The Presentations Japan Series

When Should You Take Questions During Your Talk?   Having an audience interested enough in your topic to ask questions is a heartening occurrence.  Japan can be a bit tricky though because people are shy to ask questions.  Culturally the thinking is different to the West.  In most western countries we ask questions because we want to know more.  We don't think that we are being disrespectful by im...

Unleash The Power Of Your Theories And Data When Presenting   It has been a while since I attended a business school presentation.  From time to time the prominent foreign business schools fly in one of their big gun professors to rustle up some business in Japan by delivering a lecture on a topical subject.  They are always good because the professors are either proving insights from their own re...

    How To Persuade When You Are the One Presenting   Being persuasive is not down to luck or accident, it is the result of good planning and execution. This is the problem.  The vast majority of speakers do not prepare properly. The slide deck gets all the attention, the data gets lots of love, the logistics are thoroughly checked.  The planning component?  Not enough going into that effort unfor...

Your War Stories In Your Presentation Are Boring   Gaining credibility as a speaker is obviously important.  We often do this by telling our own experiences. However, having too much focus on us and away from the interests of the audience is a fine line we must tread carefully.  When we get this wrong, a lot of valuable speaking time gets taken up and we face the danger of losing our audience. The...

Successful Presentations Need Good Structure   It is a bad sign when a presentation makes me sleepy, especially if it is at lunch time.  It is very common to have speakers address a topic over a lunch to a group of attendees.  After lunch, you might explain away a bit of the drowsiness, but during the lunch is a warning sign.  The speaker had good voice strength, so nobody was struggling to hear h...

Tech Presenters Please Stop Making Stupid Errors   I am sitting there with a crowd of people attending a presentation on blockchain technology.  Some are very technical people active in the crypto currency area, some run their own tech businesses.  Our presenter has amazing experience in this area, having worked for some very big names in the industry.  He also has his own company to promote as we...

How To Be An Inspiring Presenter    At the start of our class on High Impact Presentations, we ask the participants to think about what type of impression they would like to have linger with their audience, after their presentation has been completed.  How about you? When people are filing out of the hall, what things would you like to hear about your presentation, if your were able to eavesdrop o...

Aya McCrindle recently graduated from our High Impact Presentations Course and did her first TED talk. She was well and truly ready for it, because of the training preparation she received. Aya has her own company, Aya Jean Style Coach, where she helps people with mastering first impressions. In her area of expertise, she is the brand. She runs her classes as the leader and that means being credib...

I Hate Sitting Through Underperforming Presentations   This global company is a household name in Japan.  They have spent a fortune getting the brand name known here.  They had some tough times early on too and got a hammering from the media about aspects of their business model.  A lot of negative publicity was generated, so the name is well known, but not in a helpful way.  The President is givi...

How To More Concise, Clear and Persuasive When Presenting   We run training on presentations and public speaking continuously. These three requests to be more concise, clear and persuasive, often come up from the participants, regarding the nominated areas where they want to improve.  In this Age of Distraction, if you miss the first two, you can kiss goodbye to number three.  As soon as an audien...

Man, Your Monotone Is Killing Me   Normally we expect Japanese speakers to be boring, because their language is a monotone and so they apply the same formula when speaking in either Japanese or English. That is okay in a way, because it is a cultural thing.  However, for foreigners there is no excuse.  If you are giving your talk in a monotone, expect to lose your audience. Forty minutes of listen...

Visual Elements In Presentations   There is no question visuals are super powerful in presentations.  This can range from your eye contact, body language, gestures all the way up to actual live fireworks.  Think about sporting presentations where they make heavy use of visuals to stir emotions.  The half time show is full of music, fireworks, action.  The team scores a goal and the big screens are...

The Power Of Conversational Style When Presenting   We often see presenters elevated up on stage or positioned at the front of the room, flanked by or under a screen, and protected from the audience by a rostrum. In Japan standing above your seated audience requires an apology for doing so at the start of the speech. This is a very hierarchy conscious society, so implying your superiority to your...

Avoiding Flat Presentations   "The good is the enemy of the great" is a clever saying and very true.  In presenting terms we can have people who are competent but not even close to maximising their potential.  They are sitting there in the lukewarm bath, never experiencing or understanding the joys of an extra ten degrees of heat.  In presenting terms, turning your inner thermometer up ten degrees...

Is How I am Dressed Important When Presenting?   There is an old saying about lies, damn lies and statistics.  An often misquoted statistic in the presenting world is that 55% of your impression on an audience is based on how you are dressed.  Some coaches are advising on this basis and it is only partially true.  Professor Mehrabian's research at UCLA did nominate that particular percentage, but...

Senior Executives In A Public Speaking Competition Was So Revealing   Speech contests and debating contests are usually for younger people at school or university.  It is not often you see the most senior people from major corporations going head to head in a public setting.  I was at an event where there was a vote to take place for some prestigious seats on the board of a non-profit.  If the num...

Facial Animation Needed For Presenting Success   We have all seen it.  The presenters face is expressionless, wooden, devoid of emotion or life.  It is usually well paired with a horrific monotone delivery, to really kill off the audience.  Presenting is a serious business, so these presenters present a very serious physiognomy.  Scowling is thought to be good too, to show the gravitas they bring...

Why Japanese Presenters Fear Q&A   Obviously we all have some trepidation when it comes to Q&A, but Japan is quite far behind the rest of the advanced countries when it comes to public speaking. The level of presentations here is abysmally low and excuses abound.  People here talk about a "Japanese style" of doing public talks. What they actually mean is they speak in a monotone, with a wooden fac...

Why Do You Need To Bother With Presenting   As usual I got the venue early.  I was doing what I teach others in sales to do, get to the venue early, check the nametags of who are attending.  This way you can put faces to names of people you know and you can see if there is a potential client in the room who you would like to meet.  The speaker was also there nice and early setting up.  This is a v...

Dealing With Questions When Presenting   Japan is quite interesting in the sense that you often don't get any questions after your presentation.  Screaming silence at the end. Before the presentation, we often spend our time thinking what would happen if I can't answer the question or what will I do if I get a tough question?  Japan has the opposite issue where the talk falls flat on its face, bec...

How Do You Follow On From Really Bad or Really Great Presenters   One of the most painful experiences as a presenter is watching the speaker before you put the entire crowd to sleep with their dull, monotonous monotone delivery. I don't know which is worse, but the opposite problem is when the speaker was legendary and you hear your name being called because you are up next.  Either way, what is y...

Subtly Selling Yourself When Presenting   We have all been there. The speaker gets up to speak after they have had their resume read out by the MC or they do it themselves once they get started.  Sometimes the MC makes a mess of it and other times they read out the content without any enthusiasm whatsoever.  This is mainly because they are poor public speakers themselves.  We should always supply...

Hey, Stop Fidgeting When Presenting   It has never been tougher to be a speaker. We live in the age of hyper distraction, with instant gratification felt to be too slow.  In fact, "slow phobia" is rampant everywhere and hand held digital device escape hatches abound.  Migrating away from all that distraction, to get people focused on your presentation is hard enough.  Things become more desperate...

The Presenting Persona   Be authentic, be yourself, be conversational - all good advice, except the presenter does have a distinct role to play though.  When we are speaking in front of others, it is no longer an intimate one on one conversation.  The talk has a purpose, there is an audience, there are expectations, time limits apply. We have to rise to the occasion.     Telling ourselves that the...

Dealing With Feedback When Presenting   We can receive feedback in the rehearsal stage and after the actual presentation itself.  Both can be very dangerous.   Asking your loved ones at home for feedback is tricky.  They may love you, but they may not know much about the subject itself, the subject of presenting and techniques for giving feedback. Pretty toxic cocktail right there, with potential...