The Presentations Japan Series

When I read this quote from Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon from 1971 that " a wealth of information would create a poverty of attention" I thought about its ramifications for presenters.  Today, we are firmly swimming against a King tide of information overload, so Simon's dystopian prophecy has come to fruition.  This is the Age of Distraction for audiences.  They are gold medal winning poor listen...

The largest meeting venue in the office complex was big enough to handle hundreds of people and it was packed. This presentation involved all the senior heads of the Department going through their strategies for the coming year. One after another, we took to the stage and spoke about our areas of responsibility. I was one of the five who spoke. My turn came after a particular colleague who was a n...

I listen to some podcasts on writing, trying to better educate myself on the craft.  I was hopeless at English at school, so the rest of my life has been a remedial fix in that department. Fundamentally, these podcast authors are aimed at fiction writers, rather than non-fiction scribblers like me.  A lot of what we do in business on our dog down days may seem like we are living a fiction, when th...

Presentations have become tediously monochrome.  The speaker speaks, the audience sit there passively taking it all in.  After the speaker's peroration, they get to offer up a few questions for about 10 to 15 minutes or so and then that is the end of it. With the pivot to online presentations, the fabric of the presentation methodology hasn't changed much.  We sit there peering at the little boxes...

Many people break the rules of presenting, usually unknowingly.  They have Johari Window style blind spots, where others know they are making mistakes, but they themselves are oblivious and just don't know.  This is extremely dangerous, because when you don't know, you keep hardening the arteries of your habit formation. It is diabolically difficult to break out of those habit patterns once formed...

Bonseki is a Japanese art creating miniature landscapes, on a black tray using white sand, pebbles and small rocks.  They are exquisite but temporary.  The bonseki can't be preserved and are an original, throw away art form. Speaking to audiences is like that, temporary.  Once we down tools and go home, that is the end of it.  Our reach can be transient like the bonseki art piece, that gets tossed...

In Part One, we looked at the ideas of primacy (the first thing we remember) and recency (the last thing we remember) and what this means for speakers. Now in Part Two we will go deeper with our entry and exit points of the chapters within the talk and how to choreograph the big crescendo for our polemic's sparkling conclusion. We naturally have to pump a lot of energy into designing the opening s...

Primacy refers to the beginning of something, as it enters our brain. This new entity has a powerful impact on our memory and our concentration.  To muscle itself into our existing brain thought stream, takes a lot of mental energy. If successful, the new direction grabs us more powerfully than continuing with the same existing thought pattern.  Recency is focused on the last thing we have heard. ...

Bruce Springsteen's song Glory Days lyric, "Boring stories of Glory days yeah, they'll pass you by" pops into my head sometimes, when I hear a speaker reminiscing about their glorious past.  I was sitting there at a chamber function when the speaker began to talk at length about his start in sales and his experiences.  It was fascinating for him no doubt, but it made him sound dated. He seemed to...

For many people it may seem we are getting into oxymoron territory here.  "Public speaking…enjoyable?  You must be kidding mate".  Many are called upon to speak and reluctantly they give their talk without talent, enthusiasm or particular motivation.  A duty, an unavoidable pain, like going back to the dentist for that root canal. As we rise in our careers, the necessity to speak in public goes ri...

Experts, pseudo experts, amateurs, believers, sceptics, supporters, enemies make up that sea of faces in front of us when we get up to speak.  We can get some basic data from the organisers about who is in the room.  What industries, companies, gender, age configurations are arrayed in those venue seats.  What we can't tell are the information assimilation biases of our audience members.  This mea...

In our High Impact Presentations (HIP) course, we do a number of presentations over two days of training.  What I love about teaching this programme is that you see the results immediately.  If we are teaching leadership or sales, it is very hard to see immediate results and those programmes are multi-week efforts.  Day One we have the first presentation which forms the marker for the programme. ...

Sometimes the organisers of the presentation event ask us if they can distribute our slides before the speech.  They are thinking that this will help the audience to follow what we are saying.  Especially in Japan, audience members are probably better at reading than hearing the content.  So having the slides at hand to refer to during the talk makes a lot of sense.  Never do this!  Ignore the sup...

Donald Trump has made this technique of "many people say…." famous for dealing with opposing views.  This is not an exercise for or against Trump. Rather, it is just looking at different ways we can head off opposition to what we are saying.  We should have a point of view when we speak and therefore we should also be prepared for opposing points of view.  Getting to the Q&A to deal with pushback...

Whether we asking to give a talk or asked to present, we need an audience.  The onus is on the meeting hosts to take care of the logistics of the venue and the associated tech needed to carry out the presentation.  We cannot leave everything to them though, because our personal brand is tied up with the success of the event.  Now "success" can be defined in many ways, but having a venue space for...

A request came to me recently asking me to speak to an audience.  So my first question was, "what would you like me to speak about?".   The answer was fairly broad.  Actually, that is good and bad.  Good, because there is plenty of scope to tackle various subjects, but bad because it is rather vague and obtuse.  Where to start?  I absolutely won't be searching for previous slide decks on related s...

You see it.  The presenter publicly self-immolates. They might butcher the start, get lost in the weeds of their content or be put to the sword at the end in the Q&A.  They can't engage with their audience, are incoherent and quivering the whole time.  It is a train wreck on display. Reputations and credibility are flayed alive.  Here is the irony – they chose it to be like this. They made a serie...

I have the opportunity to give a number of presentations each year.  I video them as well, so I can study where I can improve them further.  What I find very interesting though, is that I am a poor model in some ways for others, who don't have that chance to present publically so often.  I was teaching some presentation skills classes recently and the students are probably a better fit for most pe...

Bonseki is a Japanese art creating miniature landscapes, on a black tray using white sand, pebbles and small rocks.  They are exquisite but temporary.  The bonseki can't be preserved and are an original, throw away art form. Speaking to audiences is like that, temporary.  Once we down tools and go home, that is the end of it.  Our reach can be transient like the bonseki art piece, that gets tossed...

Think about the business presentations you have attended over the years.  How many speakers were really engaging you during their talk.  How many speakers can you even recall?  One of the problems is that most business presentations are the "inform" type and are downloads of a whole bunch of data about the topic they are covering.  Numbers don't have to be dry and boring.  The mantra is "Stories n...

At different times, I have done both formal and informal one-on-one coaching for people who want to improve their presentations skills in Japan.  Most people can understand the concepts of voice modulation, gesture usage, posture, movement on stage, energy projection, design elements, slide deck build rules, rehearsal importance, etc.  The one area where everyone seems to struggle is with the use...

Recently, I was asked to coach the President of a 100,000 person company with a long history for his presentation. What I noticed was how difficult it was to do a good job of promoting the firm, without it sounding like a blatant commercial for the business. Many of us in business are asked to give public presentations and these are excellent opportunities to promote our personal brands, professio...

Seamless Slides and Stellar Delivery. Unlocking AI's Potential in Presentations In Japan Something I had never heard of before called "Steampunk" popped up in my TikTok feed. Now I write a daily blog published on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and X, called "Fare Bella Figura: Make a Good Impression, Be A Sharp Dressed Man" on the subject of classic men's wear for business. Obviously, I am interested...

We see a lot written about public speaking and presenting. Usually it is on the assumption we are the sole speaker or one of a line-up of speakers who wow the audience one after another. Interestingly, a lot of speakers I see these days are often members of expert panels, herded together by the MC and taken through the key points of the topic.  I also notice that none of them are much good in this...

I had two interesting experiences last week.  One was watching the aspirants for a top position in a Chamber of Commerce go head-to-head for the votes of the members by giving talks about why they should be elected.  I love attending these types of events because as an instructor of public speaking; I know there are always a lot of life and business lessons about to be revealed.  They had five min...