The Presentations Japan Series

How To Murder Your Personal Brand In Business In Japan   When you get up and speak in front of an audience, you are putting your professional and personal brand on the line. The event is advertised, people are alerted to the fact you are speaking and a proportion will bother to turn up to hear what you have to say.  They may be drawn in by the fact you work for a famous or powerful company, so the...

What Is The One Key Thing When Presenting?   I was talking with a friend, while we were having lunch at this very nice Italian restaurant he frequents, near his office.  Between dishes, we were talking about how he has to go to his US headquarters and join all the other representative Country Heads from around the world and give his report on how the business is going in Japan.  I was thinking tha...

Don't Be Boring When Presenting   Every week I get to listen to speeches from some of the top people in their field.  I belong to an elite Rotary Club here in Tokyo.  That description in itself is a bit of a problem, given the philosophy of Rotary as a service organisation helping society and connecting business people together.  When my fellow Rotarians from different parts of the world hear this...

How To Facilitate When Presenting     Many presentations are one dimensional. The speaker speaks and we just listen, maybe getting a chance to lob in the odd question at the end. In many cases, with internal presentations, there will be a role for the presenter as a facilitator as well, to get the discussion going or to drive the decision making process. Very few speakers are trained to facilitate...

Great Voice As a Speaker?   Probably only a microscopic number of speakers have had any voice training. The vast majority of us are in business and get called on to speak. As we rise through the ranks we need to deliver reports internally, to speak to our project teams, to address the sales rally. We also get dragged outside the organisation to give speeches to industry groups or chambers of comme...

The Power Of Belief When Presenting   Watching a grey haired, grizzled veteran of the media making his award acceptance speech talking about the importance of the pursuit of the truth in the media and a High School Senior speaking out about gun control, I was struck by how powerful both speeches were.  Many award speeches we see are either hopeless or perfunctory.  This one was different.  No note...

Experts Not Very Expert At Presenting   Five star luxury is always appreciated and the hotel setting for this presentation was clearly appropriate given this elite event. The speaker's contribution to business acumen was being highly anticipated, judged by the number of people in the room. Numerous round tables with white tablecloths, mainly men in dark suits, reserved tables for the more importan...

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 perfo...

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 tr...

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 impr...

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 completel...

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...

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...

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 lime...

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,...

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 do...

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 pe...

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...

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...

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 m...

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 diffe...

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 l...

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 speak...

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...