Being able to spend more time engaging with the assembled masses, rather than engaging with your script takes work. The content contained all of the expected things. That is an issue as well. Once your audience realizes you are doing the usual routine expected of someone in your exalted position, they tend to mentally switch off.   It was delivered with supreme confidence and you could tell this wasn’t the speaker’s first rodeo. It was good, but it wasn’t great.

The second speaker upped the ante and spoke with no notes. This is a much better version. It means you can spend your entire speaking time engaging your audience with eye contact. It would have been better if the speaker had actually done that, picking out individuals in the crowd and engaging them one by one. Rather, it was one of those one size fits all jobs, where the speaker is talking to everyone and no one at the same time.

It was a big crowd. In these cases, when you select one person and you look and speak directly to them, the distance involved provides the illusion that you are talking directly to a number of people standing or sitting around the person you are actually concentrating on. It means you are engaging many individuals with the sensation that you are directly addressing them and no one else in the room at that moment. This is so powerful you would think all speakers would do it.

So both speakers were using eye contact, but it was fake eye contact. It looks like they are speaking to the people in front of them, but actually it is an undifferentiated mass affair, rather than creating a feeling of one on one intimacy.

All you have to do to change that, is look directly into the eyes of one person for around six seconds and they will feel a profound sense of personal connection with you. Why six seconds? The time spent under six seconds can come across as fleeting and perfunctory, rather than a genuine attempt to really engage. Over six seconds of you staring intently at someone, brings out the fear you are a psycho axe murderer, to the audience member involved.

The other element that was missing was engagement with the message. I am struggling with finding the correct descriptor here. Uninspiring platitudes is too harsh a judgment, because I am sure they were genuine in what they were telling the audience. The problem was it sounded just like the type of thing they should be saying, so our expectations were met, rather than exceeded. Good, but not great.

On both occasions, there were no attempts to connect with the audience at the emotional level through storytelling. This is rather the problem with most business speakers. They are talking to us, but not engaging or moving us. Storytelling really brings the human element to the fore. We easily follow the plot, we can identify with the characters and we will feel an emotional connection with the point being made by the speaker. This is how you go beyond good to achieve greatness, as a communicator in business. The fatally sad part is that both of these speakers’ professional lives are absolutely brimming with human stories which we can naturally grasp and appreciate. There is such a richness in using stories to drive home the point, but the treasure was unspent on this occasion. Why?

Because they couldn't go beyond being good to challenge themselves to be great. This is the issue when we gain confidence to address an audience. We feel we were professional, that we did a good job, that we completed the task competently compared to most others. This is true, but we fall short of our full potential when we are self-satisfied with these lower rungs on the ladder to speaking success.

It sounds harsh but realistically most business presenters we experience are rubbish, so our scope of comparison creates a false sense of achievement. We need to become the best we can possibly be. To do that we need to engage the audience with our eyes, speak directly to them and regale them with human stories that really stir their emotions. This should be the standard against which we measure ourselves.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Interview by Guy Perryman from Tokyo InterFM 897

As presenters we work across many mediums.  Most often we are standing in front of an audience presenting.  Someimes we are able to use video for television or own own TV shows on YouTube.  I have done many television interviews over the years and now host my own television programme on YouTube called The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show.  Podcasts are a type of radio show which allows individuals to broadcast their messages, without relying on the traditional media.  I have also done a lot of radio interviews as well and now host three podcast shows a week.

Being interviewed though is another ball game, because you ose control of two very important things - the content direction and the editing of the final version which goes to air.

Radio requires a number of things and obviously when you are only able to project your voice, what you say and how you say it become vital.  In this interview I am trying to demonstrate how to do both.  I didn't know what the exact questions would be in advance, although I knew the general direction the show would take.  

This means you need to think fast and try to make your responses as interesting as possible to the listening audience.  What we say should be interesting and this is where storytelling is so powerful.  Also the use of the voice to have variety and energy is important to keep the audience listening to you.

We shouldn't miss any chance to persuade our audience to do what we suggest.  We are in the persuasion business and so we need to have an action we want the listeners to take.  If you believe in what you are doing, you should never be shy about recommending it to others.  I talk about the Dale Carnegie course in this interview, not to sell more courses.  I talk about it because I know we have the cure, the magic formula for so many people and they need it.  My job is to get the message out and this type of broad based audience is a great chance to do just that.

Listen to this interview and ask yourself if you were being interviewed, how would you go?  Would you be abe to present your suggestion for the people listening in a way that they would accept?  Would you be able to weave some stories into your talk to hold everyone's interest?  Are you prepared to share personal things about yourself so that your audience can more easily connect with you?

Oprah’s Golden Globe’s Speech Carries Smart Lessons

Oprah Winfrey has been celebrated by many for her recent acceptance speech at the Golden Globes event. It proves once again the power and attraction of being able to command an audience and being persuasive with your message. Like her or loath her, that performance was very impressive. She is a seasoned professional, with many years in the limelight, so naturally she was very comfortable up there on stage. The surprising thing for me though is how many famous actors have trouble stringing two words together, when it is their turn to speak without a scriptwriter feeding them the lines. So being a celebrity, being in the business, is no guarantee of oratorical magic. What can wepick up from her speech to make our own presentation’s more successful?

I like the fact that Oprah started straight away with a story. She located the story in time in 1964, with a location - her as a child sitting on the linoleum floor of her mother’s house watching the Academy Awards on television. By giving us the time and location she is urging us to mentally transport ourselves back to our own childhood, sitting on the floor watching television like she was. With a few short descriptors she has mentally taken us with her. This is why telling stories makes us so powerful as communicators. She has grasped out total attention. No one in that audience was reaching for their mobile phone to check their Facebook or Instagram accounts during that story.

She wrapped up the story by transitioning to comments about the judging panel and then connected that segue with the current debate about the role of the press. This is a big topic and again, something that everyone has been exposed to recently, so it is easy for us to understand what she is talking about. Putting issues into a topical reference point makes it relevant to the audience and more interesting.

She used some powerful headliner sentences during her talk to engage the emotions of the audience. The first was when she said “speaking your truth”. This related the issues about the accuracy of reporting of the press with the current scandals about the abuse of power by men, which has seen famous men fall by the wayside, one after another. This use of a rallying cry is made to engage and energise the audience. Being able to reduce complex issues down to a headline is a real skill, but these are the things on which successful rallying cries are built. She also used another good segue to link the current issue with the issues her mother and others like her endured, again linking back to the start of the story.

By bringing up the VC Taylor story of her kidnap and rape on the way home from church, connected the theme of men using their power to abuse women, by putting it into an historical civil rights context. The extension of that story to include Rosa Parks again linked an unknown person VC Taylor to a more famous personality, to bring more credibility and memory power to the listener’s perspective. Now she has built a platform of context for her most powerful rallying cry of “Their time is up”.

There is a certain cadence to this build up. She was piling on the references to injustices of the past, to show the current injustices in a historical light and then hammer home her powerful statement of the current moment - “their time is up”.

Getting this type of build in a story is the art of storytelling. We need to set the scene, add the logs to build the fire and then throw the petrol on the fire at the right moment, to ignite the audience’s emotions. This was a masterful piece of planning and execution to get to the point of the story.

She used the “Me Too” mantra as a plea for no more cases, moving the completion of the speech to a more positive bent. She had been talking about a lot of negative things in the first part of the speech, but now she was moving the audience along the scale from desperation that nothing can ever change, to one where change is a reality. She mentioned more headline phrases, “hope for a brighter day” and then talked about a “new day on the horizon”. This is leaving the audience with hope for a better world. This is a powerful, positive call to end the speech with.

This is a useful thing to remember for our own talks because often we can be going deep into a problem and can get trapped in a negative loop. She ended with a clear Thank You and that was it, nothing more added or needed to be added and all done in under 10 minutes. Make it clear for the audience that you have finished. In our talks we can have a Q&A session, so it needs to be apparent to the audience where we are in the programme and that they can now ask their questions.

Another thing I noticed was she had controlled passion throughout this talk. She was using great energy to bring her words to life. She was also totally congruent with her content and her delivery. What she was saying and the way she said it matched up perfectly and we have to make sure we are doing the same in our talks. If it is a serious subject, then look serious and no jokes.

Her eye line was adding to her message. She was working the left, center and right sides of the room, as well as direct to the viewing audience, when she would look straight at the camera. This makes for a very inclusive style of speech. We should make sure we are addressing the entire audience. We should try to pick out people in the audience and speak directly to them for about 6 seconds, before picking up another person, repeat and repeat and repeat until we are finished. I noticed she also didn’t let the audience applause break her timing, she carried on over the top of it, to keep the flow. When we have found our speaking rhythm we should keep going with it.

A polished performance and one that reinforces the importance of planning well what it is you are going to say. She injected crescendos into that speech with strong well composed headlines. She embraced key messages into the stories which themselves were easy to follow. She involved her audience by engaging with them. We can do all of these things as well, all we need to do is plan for the impact we want and then work backwards constructing how to achieve it. Speaking has so much power and all we have to do is learn how to tap into that well.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

No Warning Speaking

Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks. Uh oh. No preparation, no warning and no escape. What do you do? Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter. It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue. One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there in your chair, taking a mild interest in the proceedings going on around you and next you are the main event.

Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds. By the time you have heaved yourself out of your chair, your brain has well and truly started to panic. A mental whiteout is probably fully underway and your face is going red, because of all the blood pressure of the moment.

Here are a couple of things we can do in this situation. Firstly, take a realistic look at the task at hand. The length of your talk will not be expected to be long. If you are a seasoned speaker, you could get up and wax lyrical for an hour without a problem. For everyone else, we are talking two to three minutes. Now two to three minutes seems rather short, except when you are suddenly thrust in front of a sea of expectant eyes of an audience.

Once upon a time, I completely forgot my next sentence and discovered the pain of prolonged time. I was asked to give a brief talk in Mandarin to a crowd of around a thousand people, when I was Consul General in Osaka. It was a special event for the departing Chinese Consul General Li, who was heading to New York. Actually, I was going okay but I paused to allow some applause to die down – this turned out to be a major error on my part.

I found when you go suddenly blank, a single microphone stand doesn’t provide much cover, up on a very big stage, with all the lights on you and everyone staring at you. That 30 seconds or so of silence, where I was totally lost and unable to recall what came next, seemed like a lifetime. So I know that two to three minutes can appear really daunting when suddenly called upon to speak.

Begin by thanking whoever unceremoniously dragged you up the podium for the chance to say a few words. Try and smile at them, through gritted teeth if you have to. You have to say something, so take the occasion and put your comments into some form of context.

You can use the concept of time as your ally. For example, here is where we were, here is where we are today and here is where we are going in the future. This past, present, future construct will work for just about any occasion and any subject. That is the type of ready to go format you need to be able to call upon when you don’t have much preparation time up your sleeve.

Another good construct is macro and micro. Talk about the big picture issues related to the occasion, then talk about some of the micro issues. This is useful for putting the event into a frame you can speak about easily. There is always a big and small picture related to any topic. Again, this construct travels easily across occasions and events.

We can use the weather, the location, the season or the time of the day as a theme. We can put this event into any of those contexts rather easily. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a long presentation.

We can talk about people that everyone would know, who are related to the event. They might be present or absent. We can make a few positive remarks about our host. Then we can thank everyone for their attention, wish them our best and get off the stage.

Let me give you a real life example. I was at an event for Ikebana International, sitting there calmly minding my own business, when I heard the speaker suddenly call me up to the stage to say a few words. I had the time from standing up to walk to the podium to compose myself about what on earth I would say. At the extreme that time gap was probably 10 seconds. I was going to need to speak in Japanese, so that just added another level of excitement to the challenge. It had been raining that day, so I miraculously dreamed up a water related analogy.

I began by thanking the host for allowing me to say a few words, although I secretly I wasn’t so happy about being put on the spot. I mentioned that the stems of the Australian cut flowers that were being exhibited that day, contained water and soil from Australia, as they had just arrived that morning by air. I said that as a result here in Japan we had a little bit of Australia present and each of these flowers were like a floral ambassador linking the two countries together. I then wished everyone all the best for the event and got out of the firing line pronto. Probably not an award winning talk, but good enough for that occasion, with that amount of notice. And that is the point. You need to be able to say something reasonable rather than remarkable to complete your sudden duties.

So always have a couple of simple constructs up your sleeve if you are suddenly asked to speak without warning. Don’t just turn up thinking you can be an audience member and can switch off or these days start immersing yourself in your phone screen. Imagine you were suddenly singled out for action and have your construct ready to go just in case.

You may not be called upon, but everyone around you will be impressed that you could get up there and speak without warning. The degree of difficulty here is triple back flip with pike sort of dimension and everyone knows it. They are all thinking what a nightmare it would have been, had it been them up there in the firing line. You will be surprised how much a difference that little bit of preparation will make to coming across as professional, rather than uming and ahing your way through a total shambles of a talk. Your personal brand will be golden for the sake of a bit of forward planning. Now that would be worth it don’t you think.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

The Power Of The Rhetorical Question

Questions in general are powerful tools for speakers. They bring focus to key points we want to get across. They are particularly useful in getting our audience engaged. They also have danger within them. Knowing when to use questions and what types of questions to use are things which must be worked out in the planning of the presentation and shouldn’t be done on the fly. If you want to get yourself into trouble then ask the wrong question at the wrong time and brace yourself for the reaction.

There is a cadence to any talk or presentation and in the planning phase we can break the delivery down to five minute blocks. It doesn’t have to be five, it could be four or six, but five minutes is a long enough time to go deep with a thought, idea or imparting some information without losing the concentration of the audience.

Actually audience concentration spans are a nightmare today. They have become so short and everyone has become addicted to multitasking. Even if they are enjoying the presentation, they are scrolling through their screens right in front of you anyway, without any hint of shame.   This is the new normal. We will face this problem forever and we are never going back to the good old days of people politely listening to us right through our presentations.

This is why we need to be switching up the presentation every five minutes or so, to keep the audience intrigued with what we are presenting. This is where great information or insights really help. The audience access to something new or valuable will pry them away from their screens for a few minutes longer. We will need to be using the full range of our vocal delivery skills to keep them with us. Any hint of a monotone delivery and the hand held screens will be blazing light throughout the room.

Questions are an additional assist to break through the competing focus for audience attention. By simply asking a well constructed question we can grab audience attention. We may have been waffling along taking about some pressing issue or downloading some precious data, losing our listeners in the process. However when we lob in a question, we magically get all eyes back on us. We have now gotten the audience thinking about the point we have raised.

The downside with asking questions though is people in the audience want to answer them. They see the question as a great opportunity for them to intervene in the proceedings. They may have a counterview and enjoy the chance to debate with us. They may have their own personal agenda and this break in the traffic is perfect for them to weigh in with what they think. They may even get into debates amongst themselves and exclude us entirely. Within no time at all, the proceedings have been hijacked and we are no longer in control of the agenda.

This is where rhetorical questions are so handy. They give us the ability to capture the mental attention of our audience on the topic we are discussing, get them engaged but maintain the control. A rhetorical question and a real question are identical. The audience cannot distinguish one from the other. This is good, because we can keep them guessing. What we want them thinking about is whether this a question they have to answer and are they ready to do that or is this a rhetorical question and all they have to do is listen? The difference between the two is the timing of the break before our next contribution. If we stop there and invite answers then they know it is time to speak up. If we leave a pregnant pause, but then answer the question or add to it, then they know they are not being required to contribute.

The key point here is to design the questions into the talk at the start. In those five minute blocks we need to have little attractions to keep interest. They might be powerful visuals, great storytelling, vocal range for effect or rhetorical questions. The key is to have variety planned from the start. In a 40 minute speech, apart from the opening and the closings, there are going to be 5-6 chances to grab attention. At the start we can use vocal range and visuals but as we get to the middle and toward the end, we need to bring in the bigger guns as people start to fade out.

We can’t flog the audience with a series of rhetorical questions and wear them down. We can maybe get in two or maximum three in a forty minute presentation. Anything we repeat gets boring very fast. Anything that smacks of manipulation gets the wrong response.

There is a fine line to be walked here. We do want to control the agenda, the debate, the timing, the attention of the listeners, without appearing controlling. Sprinkling a couple of well constructed rhetorical questions into our presentation will help us to maintain interest and defeat our screen based, social media and internet addictive rivals. Get used to this, because this is the future for all of us as presenters and we have to lift our game to make sure we are in a position to have a powerful influence with our audiences. The alternative is speaker oblivion.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Have A Point Of View

Often we will hear a presentation and receive a lot of information from the presenter, but we are not really clear on what is their point of view on this subject. We don’t think we need to state our point of view when it is a product, because there will invariably be quite a lot of features which can be talked about. The problem with that is features by themselves are not persuasive enough. None of us buy features, because we are all too busy buying the benefits of the features. It also might be a service. The client wants to know what difference our service will make for their business growth. It is an intangible too, so the purchase decision really rides on the client buying an image of what success will look like. This is where having a point of view kicks in.

We have to tell the buyer how great our solution is. We shouldn’t be thinking all I have to do is present the detail and the client will buy what I am selling. If only it was that easy. Instead we need to be telling them that this is the greatest thing on the planet.

Technically oriented people are particularly prone to understatement. They believe that the data sells itself. This is because often they are very logical types. They didn’t get the email which explained that we all buy on emotion and justify with logic. They need to state their point of view on how great they think this piece of technology or intellectual property or whatever is. If we want the audience to get our message, we have to stand firmly behind what we are suggesting. Don’t make the audience do all the work – tell them this is the greatest whatever.

If we believe there is some imminent change approaching the current state of the market, we should mention that and predict what we think the likely ramifications will be. We may be proven completely incorrect but that doesn’t matter. At that point in time the audience will leave the presentation knowing that you stand for something and there is an internal logic holding that construct together. It may eventually go in a different direction, but there are always so many mitigating factors, it is hard to be held to your incorrect prediction. The key is you give the audience the sense that you stand for something and are not just wishy washy and uncommitted. Better to be proven wrong, than immediately dismissed as someone who can’t commit to anything and just supplies raw data.

We want belief to be demonstrated by our speaker and when they have a point of view backed up with a solid structure supporting their proposition, we see that as professional We may or may not like or agree with what is being said, but we respect the intellect and the delivery. We should never rely on the slide deck or the slick video to do the selling for us. We need to use our voice and body language to show our enthusiasm for our point of view. This is critical because we are more likely to follow your line of reasoning, if you show your 100% commitment to it.

The structure is simple. We explain our point of view, we then spend the next twenty minutes or so, supplying data, examples, facts, testimonials, stories which are the evidence for this point of view. It is all beautifully connected together. We finish by restating our central proposition and call for the audience to agree with this and support that point of view. We now go into Q&A and marshal even more evidence to support what we are saying, this time in the face of people who put up alternative ideas or totally opposite opinions. In the final close we again state our view and call for everyone to support it, this is the last thing ringing in the ears of the audience as they depart the venue.

If we want to be remembered then we need to have a point of view. If we want people to support our product or service we need to sell them our point of view on why they should buy it. We need to back all of this up with passion, enthusiasm and belief. If we do this then we will be successful as a person of influence.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Zen Presenting

Zen study is a way to strip out all of the non-essentials in life. The noise, the distraction, the things that are not so important. People sit around concentrating on their breath cycle or one word or a number of other methods to quiet the mind, so they can get more clarity about themselves and what are their real priorities. As presenters, this is a good metaphor for when we are in front of people speaking.

You would think with all those thousands of years of Zen in Japan, in art, in design, in temples, gardens, in history etc., that the Japanese people would be legends of simplicity and clarity when presenting. Not true! Presenting as an idea only came to Japan around 160 years ago. Fukuzawa Yukichi who founded Keio University and who graces the 10,000 yen bank note, launched public speaking in Japan in the Meiji period. There is an enzetsukan or speech hall still on the grounds of Keio University, where presumably the first speeches were given.

Western society plumbs the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome, parliaments allowing debate and Hollywood for models on speech giving. Japan has no home grown role model. If the authorities needed you to know anything in old japan, a notice board would have it written there for you. No shogun oratory from the castle walls to the assembled masses. No Mel Gibson Braveheart style speeches before vanquishing the foe in battle. Japan bypassed all of that until Fukuzawa Yukichi decided this was another area of modernization that needed implementation, like wearing ties, boots, hats and petticoats.

No slide deck in those days, but Japan certainly was an early adopter of the technology for giving presentations – the overhead projector, the slide projector, the modern light weight projector, large screen monitors, electronic pointers. Any venue you go to in Japan will be bristling with gear.

Interestingly, the content on screen will also be bristling. There will be 10 graphs on the one page, lurid diagrams employing 6 or more vivid colours, text so small you could use it for an optometrist’s eyesight test chart. Where has the zen gone?

We don’t need any tech or screens or props or gizmos. We can speak to the audience and enjoy being the full focus of their attention. Many speakers are competing for attention with what is being displayed on the screen. Company representatives love to play the video of their firm or product or service. They can be quite slick, the joy of the marketing department and the pit into which a chunk of money was thrown for the production company, directors, designers, film and sound crew, talents and innumerable others who all got a slice of the pie.

The question to ask though is does this video actually assist the speaker to make the key point under consideration. Often they are like eye candy, but are not on point to the main argument. Unless it strongly reinforces your message dump it. It will only be competition for you the speaker and it will suck up valuable time which could be spent better with you as the man focus.

I saw Ken Done, a well known Australian artist, give a talk in Japan many years ago. He has a very unique visual style and yet he moved around from behind the lectern, stood next to it and just spoke about his art to the audience. It was very engaging because it was so intimate. The Japanese audience loved it. There was only one source of stimulation for the audience and that was Ken Done. This is what we want – to be the center of their world for the next thirty or forty minutes.

Don’t use a slide deck unless there is something in that content and presentation on screen which really helps bring home your argument. If it is for information purposes, then that will work well. If you are there to persuade, then you will be so much more powerful if all the attention is concentrated on one point and that point needs to be you.

In this case we have stripped away all the noise, so we have to fill the void with word pictures. We need to be having the audience see what we are talking about in their mind’s eye. If you have ever read the novel after seeing the movie, you find yourself transported visually to the scenes from the movie, as you read the text. This is the same idea. We have to transport the audience to a place, time and situation that we are describing in words, in such a way that visually they can imagine it.

We don’t always have to have slides or visuals. We are the message, so let’s manufacture the situation so that we are the center piece of the proceedings and all eyes and ears are on us and every word we say. We can Zen our way to speaking success!

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Bailed Out By The Brand

My eyes are closing. I am struggling to stay awake. There is something about this presentation that is not working. I thought, it must be me.   I must be tired. Later however I realized the problem. I was being lulled into sleep by the monotone delivery of the presenter. Now there was no excuse for this because the language was English. We know that Japanese is a monotone language, so you can sort of understand that this is going to lull you to sleep, unless the presenter is on their game.

The brand by the way is gorgeous. This is seriously high profile, a name that everyone knows and respects. The name alone triggers images that are all first class. The slides and videos he presented were all quality. These people have money and they know about marketing very high end products. They have been doing it for a very long time and they do it globally.

Our speaker had all of this powerful support going for him, yet the actual presentation was sleep inducing. Why was that? The brand is a passion brand, but there was no passion. The brand is a great story, but the storytelling was minimal. The delivery was wooden. Measured, but wooden. The person delivering it comes from a culture that is exuberant, intense, enthusiastic. He showed little of these traits.

Fortunately, despite his lifeless delivery, the brand is so powerful it can survive his attempt to murder it. But what a wasted opportunity. It is not as if this brand doesn’t have competitors. There are many and they are also high quality, high status, expensive, exclusive, well healed. He needed to stand out amongst a very crowded field, infecting that audience that evening with his passion and belief in the brand. He is their guy in Japan, so that is his job, every time, everywhere.

It was a good audience too. These are people who appreciate a good brand, who are influencers, who can spread the message. No one will bother though because they were not receiving any energy from this talk. This is the danger when we have a strong brand supporting us. We can become complacent. We imagine we don’t have to do much because the brand sells itself. The marketing department’s glossy photos and slick videos are enough.

Not true. Brands are being recreated every single day. When the product is consumed that is a brand defining moment. If the brand promise is not delivered when the product or service is consumed, then the brand is that much lessened. If this continues, then the brand will disappear, vanquished by its competitors. The brand doesn’t have to be consumed to define the brand though. We as representatives of the brand, are influencing the quality perception of the brand every time we present. If we give a really average performance then the audience will start to doubt the quality claims of the marketing department about this brand. Never forget, we judge the entire organisation on you and how you come across.

If our man in Japan had given a high energy presentation, extolling the virtues of the brand, that would have been consistent with the positioning of the brand. If you are representing a funeral home however, that would not be appropriate. So obviously we need to be congruent. This brand case though would be a great platform for enthusiastic storytelling and verbal passion for the brand. Where were the gripping stories of high drama and intrigue, as they duked it out with their competitors across the globe and over the decades? Where were the human dimension stories of the customers who were famous and fans. This is a glamour business and yet there was little glamour presented in his talk. The styling is seriously beautiful, but we heard nothing about the design team. We got no insider account of some of the legendary tales from the past. It was flat.

There was little or nor energy being transmitted to the audience. When we speak we have to radiate that energy to the listeners. We need to invigorate them. We do this through our voice and our body language. It is an inside out process, where the internal belief is so powerful it explodes out to the audience. They see we are convinced, we are believers and they become believers too.

It is interesting that we have a client company we do training for and the external image of the brand is over the top. Yet the people who work there are very muted, very low key. The contrast is quite jarring because it goes against what we would expect. This means that if we are representing a dynamic brand we had better be dynamic. Our speaker was not dynamic at all. He put me to sleep. No brand consistency on his part and that is just not allowed.

Let’s raise our energy levels up when promoting our company in a public presentation. Make sure our voice is using all the range of highs and lows to get full tonal variety. No monotone delivery please. We need to punch out hard certain key words and phrases, like the crescendos in classical music. We need our body language to be backing this up, our gestures in sync with what we are saying. We need to lift the energy of the audience through our personal power. None of this happened that evening and the brand will survive, but the brand elevation opportunity was totally missed. If he keeps doing this, over time, it will be to the brand’s detriment. I wonder if the leaders of his organisation have a clue about any of this?

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Crazy Things Smart People Say

Education can be a barrier to intelligence sometimes. This is often the case with people educated in very hard skill disciplines. They are asked to absorb vast amounts of complex information and to follow strict procedural structures. The rote learning aspect becomes paramount. This is fine and will get you graduated out of varsity and into the real world. With so much invested in technical knowledge other skill sets are not fully appreciated enough.

Soft skills, such as communication, are not highly valued. The thinking is that this is rather fluffy stuff. Serious people are knowledgeable about deep technical subjects and how they transmit that knowledge isn’t all that important. The quality of the data or the advice is considered to the key thing, not the delivery. Anyway the delivery bit smacks of conmen, carnival barkers and dodgy sales types who talked you into buying that timeshare you never use while you were on holiday.

I was reminded of this recently when talking with a very highly skilled technical person. I have actually seen this person present and he has vast amounts of data at his ready command. He is steady, reliable and a bit dull. Normally being a bit dull mightn’t be a problem, except in his profession the competition for advice is fierce. Gathering potential clients together and giving them a snapshot into how brainy you are is a great prospecting tool in his profession. You would think that intelligent people would be able to work out that the delivery of all that brainpower was a competitive edge. An edge that needs to be really finely honed and maintained.

In the course of our conversation I was suggesting that he could do some presentation training and this would help him stand tall amongst the weeds. There was a need but only a low recognition of the advantage that this would give him relative to others, who also claim they have big brains as well. This is a common blindspot for technical professionals. They confuse having the knowledge and big brains with being automatically awarded the business by clients.

Today, across all industries, buyers are much better educated and informed. They have access to global information, at a speed unimagined in decades part. “We will gather our big brains together and they will come” did work for the longest time but not anymore. All professionals have to be highly knowledgeable and persuasive. The persuasive part requirement hasn’t been universally grasped by the technical experts as yet.

Our reluctant hero asked me what the presentation training would cost and then proceeded to tell me it was too expensive. This was shocking to me. His profession has no hesitation in charging vast sums to clients because they see the cost through the prism of the value they provide. The actual amount of money was a peanut, in fact, yet he was reluctant to invest in himself to become a dominant player. I am sure if there had been a global conference on his key subject matter, he would have jetted off without hesitation and spent a considerably larger sum to attend the event.

I was shocked not because of the money involved, but because of his inability to grab the chance to become well recognized as THE expert in his field. Participants leave his current presentations lukewarm. They are not salivating at the prospect of working with him. They are not highly motivated to sign him up as their advisor. They are still guarded and unsure. He could switch that whole thing around easily by investing in himself to extend his abilities.

Are you like this too? Are you in denial about the reality, that in this better informed world stocked with your competitors, you need all aspects of your skill set working for you? Brains, experience and the ability to communicate to potential clients that you have both are fundamental to the new order of business.

You have built it, but we won’t come because we are going to the other guy who invested in himself and became a fully rounded professional. That “expensive” peanut is costing my friend and others like him a lot of money but they haven’t worked it out yet. Don’t be like them. Invest in yourself and learn how to work every audience into a passionate belief that they need you and your services right now.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

How To Captivate Your Audience

We can speak to a group and then there is another level, where we try to captivate our audience. What makes the difference. The content could even be the same but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner. Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life. We see this with music. The same lyrics, but with a different arrangement and something magical happens. This new version becomes a smash hit. Speeches are similar. A boring rendition is given a make over and suddenly has the audience enthralled. I am sure we would all vote for the enthralling version, so how to do we do that?

The quality of the argument we are going to present is important. We definitely need to design two powerful closes, one for the end of the speech and an extra one for after the Q&A. Importantly, we start from this point when designing the talk. We work out what is the most compelling message we want to leave with our audience and we start working backwards structuring the speech from here. Once we know what we what to say, we need to be gathering evidence to back up that assertion. We have to remember that statements are easy to make, but the listener needs convincing. We now do a rough sketch of the key points and the supporting evidence.

In a thirty minute speech, there won’t be so much time, so we might get through three or four of these key points and that is it. Now we make sure that the evidence is super strong, offering really compelling proof, to build credibility for our argument.

Next we work on a blockbuster opening. This has to compete with all the things running through the minds of our audience. The things they were doing before they got to the venue, the things they have to do after this speech. The hand held device is a modern day siren call, diverting their attention away from us, as they check email and social media. We have to smash through all that obstruction and clear a path so that they will hear our message. The first words out of our mouth had better be compelling or we will lose the battle for today’s minute attention spans. We need to carefully design what that will be.

We want our visuals on screen to be clear and comprehendible within two seconds. If it is taking the viewer longer than that, then they are too dense. Let’s keep the colours to an absolute maximum of three. Photos are great with maybe just one word of text added. This intrigues our audience to hear more. We can then talk to the point we want to make. If we use graphs, we should have only one per screen wherever possible. If we are going to use video, it had better be really, really hot and the transition from slide deck to video, back to slide deck has to be seamless.

Every five minutes we need to be switching the energy levels right up, to keep our audience going with us. This is key. Classical music has its lulls and crescendos and so should we.   Naturally, we have tonal variety right throughout the talk, but we need to be hitting some key messages very hard, around that five minute interval. This needs to be combined with some powerful visuals on screen to drive home the point. This is not delivered by chance, good fortune or accident. We need to plan for this and structure the presentation so that this brings all the vocal and visual elements together at the same time, in a powerful, impressive way.

We are meticulously sprinkling stories throughout the speech to highlight the evidence we want to provide for our key points. Data by itself is fundamentally dull, but stories fleshing out the data are so much more scintillating. These should be full of stimulation for forming mental pictures in the minds of our audience. We sketch out physical locations, describe colours, talk about the season, mix in people they may know, explain the why of what is in the story. In this way we want our listeners to see the scene in their own mind as we explain the point of the story. It is a bit like reading a novel, after having seen the movie. As you read it, you can mentally imagine the scenes you saw previously on screen. This is the effect we are going for.

Our final close after the Q&A has to go out with a bang and not a whimper. We want a strong call to action. The final vocal delivery must finish on a rising upswing. Don’t let that very last sentence peter out at the end. Remember, we want to muster the audience to our cause. We want them to leave dyed in the wool supporters. We want them getting a tattoo with our name on it. Okay, I was getting a bit carried away there. That is probably too much, but you get the idea.

We need great structure, evidence, visuals, stories, pacing, energy, passion and belief in our presentation. The delivery is going to rock because we make it rock through rehearsal after rehearsal, until we have refined the whole thing into a symphonic triumph. That is how we need to be thinking to captivate our audience when we start constructing the talk. Begin with captivation in mind.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

The Danger Of Longevity

Sometimes you see a confident presenter really bomb. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, the contrast is vast. If they are totally hopeless and they bomb, well that is understandable. But a competent presenter bombing shouldn’t occur. It did and I was wondering why that happened? Where did our speaker go wrong?

Comedians have this same problem – no one laughs at their jokes and there is not much camouflage for them to hide behind, when all they have is a microphone stand on a stage. Being in the limelight, at the podium, on stage, up on the dais is a pressure location. When you are revealed to everyone as a flop all your desperate attempts to refloat the Titanic, make the whole thing seem even more preposterous and pathetic.

In this case, there wasn’t even a good recognition that things were rapidly going south. It was only at the end, when it was too late to do anything about it, that the speaker realised he had bombed completely. The tepid applause reaction was a give away. The lack of questions a more immediate one. The whole apparatus of the talk collapsed in on itself, under the weight of its own ineptitude.

The issues were a misreading of the audience and an arrogance. The audience had been lured to the venue with bold promises of goodness and light. The content wasn’t good enough to back up the advertising and the audience spotted the gap straight away. They were there for answers. There weren’t any and they knew it.

The arrogance was an assumption about the speaker’s credibility being sufficient to justify the content of the presentation. When we emphasise the years in business, we are aiming for increased credibility, linked back to our stupendous track record. We have stood the test of time etc. Our speaker had not properly prepared the presentation. He gave it a “once over lightly” treatment, because of his supreme confidence in his ability to deliver the talk. He was a good speaker and a competent presenter. He thought his track record stood for itself. The only problem was the content of the talk was rubbish.

We tread a fine line with the longevity thing. Track record, sustained over many, many years is a credible thing for the audience. The only concerns are that the whole affair may be perceived as dated. We are always being fed the new and greatest, latest best thing. Business fad books come and come and come. The old ones are taken out the back and quietly disappeared. When we talk about the good old days we like it because we were there, but the audience only cares about what is the relevance for them. We have to be skilled to make it fresh, new and connected to their current business reality.

Our speaker failed in that regard. I said arrogance and this is the bit that hurts. Our pride in our track record can make us blind to the fact that people don’t really care all that much. We like strolling down memory lane, but so what. We arrogantly assume that what we did was important. Wrong. Where is the link to the audience’s current problem right now? We have to keep building that connection. The successes of the past help us to prepare for the future. The failures of the past, help us to prepare for the future.

This is the skillset needed in a speech presentation. Getting the audience need properly understood, suspending what we like to talk about and instead focusing on what the audience is keen to know about is our task. If we fail to get that balance right, we can come across as dated. This is what happened to our speaker. He delivered a brilliant rendition of his past glories and achievements, without effectively connecting to the audience’s concerns of today.

I am getting older too, so I took copious notes from this speech on what not to do, if I am ever tempted to talk at length about my good old days. I think we all should avoid that temptation too.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Job Well Done

When you see someone do a very good presentation, your faith in humanity is restored. There are so many poor examples of people killing their personal and professional brands with poor public speaking skills, it is refreshing to see talks done well. It is not that hard really, if you know what you are doing and if you rehearse and practice. This is where the majority of lousy speakers trip up. They don’t rehearse or practice, they just unload on the poor unsuspecting audience. Here is a hint. Never practice on your audience!

The global CEO of a major pharma company jetted into town recently and spoke at a chamber of commerce event. The presentation was well structured and flowed in a way that was easy to follow. The slides were professional and clear. He spoke fluently, wasn’t reading from any script and instead was talking about the key points up on screen. When we got to Q&A, he repeated the question, so that everyone could hear it and then answered it. He did that while addressing the entire audience, rather than just speaking to the inquirer. When he did not have the information referred to in a question, he admitted it straight up, without trying to fudge it. This builds trust and credibility.

I doubt he did any rehearsal for that audience, because it was a stump speech he has given so many times he was entirely comfortable with the content. Could he have done better? Yes, he could have added more stories into the presentation. A few vignettes from the exciting world of white lab coats, where they were developing new medicines to save humanity, would have been good. He could have delivered it with a bit more passion. It was professional, but it came across as a stump speech. He was supremely comfortable delivering it and that is one issue we have to be alert to. When we are too comfortable, we can sometimes put ourselves on cruise control. We should keep upping the ante each occasion to try and see how much further we can push ourselves.

Another function was an industry awards event and the main VIP guest made some remarks before announcing the winners. Humour is very, very hard to get right. When you see it done well, you are impressed. You need to have material that is funny for a start. Then you have to be able to deliver it so that people laugh. This sounds easy, but as professional comedians know, the timing of the delivery is key. So are the pauses and the weighting of certain key words. It has to be delivered fluently, so no ums and ahs, no hesitations, no mangling of words. Getting the facial expressions to match what is being said is also tricky.

Our humorous speaker was delivering some lines that he had used a number of times before, so he knew his material worked. It is always good when big shots are self depreciating. We can more easily identify with them when they don’t come across as taking themselves too seriously. “I am good and I know it”, doesn't work so well.

Where do we acquire this humorous material? We steal it. Our speaker had probably heard those jokes somewhere else before and just topped and tailed them for this event. He made them sound personal, as if they had really happened to him. This is important in order to build a connection with the punters in the audience. So, when you attend an event and you hear someone make a good joke or tell a humorous story, don’t just laugh. Write it down and start using it yourself. The secret though is to practice that humourous telling on small audiences, to test you have it just right. The cadence is important and that takes practice. I would guess our speaker had told those jokes many times before. It is fresh for us, but for him it was well within his range of capability. This is what comedians do. They introduce new material in small venues, filter out what doesn’t work and then they bring it to the big stage. We should do the same.

Another place where we can find humour is in what we say that makes an audience laugh. When I returned to Japan in 1992, I was called upon to do a lot of public speaking in Japanese. I began with constructing what I thought was humour. This was a pretty bold step because I had no track record in being funny in English, let alone in Japanese. These jokes of my own creation all completely bombed. However, I would say something not meaning to be funny and the Japanese audience would laugh. I took note of that reaction and realised that was a joke. I would incorporate that into my other talks. Over a long period of time and a lot of speeches, I built up a stock of these humorous sprinklings of pixy dust that worked.

It was refreshing to see two competent speakers in action recently and it is certainly a skill that all of us can improve in. There are some simple basics of speaking we need to concentrate on - prepare, rehearse, learn – repeat!

Pink Elephant Your Way To Influence

Don’t think of a pink elephant. Did you think of one when you read that sentence? It shows how easily we can we swayed by images. If I had said don’t think of the letters p-i-n-k-e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, you would have been fabulously successful. What is the difference – both refer to the same prohibition? We are very much susceptible to images, yet we rarely use this facility when we are trying to have influence with those around us.

We think that force of will, desire, status, oratory, personal power, connections or wealth is how we can have influence with others. In various circumstances, some of these will work, but most are out of reach to the ordinary punter. What else can we do? Well we can “pink elephant” our way to greatness. We can incorporate images into our conversations to persuade others to follow our recommendations.

Getting others to follow our ideas is how we have influence and we have all heard that storytelling is a powerful vehicle for explaining recommendations to others. Like with joke telling though, most of us are pretty average at these skill sets. It sounds easy enough – just tell the joke and people laugh, tell the story and people will get in line behind you. Well we know that few are any good at telling jokes or stories. That is mainly down to a total lack of planning.

Professional comedians spend an enormous amount of time working on their content and then perfecting the timing and mastery of the delivery. If you ever watch Japanese rakugo comedians for example, you can really understand the work that goes into this line of enterprise. They sit on a cushion, usually hold a fan in their hand and that is it. Everything else is down to what they say and how they say it. They create multiple characters, locations, situations and dialogue out of thin air.

On our own part, we normally spend zero time working on our ability to have influence. We don’t craft our story content, nor do we practice the delivery over and over to have the best effect. We just blurt out of our mouth whatever it is we want and then get discouraged when no one could care less about what we want.

There is a simple formula that is a powerful engine for gaining influence. It works on the basis that a good idea is a good idea. The reason for that is because the rationale behind the idea is compelling. If your idea doesn’t engage the emotions and logic of the listener, they are unlikely to be convinced of it’s value. It is a subtle appraoach. Ramming our ideas down the throats of others is the usual way people approach conversion to their way of thinking. This widespread habit has spawned a public of doubters, skeptics, nay-sayers, trolls and haters. We have to recognize that this is our potential audience from the start.

So don’t tell people what you want up front. “I think we should hire more sales people right now, to expand the revenues”, you say fervently. The immediate reaction to this bold expense plan is to inspire everyone in earshot to get to work on coming up with the thousand good reasons that is nonsense and won’t work. Instead we need to build up some images in our story that lay things out in such a way that the audience leaps ahead of the story. We want them to arrive at their own conclusion, that we should hire more people to raise the revenue. By the time we get to our recommendation at the end of the story they are already there and wondering what took us so long to get to the obvious answer. This is called winning without battle, in this case a battle of wits and intellect.

The storytelling should have scenes the listener can see in their mind’s eye. We might say:

“Last Friday, I was up on the 44th floor of the headquarters in Akasaka having a coffee with Tanaka san from the CFO’s office, talking about how to achieve the President’s recently announced five year revenue targets.

Interestingly, she said that they had just finished a computer simulation analysis of the results from the last five years. They found that sales per salesperson were averaging around 40 million yen per year.

I was surprised to hear that even first year newbies like young Suzuki san in the sales team, more than covered their costs in the first year.

I always presumed those new hires were a cost to the company.

Tanaka san was busy getting ready for another presentation a little later that afternoon, so she walked me over to the gorgeous new dark wood paneled board room on the 47th floor.

She booted up her laptop and showed me this line graph on the big 65 inch monitor there, that each year the average increase in salesperson revenue was 50%. I didn’t know that by year three, the salespeople were really starting to pull in sizeable revenue numbers.

It was interesting to me that new hires cover their costs and that the real results get going in year three.

If we are going to meet our five year targets, we should hire more salespeople right now.

If we do that they won’t cost us anything this year and in three years time they will be producing the big numbers we need”.

Now that story required a little over one minute to tell. This is not a huge burden on the listener’s patience. I included people, locations, images they could identify with to make it real. At the very end, I made a call for action – “hire” and then finished off with the icing on the cake with the benefit of doing that action – “produce the big numbers we need”.

Don’t “free form” when trying to have influence. Carefully plan what you will say, practice it to get it concise and digestible for your audience. If you do that you will have people follow your recommendations and ideas and that is what we all want, isn’t it.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

How to Make A Magnificent Acceptance Speech

You want to promote your business or organisation, so that you can be more successful. A genius idea pops up amongst the brain trust over a few drinks after work – why don’t we enter the Business Awards? Someone has to win don’t they, so the odds are fair. Anyway, there is no downside is there? True but there can be, if you don’t fully think this through. I don’t mean the requirement for polishing the application or assembling the data in support of the claims being made. I am talking about seizing defeat from the jaws of victory on the winner’s dais.

When you win, you are invited up on to stage. The cameras are rolling, the lights are flooding the arena and the music is pumping. You are pumping too baby. It quickly occurs to you that hammering the booze on the table to instill some bonhomie amongst the troops was a good idea at the time, but now you need to pull yourself together. Back slapping, hand shakes, high fives propel you to the stage, as you make your way through the labyrinth of round tables.

Before you know it, you and the team have assembled on stage to receive the ovation from the crowd. In a moment, the MC announces you are about to be handed the cool looking trophy from the key VIP guest of the evening. The crowd goes quiet as you draw up to the stand microphone of the stage grasping the prize in your hand. A thousand eyes are fixed on you, awaiting your acceptance speech. You fluff it.

A ragged series of ums and ahs are punctuated by disoriented rambling highlighting no cohesion of thoughts, concepts or ideas. You are now sweating bullets. Multiple beads of perspiration start to run down your face, your pulse is surging, you realize this is a disaster and mentally start looking for the exit. The tuxedoed dandies have had their Colosseum bread and circuses moment. Having seen the lions dispose of their victims, they return to their table chatter. You are not forgotten though. You are now publically outed as an incompetent, who can’t string three words together. Your reputation is shredded and the trophy somehow feels less magnificent in your grasp.

You recall have seen this before haven’t you. Underprepared speakers making a complete hash of it. Don’t try and wing it. Think ahead and be properly tooled up. Under no circumstances mention you are nervous, even if you worry you are about to faint. Fall flat on your face out cold, but don’t apologise for your lack of preparation for this speech or your totally bereft skill set in giving speeches. Don’t make jokes to release the tension of the moment, you are not funny.

Begin where you need to. Thank the chief VIP, the Chamber or Business Association and the judges for awarding you this magnificent trophy and great honour. Congratulate your vanquished opponents with great generosity extolling their virtues and achievements. Next take this opportunity to promote your company or organisation. That is why you applied in the first place isn’t it? Give them your thoroughly rehearsed and well constructed elevator pitch on why what you do is vital to mankind and the future of the universe. This needs to be tight, taut, with no fluff.

When you thank the people who have made this happen in the team, make a short personal remark about each. Taro who stayed late so many nights, catching the last train home to get the project completed on time. Megumi for her total dedication to the care of the clients. Daisuke for his rousing leadership of the sales team when things looked grim. Mari and her team of angels in the back office who somehow managed to hold the whole thing together through thick and thin.  

Finally, thank your family and friends who have supported you. If you become emotional at this point, don’t worry, whip out your hanky wipe your eyes and just keep going. We will love you for it.

Wrap it all up with a rousing call to action for the crowd. Encourage them to play a bigger game and maximise their potential here in this wonderful, exciting special country of Japan. Thank the organisers again, wave the trophy and move away from the microphone stand, to signal you have finished. Now quietly call the team together to join you and the VIP, as you all pose for the photographers with the trophy. Then get off the stage, you are done!

Think through the award component of the evening, prepare thoroughly what you want to say, rehearse it many times, time it to make sure it isn’t too long and stay off the booze until you actually win. Good luck!

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Do Your Homework

I was at a speech recently, given by a very prominent person, an extremely experienced speaker, to a very prestigious audience. It should have been a triumph, but it was a fizzer. There were two particular problems with the speech. One was it was set for 25 minutes but the speaker finished in 8 minutes. The second problem was that the most interesting part of the speech was not readily accessible for the audience. Both issues stemmed from a lack of homework before giving the speech. Given the experience of the speaker, I found this rather surprising, but it highlights that no matter how comfortable you are or how experienced you are, always do your homework before giving the talk.

Japan is a very formal country. If a speech is scheduled for 25 minutes, it has to last that long or otherwise it upsets the timetable. It creates a gap and organisers here in Japan are not renown for their flexibility and capacity to ad lib. It also sends a subtle negative message to the audience, that they are not worth preparing a 25 minute speech for. It comes off as being disrespectful and flippant.

I was sitting in audience the listening to the proceedings audience and was surprised to hear the speaker wrapping things up. Looking at my watch, I realised we were barely out of the blocks. Another audience member caught my eye, as we both realised this was coming to an abrupt and rather shocking end. He gave me a quizzical look that said “is this speaker serious?”. It certainly didn’t leave the right impression with the audience. They felt cheated and that they had not being respected enough, given how self important they are. This was the right crowd to win over too, so a real opportunity gone begging.

I have often been asked to speak to Japanese groups from 4.00-6.00pm. It is late in the day, when people are already tired from the morning and early afternoon sessions. The length of a two hour speech is taxing for an audience to stay connected with the subject and with the speaker. I wondered why they would want to put the audience through that ordeal? I asked, “Can’t we just make it an hour, tops?”. I was told, “Oh no, Dr. Story, it has to be two hours”. Listening to a foreigner speaking Japanese for such a long period is also tiring because of the extra concentration needed.

After doing a number of these long speeches, I eventually realised that I was the filler, between the end of their own programme and the party. The food and drinks were ready for a 6.00pm start and I needed to keep tap dancing until that time. If I had quit after an hour, the organisers would lose face, because people would be lost with what to do for that single unscheduled hour. If they were Aussies, they would just start the party earlier!

So before you speak, carefully check on how long they want you to occupy this part of the programme. The organisers usually have very little interest in the quality end of the experience. They just need the slot filled and you need to understand that is your role sunshine. Knowing this will help you in your preparation. You can structure the presentation to make it interesting over a two hour period. One way to do that is by employing visuals. I don’t mean detailed, heavy duty graphs and tables of statistics, like a lot of Japanese presenters seem to love. I mean photos with no words on them, which you then proceed to talk about.

Now our big name speaker in my example, actually had some really intriguing photos with him, but he hadn’t thought to put them on slides and show them to everyone. He just waved them in the air effortlessly and ineffectively.

It is not hard to ask the organisers if there is an opportunity to use a screen and a projector. Most venues in Japan have these types of equipment. Why that relatively simple task wasn’t checked on before the speech was a complete mystery to me. He could have really wowed his audience because the content of the photos was really dynamite. Waving the actual photos around from the podium isn’t quite as exciting, as projecting them up on a huge screen and then telling everyone the back story.

The point here is do your homework in Japan before you speak. Check on the logistics, the reasoning behind the schedule, the equipment availability at that venue for what you need. Who will be in my audience, what are they interested in, what is their knowledge of the subject, how can I impress them, will there be consecutive or simultaneous translation going on if you are doing it in English? No one prepares to fail, but we do fail to prepare, don’t we.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Nerves Are Not Needed

Speaking in front of others makes many people tongue tied and nervous. They struggle to get through a simple presentation, internally, in front of their colleagues. A public audience is something they would flee from, screaming and waving their hands in the air. Why is that? We all learn how to talk. The presentation is just a talk, so what is the big deal? Yet, it is a barrier to many people who have to navigate this impediment to move up through their careers. If you are in front of the big bosses and you can’t make a competent presentation, kiss your career aspirations goodbye baby. There is very little chance they are going to put you in charge of others. So, if you like what you are doing today, that will be just fine, because you will stay where you are right now for a long, long time.

If it is just talking, why do we have such tremor at the prospect. Most of us can talk to our friends, family and colleagues without any problem. In a presentation though the stakes are raised. We are on show, we are singled out for attention, scrutiny and investigation. We become very internally focused. We are oblivious to our audience because all of our attention is on ourselves. All of the pressure is on us too and it is coming from within ourselves. Our self-talk is bad. Our self-regard goes negative. We become plagued with self-doubt, memories of failures, shortcomings, inadequacies and derision.

Our playbook is drawing on our failures from the past, not from our potential or even small successes we have had. We go to scale immediately on the negative and obliterate the good bits from our memory. We recall that school play when we forgot our lines and everyone laughed at us. The time at University when our class presentation of our research paper was scoffed at and belittled by some of our classmates. That time in the results meeting, when the big boss berated us for our presentation skill deficit.

We are operating from a sense of scarcity of ability, rather than an abundance of opportunity. We have to switch these ideas around. “Fine buddy boy, but if I could do that, I would have done it already”. That is too true and the reason you haven’t done anything better to date is because you don’t have any worthwhile information on what you can an should be doing. When we don’t know how to do something we tend to shy away from it. We do this to protect our public image and our ego.

So we have placed ourselves in an internal contradiction where our fear drives our behaviour to never end the fear. We need to recognise that cycle and to determine to break it. The brilliant thing today is that we are awash with so much information on how to give presentations. Shelves groan under the weight of worthy tomes on the subject. YouTube is bursting to seams with instructional videoes. Podcasts aplenty provide hints and tips. TED talks are readily available to see what others are doing and at a high level. Once upon a time, you had to be in the room or specially connected to see the best in action, but today you are a few clicks away from free access.

Start by studying. Learn the basics by attending entry level presentation courses. Switch your thinking about how to prepare for talks, by focusing on your rehearsal and not just your materials preparation. Leave you ego at the door and volunteer at every opportunity to present. Repetition is needed and after doing just five presentations, you will feel a lot more comfortable than you did for the first. After twenty, you will be relaxed. After fifty, you will be enjoying it.

When you know how to properly structure your talk, you can relax and just help us navigate through it. You will have the slides to support you, which are visual markers as to what comes next. Don’t try to memorise the content or you will blow yourself up.

I saw this with a speaker visiting from the USA. She had a grand resume and was going quite well, but she made the fatal error of trying to remember what she wanted to say for each slide, rather than just talking us through what was the point of the slide. She lost control of her breathing because of her mounting, self imposed pressure and actually had to stop the presentation. She eventually completed the task, but she was a mess at the end.

Fear of public speaking is often a product of ignorance of what to do, fuelled by wishful thinking that you don’t need to do anything special, like studying the subject. When you get good information and apply it, then the fear fades and with practice comes skill. I avoided speaking for decades because of fear. I finished my first public speech in 1983 in 8 minutes. Unfortunately it was supposed to go for 25 minutes! Today, I have delivered over 500 public speeches and now teach people how to give presentations. The difference came about because I decided to study about how to do it, volunteered to give talks at every chance, got proper training from experts and put myself out there and had a go.

The nerves piece disappeared once I slipped my attention from myself, to my audience.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Let’s Be Clear

Most talks and presentations we hear, we cannot recall. Why is that? We were there presumably because we had an interest. The presenter no doubt made an effort to share something of value with us. They probably spent hours on their presentation slides and were perhaps somewhat anxious about giving the presentation. So a lot of nervous energy was expended in the exercise, but with a zero result. If we can’t remember the content or the speaker, then it is hard to say it was a success, wouldn’t you say?

Part of the problem is the way people present their information in the first place. The slides are too dense and confusing. The delivery is done in a lethargic manner, devoid of passion, with zero body language backing up the key points. Sitting there listening, we catch that disease from the speaker very swiftly and suddenly we don’t have any passion for the exercise either. We hear a monotone voice droning on and on, like the humming white noise from your electrical appliances. The speaker may also be speaking too fast because they are nervous or may just be a serial mumbler, who is hard to catch.

The design of the talk may not flow well, so it is hard to make the mental move from understanding one point to understanding the next. The speaker may decide to improvise and sweep us all off on to a tangent, that has little to do with the main menu. We rarely make it back, because we have now lost interest in what they are saying and we are playing with our phone instead.

A recent presentation had elements of this. The speaker was quite a smart person, having built their business up from zero and is now winning large contracts from big players in Japan. The slides outlining the details of how the software worked were dismal. It was complex and disconnected. It was assaulted by numerous tangents of tangents, totally wrapped up in diversions. The delivery was lifeless and humdrum. There were no crescendos, no light and dark elements – no contrasts. It consisted mainly of a composite of calms and no storms and so didn’t spark as much interest as it should have.

If we want to elevate our good name above the rabble, we had better do a splendid job of being clear when presenting. Our slides should be in the ratio of one slide to one idea. The less on the screen the better. Let’s lead the charge for minimalism on screens. Let’s bring out our inner zen of nothingness. The screen and the slides are competitors with our face. We want people looking at us and glancing at the screen, not the other way around.

We want to use numbers. There are seven elements or five elements or three element of our main thesis, for example, and so we attach numbers to each. This is a simple, tried and true guidepost system to navigate the audience through the content. Don’t make the punters work hard to follow where we are going with this talk.

We should speak with passion, belief, commitment and enthusiasm about our subject. If you can’t do that, then please remain in the audience and don’t get up on a podium and try to talk to crowds. All you are doing is killing your personal brand and bringing no value to humanity. We want your energy, but we want it harnessed – it has to be controlled. We want some words being hit hard and some introduced gently – both are powerful mechanisms for emphasis. We want the energy, but we don’t want chaos, where all the words are jumbled together.

I was coaching an Indian businessman here on public speaking and in his initial speech, he spoke at breakneck speed for three minutes, with nary a pause nor a break and with a very heavy subcontinent accent. In fact, it was one massively long sentence, strung together without compunction or mercy and fully incomprehensible and forgettable. Introducing some concepts like having a clearer structure, slowing down, adding in pauses and highlighting some words over others for effect, had a miraculous impact on his final version. It was night and day.

Don’t mumble. Record yourself in rehearsal and be prepared for a shock. Yes that tinny, reedy, nasal, mumbling voice is really you. The lack of a rehearsal is the big error to catching problems, before you destroy your public reputation. Rehearse. Listen to how you sound before anyone else has to. Rehearse.

Speak to your key points and don’t read us the manuscript please. We all have email by the way, so you can send it to us, rather than read it to us. When you run through it numerous times before you are unleashed on your audience, you discover the right cadence of how to express the ideas best,

One run through though is a joke. You need to be doing this preparation multiple times, so that all the vocal bugs and defects are completely eliminated before the curtain goes up. By the way, regardless of how your voice sounds to you, don’t worry about it. All those born with television announcer voices are on television or radio and the rest of us are out in the real world, shaking it up, as best we can. If what you say is being delivered in a way that we can easily understand and if the content is interesting and valuable, then we will forgive your total lack of a superstar bass DJ voice.

Being clear when speaking is not such a big deal. People worry about it, but don’t do any work on it before having to speak. They then wonder why the whole thing fell in a heap. A few simple measures will make it perfectly clear to the audience. They will hear you and then the quality of the content will either resonate with them or not. Your chance of being remembered will go right up, if you just do a few things before you unleash yourself on your audience.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

How To Rehearse Your Presentation

Every performance is better when practiced beforehand and presenting is no different. We don’t do it for a multitude of “good” reasons, none of which abrogate the need to make the time and put in the effort. We have the time, we just need to allocate it. We are putting ourselves out there when we present, so don’t miss it, there is a lot on the line. We need to ensure we are a triumph rather than a joke. The way to do that is to practice beforehand. How do we do that, what are some best practices to help us?

We cannot start with the slides, which is what most people do when putting their presentation together. Instead, we need to design the whole presentation first. We need to start with the close. Yes, we need to plan how will we finish the talk. What is the one key message we want to get across to our listeners.

Getting the whole thing down to one key point is no easy task, but the mental effort to do so will pay big rewards when it comes to ensuring clarity and getting the talk’s structure correct. When we distill that one point, it becomes the beacon on the hill around which to arrange the preparation of the data and the flow of the talk.

We now design the sections of the talk. What are the key points we will make and what is the evidence we will marshal to sustain the argument in the time allotted to us. These should flow together nicely, like in a good novel. Each part leads seamlessly into the next.

We are also going to be introducing personal stories of our successes and failures and those from highly regarded experts, to flesh out the points we want to make. Stories are easy to understand and remember, so don’t make our audience work hard, give them the information in story form for maximum effect. So each section has some key point, supporting data, told in a story format.

Finally, we design the opening – how can we break through all the competition for the mind space of our audience. How can we grab their complete attention? How to get them away from those addictive mobile devices, hidden under the table? We need to design how we will us our voice at the start in particular. How much volume will we need to gain control of the room?

We should avoid reading the presentation. We are going to be aiming at talking to points on the slides or in bullets format in our text or recalled from memory. This is free form folks, no harness and no safety net, so it needs practice. What may sound great as text, can sound a bit stilted when spoken out loud. This is important, we must “voice” the presentation. We can’t just mentally run it through our mind, as a personal exercise.

Using a mirror, video camera or a coach are good ideas, to get feedback on how we are coming cross both visually and verbally. The coach may be a colleague, family member or a professional. If a colleague or a family member only ask for two pieces of feedback – “what am I doing that is good?” and “what can I do to make it better?”. Untrained coaches are quick to tell you everything that is wrong – in great mind numbing detail. They will kill your confidence early, so don’t allow that to happen, give them some guidance.

Every five minutes we need a change of tempo to keep our audience interested. We need to switch our energy or speed up or down. We need to hit or soften key words. These crescendos and lulls are not left to random chance, this is all preplanned for maximum effect. We need to hear it out aloud to understand how it will sound to our audience.

We can’t be too strong all the time or we will wear down our audience and lose them. Alternatively, if we are too soft, they are lured away by the internet and are soon gone from us.

There is no one there, but we must involve eye contact with all in our imaginary audience. We practice looking to the left, center or right, also close and far. We also need to practice the congruency of our gestures with our words. Match a powerful gesture with a point you want to drive home, to give it strength.

Expect to do a number of rehearsals, not just one. We need to a full rehearsal from start to finish, at least three times. Now if it is a thirty minute talk, the time soon adds up, so we have to plan for that. Separately, we also need to work particularly hard on just the opening and close. The first impression and last impression decide our impact.

Don’t forget to practice the Q&A. Remember, the audience can ask us anything, no matter how rude, off topic, irrelevant or impertinent, so we have to be ready to go. We can go from hero to zero quick smart, if we don’t practice answering difficult questions before we go live.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Pizazz Baby, We Need More Pizazz When Presenting

Pizazz is one of those unusual words, that sounds kind of cool, but is a bit vague. In presenting terms, we are really looking at being more interesting and engaging and doing that in a sparky, non-anticipatory way. Droning on when presenting is a pretty strong norm for many people. They talk at us, not with us. They are lifeless and low energy. This may be fine for having a cup of tea with your friends, but if you want to present, then you have to switch it up.

A workman like, by the numbers, presentation is fundamentally boring. A recent presenter did a painting by numbers job with his effort. The talk had completed the exercise in the allotted time and he had spoken about a number of key points. The delivery was wooden though, the voice tone was flat, the whole thing was a lifeless shambles really. The snapper though is that the speaker represents his organization to the world at large and he did a poor job when up on the podium.

When you are in a high profile role, like being the CEO, then you simply have to perform. Never forget we judge your whole organisation on you. If you are mediocre, we assume everyone is the same. We don’t say, well that guy or gal was the exception.   The rest of the crew are all dynamite. Nope, we say they are all duds down there.

So engaging your audience is a requirement. This is easy to say, but not so easy to do. Energy is a key component of this process. Somehow we all know that enthusiasm is contagious, but miraculously manage to forget this, when we start speaking in front of groups. The low energy insult became a trademark of President Trump when disparaging his political opponent Jeb Bush.

It is cutting, because it implies you don’t have what it takes to be a leader. Whether you agree with Trump or not, the point is valid. If the leader is low energy, we somehow doubt they can do the job properly. We don’t get to meet that many CEOs or politicians in person, so we draw our conclusions from seeing them on television, in videos or at public presentations. Remember we are all on show when presenting.

The podium is one area of difficulty, but with the prevalence of YouTube videos and business social media, presenters are starting to really branch out. This was brought back to me not so long ago, when I saw a video on LinkedIn of someone I know and the delivery was fundamentally funereal. The whole atmosphere was dark, bleak, lifeless. This guy is a smart guy and if we read the transcript we would think what he had to say was valuable. The voice however was a monotone, the energy was totally insignificant and the exercise was absolutely dreary, not motivational.

Sadly, the message while actually pretty good, was just destroyed, totally killed by the poor delivery. Now if you are going to put yourself out there, especially in the crowded alleyways of the YouTube video world and broadcast through social media, then you have to step it up. There are so many windows to the world now and everyone can see us. Once upon a time, you could be fairly hopeless and only a few poor souls would know. Not anymore. This is where the pizazz idea comes in.

If you want your message to cut through the white noise of a squillion other presenters, then you need to have an attitude that says, “I want to stand out and be heard”. Casey Neistat did that with video blogging. There were plenty of other well established video bloggers out there, but he brought a movie style approach to his vlogging. He would set the camera up, so that it recorded him entering the room, for example. A simple but very effective idea. All the other vloggers were one dimensional – they were pointing the camera at themselves, as they held it at arms length. He made a small change that set him apart. He brought some movie making style pizazz to the exercise and the rest of us are happy he did that. Now it is much more interesting for us the viewer.

Gary Vaynerchuk did that with his Daily Vee vlog. He combined reality television style presentation, with motivation and information. Nobody had done that before. He created some pizazz and is getting close to a million subscribers for his show. He gets a lot of work speaking, sells his books and gets business for his digital agency off the back of his notoriety. All he did was make a small innovation in a crowded space, so he could stand out and he has been incredibly successful doing that.

This then has to be the mantra. Set yourself apart when presenting. If you want to move into video, then you really need to compete. This is not just you presenting while being recorded. Yes, you can do that, but if you are going to blast yourself around the world via video on social media, then add pizazz to the mix and make it interesting. Be that little bit unexpected, have something that differentiates you from the pack.

You don’t have to be handsome, beautiful, deep bass DJ voiced or tall. You just have to be interesting, engaging and relevant. Use voice modulation, tell stories, speak with, not at your audience and bring your full energy to the task.

Okay, let’s all go back to the drawing board. Let’s stop doing what we have always done and think about how we could add some pizazz to our presentations and start experimenting, to find what works best for each of us.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Own The Space And Work The Room

Getting up in front of people is confronting for a lot of speakers. Beady eyes are boring into you, a sea of serious faces is scary, the lights are painfully bright and the pressure feels intense. You start to doubt your preparation was sufficient for the occasion. You throw up the laptop lid and then try to mount the podium such that it provides a safety barrier between you and the great unwashed. You studiously avoid confronting eye contact, by staring down at your laptop screen or your notes. Or to leaven things up, you read the screen to the audience, presenting a nice view of the top of your head. If you have a partly bald pate, like some medieval monk, then that makes it all the more gripping. It doesn’t have to be so pathetic. In fact, you can “own the space and work the room”.

By properly designing your presentation in the first place, you can release yourself from the laptop. The main screen will be composed of little text and mainly images. These are images designed with the object of conveying the key points in two seconds. This means you are replacing text on a screen, with oral word pictures delivered by you. This is so much more powerful. The slide advancer technology is pretty good these days and this frees you from having to be physically chained to the laptop.

Now you can move to the audience. Depending on the size of the occasion, the approach will be different. Let’s assume a 30 person plus venue. You divide your audience space into six sectors, like a baseball diamond. Left, Middle, Right Field. You then cut it in half, so you have an Inner Field and an Outer Field. If the audience is smaller than 30 people, then you probably have just left, right, front and back to work with.

The point is to “work the room” by engaging with your entire audience. Make around six to eight seconds of eye contact with each individual, in all of those sectors. Do it randomly, unpredictably, to maintain interest. If you do it a predetermined order, the audience will leave you, because they are able to anticipate where your attention is focused. Once they know, they switch off and are easy prey to distractions, like their phone and the internet.

In a larger audience, one individual seated toward the back receives your eye contact but the twenty people sitting around them, all think you are making direct eye contact with them. In this way, you can continuously engage the entire group.

Don’t pace across the stage while talking. You see nervous speakers doing this and it becomes highly annoying, as they keep traipsing across the stage from left to right, left to right, left to right. Don’t do that. Here is Dr. Story’s Iron Rule: “Don’t talk and walk. Move in silence, land on a spot and then speak”.

Certainly move to the extremes of right and left of the stage. Make sure you engage with those seated on the side of the venue. From the center, walk across to the left and use your eye contact to connect with these audience members. Move back to the center and do the same with the center group, then repeat the process for those on the right. Then back to the center. I think you get the idea.

The key is pause speaking, move to a new position and then start speaking from there. Having a pause is a good thing in a speech. This gives you time to take up your new position and it allows the audience to digest what you just got through telling them.

There are also six speaking positions we should be using:

One, is the middle part of the stage, separated equally from the screen and the stage apron.

Two, in this center location, our chin should be held up at a ninety degree angle to the floor. This is the neutral position of having no particular emphasis attached to that location.

Three, if we want to make a macro point then back away from the audience, toward the rear of the stage, where you can be seen most widely.

Four, in this back of the stage location, hold your chin up at a slightly higher angle than ninety degrees.

Five, if you want to make a point of emphasis, then move to the front of the stage apron, as close as you can get to the audience.

Six, in this front of stage location, drop the angle of your chin down slightly to be less than ninety degrees.

By the way, be careful about going to the edge of the stage so you don’t fall off. Don’t laugh. I have almost done this a couple of times in my enthusiasm to get close to my audience, while trying to drive home a particular point. Falling off the stage will make you a memorable speaker, but it is not advisable.

If the stage area is smaller and the screen occupies a good portion of the real estate, then don’t walk in front of the screen, if there is a projector involved. In very short order, you become the screen and that is totally distracting for an audience. Now you would think this was such an obvious point. However, we have all seen speakers do it. They are not aware of the projector in front of them and they have lost the attention of their audience.

In this case, stand on the audience left side of the projector. We read from left to right, so we want people to look at our face first and then look at the screen.   I would say that 80% of the time the room is set up for the speaker to stand on the opposite, the audience right side, so it is best to let the organizers know in advance where you want to stand.

We can still use our middle, back and front distances on the audience left side of the stage but we can’t use the audience right. That is unless you hit the “B” key on the laptop and black out the screen. In this case, you won’t be in the way of the light beam from the projector and you can move around freely. By the way, to bring the screen back up again, just press “W”.

Take control of your speaking environment. Do not rely on clueless people to set it up for you. Get it properly organized beforehand. The speaking spot is a physical environment. We don’t want to just turn up there like a spectator, we want to dominate it. Make sure you “own the space and work the room”. If you do, your audience will buy your message and they will remember you as a powerful and confident presenter – someone they would like to hear from again in the future. Remember, this is how you build your personal brand.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.