The Presentations Japan Series

Clubhouse is a new app that enables audio discussions with people who share a similar interest, coming together from around the world.  The conversations are not retained and the content disappears each day.  There is no distribution of the content either, because of that removal function.  Unlike say a written blog which can sit on your website continually adding value to your brand.  Also, there...

This pandemic will blow over soon and we can all get back to normal.  What will that "normal" look like though in the presenting world.  CFOs have pulled their green eye shades down and sharpened their pencils and realised the company can save a truck load of dough by attending business and industry conferences virtually, rather than in person.  I am on the Board of the International Dale Carnegie...

As presenters we want to inform, persuade, entertain or motivate our audiences. Most B2B business presentations fall into the "inform" category, because the organisers don't take too kindly to presenters "selling from their platform".  They want us to get up there and bring some value to their audience by providing data, experience and insights.  Grabbing the mic to flog your widget will see you b...

Year Two of the pandemic puts a lot of stress on organisations.  I was watching a television news report last night on an Inn that is closing.  This particular Inn is well known in Japan, because it featured in the hit comedy movie series "Otoko wa tsurai yo!" – "It is hard being a man".  This "Otoko wa tsurai yo!" series reached 46 movie releases, so it is a legendary franchise here in Japan.  Th...

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...

Rushing out the door to get to your talk and arriving in the nick of time is bad, bad, bad.  You have cut it very fine. Breathless, you greet the hosts, who are looking suitably pale as they thought they had an event with no guest speaker.  The shambles has started and now the odds are it will continue into your talk, as you battle with the tech.  The laptop decides to throw a tantrum and not beha...

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...

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...

In the public arena most presentations follow a set formula. I speak, I stop, you ask me questions and then I finish up and leave the venue.  Inside of companies though, there will be different types of presentations.  We may be creating a new project, getting the team members together and taking them through what we need to do.  It might be a report on the progress of the section, where we are wi...

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...

"How was it?" is a pretty lousy survey question a presenter may ask of acquaintances, friends or their staff immediately after speaking.  Unless they are your sworn enemy or a sadist, they are not going to tell you what they really think if you stink, because of the relationship you have with them.  We need to make sure we are growing and improving as presenters, so objective feedback is crucial t...

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...

This recent debate is a hot button topic. Let me set the record straight, I am an Australian living in Tokyo, so I have no dog in this American presidential brawl.  I am approaching this topic from the point of view of what we would do, if we were under attack in public, rather than to rule on the rights and wrongs of politicians' strategies.  Imagine it was you up on that stage getting hammered,...

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...

It was a strange feeling.  I was back in the Super Safe Classroom after 7 months of teaching solely LIVE On Line.  In the online world, we are engaging our audience every two minutes.  Remember, this is the Age of Distraction. Audiences are weaponised at home with unseen devices to escape from our grasp and our message.  They will be multi-tasking like demons on speed, given the slightest pretext....

Speaking is easy, so being clear should be easy too.  Well that sounds good in theory, but there is more hope in play here, than actual technique going on.  Imagining that your usual conversation style is sufficient for presentations is another exercise in hopeful thinking.  Wait a minute, people say that we should speak in a conversational style, so isn't this confusing or contradictory?  What is...