The Presentations Japan Series

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 in how we men choose to master and control our first impressions in public.  Everyone is judging us based on how we appoint ourselves and that is before we have any chance to utter even one word.  If that is the case, and it is, why not make an effort to control that first vital impression? 

Anyway, that is another podcast subject, so back to today’s theme.  These Steampunk videos were AI created and featured seriously “killer handsome” men wearing very, very cool Victorian era clothing. The imagery was amazing, fantastical, and addictive.  Sadly, probably no one looked anything near that good in foggy Victorian London and few guys today could even come close to these AI images.  It is all fake, and this is an important point to keep in mind when we are dealing with AI.

This got me thinking about AI and fakery in the field of business presentations. Where is the line to discriminate between fakery and authenticity? Let’s look at some of the AI tools and see where they are leading us. Canva, Beautiful.ai, Visme etc., use AI to arrange our basic slides into very sophisticated output.  If we are not sure what style of visual presentation will best suit the content, then we can access help from Microsoft Designer and Google Slides AI.  If we have numbers to represent on screen, then Infogram and Datawrapper can help. The AI will suggest the best chart type based on the data. I don’t know that we need that much help though: for data over time use line graphs, for short-term comparisons use bar charts, and use pie charts for gauging proportional differences. 

If we are thinking about how to put the talk together, then ChatGPT, Claude and Jasper AI can craft a script as a base for us to work with.  If we want a formal tone, we can command it or go for a conversational tone, and the AI will respond accordingly.  If like me, you are not that red hot on grammar and punctuation, then Grammerly or ProWritingAid can make suggestions.  They don’t always get it right, so we have to maintain a certain amount of knowledge to intervene when needed. It is handy though to be reminded that you have started the last three sentences with the same word, so that we can introduce more variety into our prose.

I haven’t tried them myself yet, but I am told that Orai and Speeko will analyse my delivery in real time.  I can get feedback on pacing, tone, filler words, modulation and pronunciation.  I had to give a major keynote recently to an elite audience and if I had been more organised, I could have tried them out. I will use them the next time during my rehearsals. 

I wonder if they give us Good/Better feedback, rather than confidence sapping critique?  By the way, a word to the wise, if you ever ask anyone to listen to your practice sessions, instruct them to give you only Good/Better feedback.  Otherwise, their first inclination will usually be to criticise what you are doing and demotivate you.

I have seen some speakers using Mentimeter and Slido, which are AI driven to facilitate real time audience interaction.  We can run instant polls, pose questions, and get feedback during our presentation.  We can do the same things analog too, but it looks cool to use these tools. I have seen simple bats with “Yes” on one side and “No” on the other used to gauge audience agreement with whatever the speaker is proposing and it works well. We can simply ask people to raise their hands in response to their agreement with the question or not and no tech involved. Personally I go for simplicity when presenting.

I do recommend keeping a hawk-eyed accounting of the faces of the people in the audience. If you think that is too old school, you can try Beyond Verbal and Emotional AI.  These tools will interpret audience facial reactions and voice tones to help you understand the engagement levels of the audience. All great stuff but I find watching their faces carefully does the same thing, and it is real time.

There is no doubt AI is here to stay and capacity will only broaden and improve.  We have to keep in mind, though, that these are just tools and not a substitute for our role as the speaker.  I actually don’t want my AI enhanced slide deck to be so spectacular that the audience stops watching me and becomes totally engrossed with what is on screen.  We, the speaker, have to be the center of attention and the tools are at our command, rather than commanding us. That is why I don’t like using videos.  If they are to be used keep let’s them super short.

Like those handsome dudes in the Steampunk videos, the presentation is superb, but the AI is fake and we can never match what is being presented.  We can dress ourselves in the same Victorian way, using fine fabrics, but we will never be that handsome and cool looking. We need to keep AI in perspective too, not get carried away with the tool set and forgetting about the human dimension aspect of the delivery. We, the presenters, must always be the main game, the core talent and the real focus for our audience.

The tech has to be used in moderation and the speaker must be soley placed in the spotlight. Don’t let the AI become the star like in those Steampunk videos I mentioned.  We reserve that position for ourselves, always, everywhere and we allow no AI substitutes for us.

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 role and almost no wowing is going on ever.  The irony is we are on the panel because we are an expert in our field, but no one bothers to inform us how to perform our expert role when being a panellist.

Whether we are the solo speaker commanding the audience from behind a podium or prowling around the stage or sitting down in a row of other speakers, the fundamental things which work best don’t change all that much.  The key thing I have noticed which is missing most from panellists is projection.  When we are standing, we have more access to our body language and to voice projection.  We are also elevated in stature too, so we are readily visible to the audience from top to toe.  We feel more powerful when standing, and this comes across in how we deliver our talk.

When we are seated, we are literally cut off at the knees.  We are hunkered down in our chair, sitting low and are physically constrained.  It has a deleterious psychological impact as well. This seated position is the format we use all the time for casual chats over coffee.  This positioning sets up a mentality that is relaxed and conversational.  Nothing wrong with a conversational speaking style, however the associated soft volume we use is the issue. 

Of course we have been handed mics, but most people are not used to using them and often don’t know how to get the most out of the tech.  They usually don’t get a chance to work with the mics, which is something you would get as a single speaker when you are there setting up your laptop, etc., before the event starts. Also, holding a mic means we have tied up one arm, so our gestures are handicapped, compared to when we are standing using a stand mic or a pin mic.

In short, we become small on stage and we stay that way throughout.  I teach speakers to use their ki (気) or intrinsic energy when speaking to reach all four corners of the venue.  Projecting your energy is magnetic with audiences and we can deeply connect with the crowd.  Sitting low in a chair makes this energy projection much harder. You really have to be aware of the disadvantage you are at and you need to compensate for it.  If you don’t know, then you don’t know and you just become insignificant on stage very quickly.

I recommend having a strategy for your panellist presentation.  I would strongly recommend you make it your goal to connect with everyone in the audience.  We do this one person at a time.  What we see speakers doing, though, is looking out at everyone at the same time, at each other and at the MC in particular. They are not thinking of connecting with the audience at all, at the individual level. 

Use six seconds of contact with each person.  Don’t look at the other panellists or the MC – ignore them completely and only spend your time looking at the people in the room. Pick up one person in the audience at random and stare straight into that person’s eyes as you speak to them. At a distance, down the back, the ten people seated around that person all think you are looking at them, so the impact is magnified. 

When you look out at the audience, break the room up into zones – left, middle, right and then front half and back half.  This gives us six zones to work on and we make use of this zone breakdown to engage as many people as we can during our remarks.  In a minute we can engage with six people. In three minutes we can engage with eighteen people, and if we pick up the ten people around, then we have one hundred and eighty people engaged.

Sit super tall and on the front edge of the chair, so that you are physically thrusting your body language toward the audience.  Direct your ki energy to the very back wall of the room when you speak. 

Make the most of the mic and use a strong voice, without yelling or creating static with the mic, to project your energy to the audience. Hold the mic a little out in front of you and then speak across the top of the mesh.  I have seen panellists actually encompass their entire palm completely over the mesh, which totally defeats the efforts of the sound engineers, who have slaved over perfecting the tech.

Use the other hand for large gestures.  Remember, you are tiny up on the stage and the chair has made you short, so you have to overcompensate for the lack of physicality.  Don’t be afraid to go big with your gestures.  Way down the back, it still looks small.

We want our three arrows coalescing together: (1) one-on-one eye contact for six seconds with specific individuals in the audience, (2) strong energy projection through the medium of our body language and voice and (3) the power of our larger than usual gestures. All of our attributes are in sync and congruent with what we are saying.

When we do this, we instantly self-select as a real professional in presenting skills, stand out from our Lilliputian colleagues on stage with us, including the MC, and we become totally memorable, whereas everyone else is immensely forgettable.

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 minutes each, which is quite long actually. 

With that amount of leeway, there is a tremendous opportunity to use storytelling to reinforce key points and make numbers memorable. Sadly, our ambitious leaders didn’t use these tools at their ready disposal. Telling us about your resume is boring.  Telling us what you are going to do is doubtful.  Quoting numbers to back up any claims doesn’t really resonate.

How about a different tack?  Why not tell a series of stories which underline your past contributions in human terms and bring ideas to flesh and blood reality?  They could have talked about the impact they had through the prism of individuals they touched through their efforts and decisions.  Putting flesh on the bones of the activities makes them all the more compelling and relatable.  Any initiative has consequences and some outcomes.  Tell us what happened to the people affected.  How did it improve their lives or business?  Were there any concrete gains which flowed from an initiative you took?

Even in the case of a future decision, there will be impacts and we should take those possibilities and weave in a hypothetical outcome and how it would play out for those benefiting from it.  Actually, it hasn’t happened yet, but we take decisions for change on the basis that what we are going to do will bring in something better and different.  We can use a fictitious story to describe that future, even if it isn’t reality as yet. We outline a future which hasn’t been delivered yet, but if elected, we will make this story a reality and make it happen.

Wrapping up numbers in stories is a great way to make sure the achievements we are publicising register in the brains and memories of the audience.  We hear the numbers, but we recall stories. If the numbers are woven into the story, we will be able to recall them and therefore they will have greater impact.  Every time you are going to nominate numbers, think how can I wrap these in a story which involves people and make the number more real?

The other missing piece was emphasis on what was being said.  Both speakers kept the same volume and power throughout their five minutes.  However, not every word or phrase has the same value or impact.  Some elements can be highlighted by turning a vocal lamp up to high beam on the keywords.  When we hit a word or phrase with power or by employing a secretive audible whisper, we project the power of that content above everything else.  This is what makes it stand out. 

I was reminded of this when listening to a classical music piano solo performance.  The Japanese pianist was excellent and the pieces of music he chose had their crescendos and lulls as he worked his magic on the keys.  Between some of the pieces, he would take the mic and make a few comments about what he was playing and why.  What I found interesting was that he was Johnny One Note when he took the mic.  He had just been employing crescendos and lulls in his performance with his instrument, but not when he spoke.  Every word was given the same treatment and therefore no particular points were highlighted.  He didn’t carry forth his magic on the piano to his speaking and didn’t use the same amazing tool for his talk as he employed in his music.  For him, they were unrelated.

The problem is a lack of training in how to do public speaking and a lack of self-awareness. Our pianist didn’t bridge from what he did on the keys of the piano to what he could do with his vocal cords.  I would extend the same observation to other musicians who use their vocal cords as their primary instrument–singers–and observe the same phenomenon.  During their comments between songs, the singers will employ a flat range in their voice.  This is just after just having hit high and low notes in their performance.  Like the pianist, they don’t seem to connect the two ideas together.

As speakers, we should always be looking to tell stories to make our points more accessible.  We should also tell those stories employing highs and lows in our vocal range to make them more interesting.  Nobody else is doing this, so we have an uncontended open field of possibilities right in front of us, ripe for the taking.

In Australian politics, they call it a “Dorothy Dixer”.  This is when one of your confederates from your own political party ask a ruling Minister a real soft ball question in the parliament during Question Time, to allow for a fully pre-prepared answer. Dorothy Dix was an American newspaper advice columnist who would answer reader’s questions, and some say she sometimes would create her own questions to answer.

At political rallies, there has been a similar set up where a stooge or a plant in the audience asks the speaker a pre-arranged question, but tries to make it look spontaneous.  At business events, the speaker may have organised a friend to pop a question they want to answer to reduce time for questions they don’t want to answer or to make themselves look awesome. In Japan, these people asking the questions are called “Sakura” and they play the same role.

I know this goes on because from time to time I am asked to be a Sakura at a business presentation.  I am infamous around town for asking the first question.  This happened by accident and now if I don’t ask the first question, people will ask what is wrong with me?  Many years ago, I did have a question I wanted answered and before I could register my enquiry, the MC said “no more questions” and I was left suspended high and dry. 

I realised I could never predict when the last question would make it to prominence, but I could 100% reliably predict when the first question would come up.  I also realised that in Japan, at least, there is always a pause when the MC throws the floor open to questions, as many people are reluctant to ask their question immediately. This provides the opportunity to be the first with no competition and the MC is forced to take your question.

Sometimes the organisers or the speaker will approach me before things kick-off and ask if I can get things going by asking the first question.  They fear that flat, spine decalcifying, stone motherless silence when they call for questions.  It seems a damming verdict on the speaker that they were a dull dog, so dull in fact that no one wants to hear one more word from them on this subject. 

I can only recall one case where I was actually asked to lodge a specific question, so normally they leave that part of the equation to me.  I ask questions anyway and unless the question itself is stupid, too self-serving or cringy, and I already know the person asking, I am usually happy to help.

The speaker may have a desire to address an area of the subject which they couldn’t get to in the talk and may ask for a question which allows them to talk more about that topic.  That would be a reasonable request, because not everyone in the audience may be an expert and be able to fill in the blanks across a broad subject.

Should you as the speaker organise a “Sakura” for your talk?  I don’t think this is prohibited, but there are a few caveats.  You, as the speaker, must be prepared to answer audience questions and the “Sakura” role is not there to provide cover for you from legitimate questions, by stealing the question airtime.

The question shouldn’t be a soft ball job either.  It should be a question that seeks more information in a serious way. Asking cunning variations on, “why are you so awesome” or “why are you the leading global expert on this subject?”, would be ridiculous choices and the jig is up immediately and everyone involved in the charade looks stupid.

In Japan, it is often the case that audiences are shy to ask the first question, but feel emboldened when some other brave “first mover” grips the thistle in their teeth and launches forth. Asking questions in the West has no stigma and indicates an interest in learning more from the speaker.  These are all seen as positive attributes. 

In Japan, asking a question has five inferences: 1. The speaker was stupid and their talk impenetrable, 2. They were a poor communicator and the audience couldn’t follow the point, 3. You the questioner are too stupid to understand what the speaker said, 4. You want hog the limelight for yourself, stand out and try to impress everyone with how smart you think you are, by asking that question, 5. You have a legitimate question and the speaker was so amazing you want to learn more because you are a serious student of this topic.

Most of the weight in Japan is on the negative side about asking questions. Therefore, sometimes we may need to get the ball moving with a question to the speaker to give permission to others to ask their secretly held question. Another suitable device is that if there is that deafening silence after questions are called for, to pose and then answer your own question.  “A question I am often asked is…”. It has the same effect, gets things moving inviting the next question and you become your own “Sakura”.

There are 6 elements we should check when putting our visuals together.  Review this checklist before you start building the slide deck and your presentation will be much more impactful and successful.

1.        Make sure you are boss of the visuals and not the other way around

Often, the speaker is overshadowed by the visuals and everyone’s attention is directed toward the screen.  We must remember that the screen has limited persuasion power compared to using our facial expressions. We can express disbelief, shock, bemusement, horror, joy, doubt, concentration, scepticism, engagement, hostility, agreement, happiness, etc.  No screen can do that and we should be combining our words with our facial expression to really drive home the point we want to make.

We must make the visuals our servant and not allow them to become our master. You see a lot of presenters who are almost invisible, because they have yielded control to what is up on the screen.  We should stand stage left to the screen because we read from left to right.  We want the audience to be captured by our voice and facial expression and then they look at what is on the screen, rather than just looking at the screen and ignoring us. 

If you find that the audience are not looking at you, just stop speaking.  That pattern interrupt will draw them all back to your face to find out what is going on.  We should also be using our eyes to look directly at members of the audience for six seconds and speak to them One-On-One.  That technique has a powerful magnetic grip on our listeners. However, be careful, we can only hold that pressure for six seconds per person or it becomes too intrusive.

2.        Tiny fonts are not useful

We have all seen it.  The presenter puts up a slide and the font sizes are tiny.  Just to rub insult into the wound, they sometimes say dumb things like “I know you cannot read this but….”.  But what?  Why on earth do we have to sit there and look at a screen that we cannot read?   

The Golden Rule with any slide is that if the viewer cannot get the main point within two seconds, then the slide is too complicated.  This is especially the case with fonts.  Make sure the fonts are big enough to read easily and if there is a fear of not being able to get them to the right size, then that slide probably needs to be broken into two or more slides.  This is usually the solution for most slide shows.  Get the information on to more slides and then we can easily enlarge the detail on the slide to make it easier to read.

One way to check the sizes are correct during the production process is to print out the slide and place it on the floor in front of you when standing.  If you cannot read the detail, then more work is needed to adjust the size so that you can read it at a distance.

3.         Graphs, graphs and more graphs

Seeing six graphs on a screen is not uncommon in many presentations.  The obvious problem with this idea is that the fonts and numbers are so small, it is impossible to read what is on the graph. In general, the Chart Golden Rule is one graph per slide.  That allows us to make the graphs large enough to be easy to parse.

Bar charts are a great tool for comparisons. We can contrast results spread over one or two years.  More than that and the bar charts become hard to read. 

If we need to see a comparison over longer periods of time then line charts are the best for that.  Again, we should probably cap things at three variable because once we get over that number it looks like spaghetti and you have trouble following what is going on.  

Pie charts are good for comparing shares of something.  Two pie charts are the limit in this regard, because after that it gets hard to see what is on the screen. 

4.        White space is good

A lot of presentations are trying to cram all the information on to one slide.  The various contents are now competing for our attention.  Leaving a lot of white space on the screen is an excellent way of highlighting key information and forcing the audience to concentrate on the one thing we want to emphasise.  Putting up one number in large font or one word is very powerful.  There is only one thing to look at and we can talk to that number and elaborate on why that number or word is significant.

5.        Use one photo and attach some mystery

“A  picture is worth a thousand words” is a great saying and very true. It really allows us to make our point. We could carry this to the extreme and put up lots of photos, but we are defeating our aim of getting our message across. We are splitting our audience’s attention too thinly.

If we can include people in the photo, then that is even more attractive as we love to see people’s faces compared to cityscapes or landscapes. We are drawn to look at people’s faces. Knowing that, we can find a photo which has that element and which will assist us to make our key point. 

For example, if we were talking about the problem of homelessness in San Francisco we could put up some graphs tracing the development of the problem over time.  We could also put up a photograph of the homeless and the latter will have a lot more impact than the graph.  We can make the same point, but the power is totally different. Always think about where we can use photos to make our point.

We could put up a photo and label it to explain why this photo is important.  An even better idea is to tease our audience and just put up a photo and that is all.  The audience are looking at it wondering what it means and that ensures we have their 100% attention for when we explain the significance behind the photo.

6.        Control the colour exuberance

Too much detail on a slide is bad because we make the audience work hard to understand what they are looking at.  Once we introduce more than two colours on a slide, we have increased the degree of difficulty of comprehension substantially.  Yes, a couple of colours can provide some contrast and relief from the boredom of just one colour throughout the presentation. We shouldn’t go crazy though and assume more is better. As with everything in the visual presentation world “less is more”.  So we need to be careful with colour usage and not let it distract from our key message.

Most people don’t do a good job of their presentations. They spend most of their preparation time on the slide deck construction, rather than allowing important time for rehearsal.  Use this checklist to make sure your slides are adding value to your talk. By avoiding these mistakes you can create the time needed for rehearsal and your talk will be all the better for it.

It's been a while since I attended a highly technical talk by serious experts. The audience, however, was not as expert, so the two speakers knew they were addressing a less specialized group. Complex topics require special handling.Piling a lot of data onto one slide is a big no-no, but that didn’t stop our intrepid, geeky speakers. One of them, a retired professor, you’d think would be better at this given he taught it at a university. Perhaps I’m too optimistic about academics and technical specialists having actual teaching abilities compared to their true passion—research.

Most of the slides were terrible.There was one slide, in particular, that showed a key timeline and included important projections into the future. It looked amazing.Yet, I still wonder what it said. The font was so tiny, and there were so many colours.  Audience members like me had no ability to decipher the actual content. This slide was crucial, given the future implications of the technology they were discussing.

So folks, the simple lesson here is to carefully consider how you present information on-screen. If it’s too complex, provide handouts so attendees can at least grasp what is going on. If you are going to show difficult content on-screen, make the fonts large, and keep the slides simple and easy to understand. Also, please scale back on the wild color palettes.

As I sat there, I thought that horizontal timeline could have been magnified on the next slide to highlight key turning points in the continuum. It could have been like a blow-up of a part of the timeline, with the rest of the sequence becoming background wallpaper. The key components would be magnified on-screen for easy digestion, or they could have just broken up the timeline into larger sections on separate slides. None of this is complex.These were seriously well-educated, intelligent people giving this presentation. So, there's no doubt this is not beyond them. But if you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

The subject is absolutely topical and exciting, yet the talk was very dry. Like many technical people, they got lost in the tech aspects.This might be fine for a presentation to scientists or specialists, but we, the audience, were not as familiar with the finer points. In this case, a different approach should have been taken.

The visuals need to be more simplified. Key points should be kept clear and accessible. Analogies are a wonderful tool for taking complex, difficult subjects and making them clearer. For example, strategic plans are like gelato. Initially, this seems puzzling—what’s the connection between ice cream and business planning? But just like with gelato, we have many flavors and options. We don’t know which is best until we taste them. Similarly, a strategic plan might seem comprehensive, but we won’t know if it works until we execute it.

The speakers also missed the opportunity to use storytelling.

We were stuck at a theoretical and technical level, with no stories to elevate the key points.This area of science is full of stories—about the scientists, breakthroughs, triumphs, and setbacks. But we didn’t hear any of that. There was no “flesh on the bones” of the science.Think about how complex technical subjects are presented in movies or TV dramas. Progress is always depicted through a rich tapestry of stories.That talk was just yesterday, but right now, I can’t recall the name of even one key person who contributed to the rise of the technology, nor do I have any stories to tie the information together. This is key: stories are like glue.They help us connect complex topics over time by creating a narrative about who was involved, what they did, where and when it happened, and the outcomes.

Drama grabs our interest and holds our attention.Without stories, it was hard for the speakers to connect with their non-technical audience. Even harder to make the key messages memorable. Hammering the audience with facts and details doesn’t ensure the message gets through. I can’t recall any of the statistics they shared. Had they wrapped those numbers in a story, I might remember. So, technical presenters, be sure to craft stories we can all recall later.

Make sure that what’s presented visually is simplified so we can easily absorb the key points. Analogies are a great tool for explaining complex subjects and should be in every technical speaker’s toolbox. Having an amazing brain and decades of research experience won’t help if you can’t engage your audience and convey your message effectively.

As a vigorous networker, constantly in motion, always looking for new clients, I attend a lot of events.  Usually there are speakers or panel discussions or sometimes both.  In this regard, I probably see over 100 people a year presenting in Japan. One consistent theme across all of these presentations is the lack of understanding of the “ba” (場) when speaking. This “ba” in Japanese means the physical locale or place or occasion, in this context. What I notice is that the speakers are confusing the “ba” as a presenter.

They address the audience in the same voice strength, body language projection and gesture application, as they would use if they were sitting together having a chat over coffee with their friend.  You might wonder why they would do that when they are there facing an audience of fifty people or more?  Why can’t they scale up what they are doing to suit the much larger assembly?  Don’t they feel the need to engage the entire audience once they have been given the shot to address the masses?

Basically, they have no clue because they have never received any training on presenting. Their only reference point is coffee chats with a friend and they just keep that template for the larger occasion. Now I am sure they have seen someone present professionally, but I feel there must be a mental disconnect between what they are witnessing and how they see themselves. 

Perhaps even that is too optimistic for Japan, because they may have never seen a professional presentation here because they are so rare. Regardless, if they have ever seen a professional presentation they were just observers rather than students.  They didn’t see what was going on as a model.  They were just passive audience members observing someone else going through the motions.  Once you have been trained, you automatically become a critic and keen observer of what the speaker is doing, because you have a range of relevant reference points to compare against.

The combination of panelists and speakers I saw in a recent event had a common theme – no differentiation of the “ba” for this occasion and chatting over coffee with a friend.  The voices were quiet.  The energy low to non-existent.  The body language turned off completely.  No passion, no highlights, no take-aways, no persuasion attempted. It was as flat as a pancake. 

Yet here were a large number of company representatives giving their ideas on a particular subject, without much in the way of real commitment or passion.  A number of them were youngish, if late twenties- early thirties counts as youngish.  Is that an excuse?  I don’t think so.  Whatever age they were, no one on that stage had given much thought to what they were doing and what they wanted to achieve. It was obvious that representing their firm well as professionals was not in their minds.  And yet here they were – on stage speaking to us in the audience.

Just speaking more strongly would have made a big difference.  Not yelling.  They had microphones so there was no need for yelling but there was a big need to more vocal power and especially hitting key words.  It was all a series of monotone deliveries, one after another.  There was no passion for their subject or their point of view and that is a death sentence in the persuasion business.

No storytelling either.  They gave up such a major opportunity to connect with their audience by telling personal stories which would have made the point they were getting at.  It was just a lot of talking without much to say really and so very disappointing.  Engaging the crowd was not in their minds whatsoever.  This makes sense if coffee chats are your only reference point for presenting.  One-on-one over coffee you don’t have to project yourself, engage the other person or lift your voice. 

The average person is just not trained to know what to look for.  At the event, I was chatting with a female lawyer about how poor lawyers are as speakers at their own seminars where they are trying to find clients.  She had no idea what I was talking about.  As it turned out the hosting firm’s senior legal counsel gave a speech at the event and afterwards I referenced it to my lawyer companion, as an example of what the problem is with the way lawyers are trained.  She had just seen the same speech, but she couldn’t distinguish what was missing.  Like most people she had no clue what to look for.  I gave her some examples from the talk and I could see a glimmer of a lightbulb going on inside her mind.  A faint glimmer to be sure.

The coffee chat “ba” and the stage “ba” are totally different.  On stage we have to be more.  Bigger, bolder, louder, more energized, more persuasive , more engaging.  We have to be “on”, rather than passive and acting like a spectator, when in fact we are the main act.

This seems a ridiculous construct – of course we when we are presenting in business we shouldn’t lie. However, look at what is happening in the rest of the world.  Kellyanne Conway introduced “alternative facts” into the American political debate to explain lies.  Donald Trump rails against the fake media and fake news. It would appear that many people, including leading Republicans, think he lies a lot, and yet half of the American electorate support him.  Are we now in a free fall where anything goes? I know this is dangerous territory to wade into, because to paraphrase basketball legend and entrepreneur Michael Jordan, “Republicans also buy sneakers and corporate  training”.

Donald Trump wrote in the Art Of the Deal that, “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration – and a very effective form of promotion”. This idea is often linked to German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels quote, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”.

So when we are presenting, is it allowed to introduce exaggeration?  You could answer that question by applying a gauge on the extent of the exaggeration.  Is a small exaggeration acceptable or is the line struck such that no exaggerations are allowed?  In Japan, at least, I would suggest that no one in business uses any “truthful hyperbole” or “alternative facts”, or exaggeration whatsoever.

This whole focus on fake news has created an audience full of cynics and doubters.  We all feel it. Every single day, I receive multiple fake emails and messages trying to get me to click on their attachment, or give them information so that they can rob me.  These fakes are getting better and better in sophistication.  More and more often, I have to contact the firm they are claiming to be from, to check they actually sent me that email or not. Back in the day, you took your chances outside with highwaymen and pirates. Today the modern era equivalents come over the internet through your email provider.  As a consequence, we are all highly tuned up on fakery and dirty dealings.

As a presenter, if we start exaggerating, our audience will doubt not just that point we are making, they will doubt every subsequent word which comes out of our mouth.  They will also warn all of their friends and colleagues to be careful of us, because we cannot be trusted, because we are a bold faced liar.

As presenters, recognising that the world is spiralling further and further down, with political discourse peppered with lies, we have to differentiate ourselves or some of this mud will get attached to us as well.  The way to do that is to offer proof, evidence, data, statistics, testimonials demonstrations, exhibits etc.  If we show a slide with a reference to some data, we need to include the source of that data.  Probably 99% of the audience won’t check it, but it doesn’t matter, we have to presume they will all check it and we need our information to be tight.  If we make a claim we have to be able to back it up with proof that what we are saying is true.  We have to see the audience in front of us as one filled with battle hardened sceptics and supreme doubters and prepare accordingly.

We must also realise this is only going to get worse and that the doubt factor will be applied to more and more of what we say.  We have to be very, very careful about making statements which stand on their own.  An opinion is fine and we have to flag it as exactly that, an opinion.  Every other statement needs to be surrounded by provable evidence.

The key is in the preparation.  We have an important message we want to get across.  What are the main points we will make and what proof do we offer to back up our claims.  That evidence has to be verifiable and cannot be “alternative facts” or “truthful hyperbole” or subtle exaggeration.  Depending on the situation we might distribute some additional documents which nominate the sources for what we are saying to head off any doubt arising in the minds of the listeners.  As things degrade further, we can be proactive about it, rather than trusting that people will take what we say at face value. As I mentioned earlier with slides, we definitely have to include the references to any data or claims we are making.

“If in doubt leave it out” is always good advice when stitching the presentation together.  If I see a slide with a reference to statistics from 2019, I wonder why is the speaker showing such outdated data and why can’t they offer something more credible.  Are they cunning, lazy or stupid?  Now, both their point and they themselves are firmly placed in my “highly doubtful box”. 

In Japan, by the way, official government statistics are usually three years out of date.  What should be an official, reliable source of information is made dubious by its antiquity.  We have to be very careful about claims we make and the proof we offer to back them up.  As usual, the Americans are leading the way for the rest of the world to become highly sceptical about what we are all being told. This pungent mud can stick to us as presenters too, no matter where we are located.

Tell the truth, back up what you say with verifiable data and avoid “alternative facts”, “truthful hyperbole” and exaggeration.  This is the path forward if we want to be regarded as credible presenters.

It was a big affair.  The entire Shinsei Bank retail staff were assembled for a series of updates from the Division Heads on what each Division was doing and where they were going.  One of my erstwhile lifelong banker colleague Division Head gave his presentation.  It was dull, monotone, low energy and not engaging in the least.  Unfortunately for him, it was my turn next.  By this time, thanks to my previous work as a Senior Trade Commissioner and Consul-General for Australia,  I had given hundreds of public speeches, mainly in Japanese, to audiences of all different stripes in Japan.

I knew how to give this talk in a way which would be interesting for the audience and in a way in which I could grab their attention.  My sharp elbowed colleague instantly recognised there were light years between his miserable efforts and my professionalism. 

Did he commit to self-improvement, to build the biggest skyscraper in town, to become excellent in public speaking?  No.  He sought out ways to pull down all the other skyscrapers, so that his could be the tallest instead.  He informed all in earshot, except for me of course, that “Greg is all style and no substance”. 

When this comment was duly reported to me, honestly, I just burst our laughing.  Not in an exaggerated thespian, ironic way, but a genuine belly laugh, because the idea was so ridiculous, so preposterous, so revealing about his insecurities.  I had given enough public speeches by that time to know it wasn’t just style that was engaging my audiences. 

What was ironic was that originally I was scouted to leave Austrade and join Shinsei’s Retail Bank, because of a speech I gave to the American Chamber of Commerce here in Tokyo.  In fact, that speech changed the direction of my career, although I didn’t realise it at the time.

Recently, I was reading an article by Kathryn Brownell in the Financial Times, where she referenced the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960.  Nixon didn’t understand the medium of television as well as Kennedy.  Kennedy saw the opportunity to speak directly to voters, rather than just relying on highlighting policy differences. I recall some reports I have come across at different times, which said that those who only listened to the debate, gave it to Nixon, while those who watched, gave it to Kennedy.

Nixon certainly made the complaint that the televised debate format brought in a new era where “politicians focused on style over substance”.  It was a dividing line between eras and the future belonged to those who mastered the skills needed to be successful with the new medium. Kamala Harris killed Donald Trump in the recent debate and that wasn’t just style and no substance.  She was extremely well prepared and brought all guns blazing to what Trump thought was going to be a knife fight.

So what about businesspeople presenting here in Tokyo?  I recall coaching a Japanese President who forsook the opportunity to do a professional speech, because he felt his vendor audience wouldn’t be ready for it.  He knew what to do but chose to not do it. That was highly perplexing to me as his coach, but standing out in Japan is never a popular course of action. He just gave the same old boring monotone performance, because that was the norm for his company and industry. It was painful for me to watch and know what he could have done instead.

I saw another local businessperson give a very good performance, as he was a skilled presenter.  However, when I sat back and thought about what he was saying, as opposed to just being mesmerised by how he was saying it, I felt there wasn’t much meat in that speech. 

Before Covid, I saw Shigeru Ishiba, a Liberal Democratic Party hopeful, currently  trying to secure the Party Presidency and thereby become Prime Minister, give a talk as part of a panel discussion. He was slumped in his chair, looking bored and his comments were lifeless, monotone and dull.  However, when I closed my eyes and listened to what he was actually saying, it had more impact. If he wants to run this country, I hope he has improved as a communicator since then.

It is obviously not a choice between style and substance.  We need both, and I want to replace the word “style” with “professionalism”, to make the point clearer.  Talking crap fluently is no help and neither is being valuable, but not being heard.  The big difference between Harris and Trump, I believe, was in their understanding of the occasion and the preparation for it.  This is precisely the same for us in business.  If we spend all of our time crafting the slide deck and none on the rehearsal, then our talk will not be optimised.

Observe any public talks today and even the good speakers face some people in the crowd who have whipped out their phones and are no longer concentrating on what is being said.  Having great content, which is ignored by the audience, because we are unskilled and so boring is no better than turning up with weak content.  We fail to have any impact. 

Let's wrap our numbers up in stories, so that people can remember them. Let’s work on our professional delivery skills, so that we can keep the listeners with us, from start to end. Let’s defeat the mobile phone, as the escape alternative to what we are saying.  By the way, it will only get worse. We have no time to lose to improve our communication capability.

Recently I was teaching a class of technical experts to have more impact when they spoke.  Like many specialists, their areas of expertise required great detailed knowledge and experience and they have to interact with other non-expert parts of the organisation.  In their case, they have to report to senior management and they also had to deal with the sales team.  The brief from HR was that the senior leaders didn’t take sufficient note of their reporting and advice because of the way they were delivering the information.  Salespeople were also pushing back on the direction they were receiving and not accepting what they were being told either.  They needed more impact when they spoke.

When we started the session, we discussed with them the areas where they wanted to improve.  Many people mentioned being more clear and succinct when they spoke. They felt that the complexity of what they were trying to convey sometimes made it difficult for the listeners.  Also, rambling during their explanation was identified as an issue.

One thing which I noticed was common across the group was their level of energy when they spoke.  They were bringing the same voice strength they would employ when having a chat over coffee with their friend to their presentations.  In Japan, this is a very typical area for more work needed when we are teaching presentation skills.  When we are speaking up in a meeting or standing before a group, we have to switch gears and bring a lot more vocal range to the content of what we are saying.

Not every word should have the same voice strength, though, but that is what a lot of people do.  They give keywords the exact same voice power, as they do less important words and phrases in the sentence.  This is highly democratic, but not very useful when trying to get our message across. We need to either hit those keywords with more volume or we need to strip the volume out and make it an audible whisper.  Both will work.  Applying the same strength throughout the sentence from go to whoa is the death knell of messaging.

Voice modulation is critical to keeping an audience with us. Listeners are so easily lost today to the allure of the internet on their phones and if they feel disengaged they are gone, gone, gone. If the vocal power is set at the same dial strength from beginning to end, then listeners will just tune us out, as it becomes repetitious and morphs into a boring, sleep actuating monotone. Like classical music, we need crescendos and the opposite, decrescendos or lulls.

The problem though, is often we have a lot on our mind and are supremely nervous.  We are not even aware that we are speaking at the one constant volume or in a monotone throughout our talk.  By the way, this doesn’t have to be a formal talk.  It can happen in a normal meeting, where we are presenting some results or giving some guidance on what needs to happen next. We lapse into a monotone and we are tuned out by the assembled masses.

Now, the nervousness has to be a best kept secret when we are speaking.  During the training, it often happened that someone would suddenly laugh nervously during their talk as the pressure mounted within them.  That laugh is a physical release from the internal mental pressure building up inside their mind. We can be nervous, but this information has to be kept from the audience, because it instantly diminishes our credibility as a speaker. 

We were filming the talks and for the first round we had them do the talk facing the camera and conducted at a ninety-degree angle to the audience. In this way, the speaker couldn’t easily see the faces in the audience. Instead, they had to concentrate on me as the coach. We sometimes do this to try to lessen the pressure of having to present to a crowd where there are a lot of beady eyes and faces staring back at us.  Later, when they had gained more confidence and poise, we had them give their talk directly facing everyone and they were able to do it without looking nervous. 

Remember, only we know we are feeling nervous. If we don’t show it and if we speak with a strong voice, we come across as confident and the audience will believe us.  That strong voice part can be a problem, though, for a lot of ladies who speak very softly.  One of the dangers is that their soft voice is ignored by the executives, usually men, who they are presenting to. They lack what is called “executive presence” and a big part of that is confidence, portrayed though voice stength. Fair or unfair, a meek, soft, tiny voice just won’t command the attention and credibility of hard driving male bosses.

When these softly spoken ladies were presenting, and I asked them to increase their voice volume, I would ask their colleagues if they thought they were yelling?  The answer would always be “no”.  I would then ask if they thought they could go even louder and the answer would always be “yes”. What a difference it made when they did.  Being softly spoken, for them, it felt like they were yelling. However, from an audience point of view, they just sounded very confident, credible and clear. 

We can get into a debate about whether women should have to change their speaking style to pander to men, but reality is reality.  Men occupy a disproportionate share of senior executive positions in most companies and they are an important audience for these ladies.  By making a small change, they will be heard as opposed to being ignored, which was the current situation in this company.

When we understand that our presenting voice cannot be at the same volume as our coffee chat with a friend volume, we will make the required adjustments.  The good news is that the results are immediate and we come across with a lot more credibly.