The Presentations Japan Series

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 subjects or thinking about the slides I could create on the subject. In this regard, I am in the minority of presenters. This is the minority you want to be in, because that slide first crowd is categorically not the group you want any part of.

When we are tasked to give a talk, how to do we work out what to speak about? A technique I always use when brainstorming about anything is the idea balloon brainstorming method. I will have a problem I need to solve. I need a system that generates the best possible ideas I can come up with and at hyper speed. Maybe someone else has better ideas, but they usually aren't around when I need them, so I have to work it out by myself.

The first step is to use paper and pen. This is old school I know, but there is something about the creative process for me that works best on paper. I am also a visually oriented learner, so being able to "see" the ideas on paper works well for me too. This is me and you may be different. My point is to know what does work for you in the first place and try and master that system, rather than just fumbling around in the dark.

I write the key word or phrase in the middle of the sheet and draw a circle around it, an idea balloon type of look. Then I think about what are the related elements to this subject. This is at a high level in this first instance. Say I was going to give a talk on presenting. The center of the balloon would be the word "presenting". Each element related to this topic would be written and then a circle drawn around it, creating idea balloons, with connecting lines drawn back to the center balloon. Elements might include "topic selection", "preparation", "delivery", "audience analysis", "common mistakes".

Each of these elements would then be transferred to individual separate sheets of paper and each word goes in the center of its page and the process repeated. The order is important. For example, I need to understand who I am talking to before I plan anything. So I start with "audience analysis", then drill down to the elements related to that which might include new sub-balloons such as, "gender split", "expertise level", "age demographic", "industry", "language fluency" etc. These would be points I would ask the organisers about, before I even started the speech preparation. I need to know at what level to pitch my talk – are they experts or amateurs or a mixture. This selection would normally be enough information and I wouldn't need to drill down any further.

For other elements, I would want to go deeper though. For example, "topic selection", would be the next logical step. I would place that in the centre of a new page and then start adding the sub-elements. This would include topics such as "topicality", "data availability", "my angle", "my expertise", "audience value factor", "audience interest". Taking each sub-element, I can go deeper again. On a fresh sheet of paper, I could place "topicality" in the middle and start building up ideas circling them into balloons on the page. For example, "Covid-19 health concerns", "business disruption", "working from home", "isolation", "staff retention issues", "mental health", "suicide increases", "leadership issues", "productivity", "cash flow", etc. As you see the list can grow very quickly for some sub-elements.

The beauty of this system is the combination of breadth of the topic possibilities and depth achieved with each topic, all being done again at a rapid clip. In ten minutes, you have multiple sheets of paper with a lot of ideas created from which to start making some selections. The next stage is tougher however, as you have to start making decisions on what you will select from the numerous possibilities. The talk has a time limit, so there has to be a sieving of the gold nuggets, that will have the greatest impact on the audience and provide the highest value. Remember, these are our personal and professional reputations we are putting on the line every time we present.

Once the topic is decided, I need to write a single sentence or phrase, which encapsulates what I believe about this topic. This is the punchline and should be completed in as few words as possible. I am forced to be clear. This is usually quite difficult, but the effort put in will help to make the conclusion we craft well worth it. The next step is gathering evidence to support the conclusion. There will be sub-chapters inside the talk, to arrange the evidence into a flow, that is easy for the audience to navigate. We need to remember that every five minutes we must switch up the presentation content, to keep our audience in our grip.

The last thing we design is the start of the presentation. This is where we build that all important first impression with the audience. In this Age of Distraction and Era of Cynicism this opening has some heavy lifting to do. We have to establish our credibility to deal with the sceptics and smash through all the clutter clogging up the brains of our assembled audience. It has to be powerful or the masses will be scrambling for their phones to escape from us.

Outlining our presentation is where we start. The assembly of the slides we will use comes last. It is important to get the order right. Do so and you will always come across as a polished professional when you speak.

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 series of poor decisions about this presentation and then reaped the whirlwind of total humiliation.

Rehearsing the presentation takes time. Time which could be devoted to adding massive content, multiple fonts and gaudy colours to the slides. This is why failures fail. They ignore logic and decide that practicing on their audience is much more efficient. It is not terribly effective though. The long term damage from short term decisions is substantial when you thrust yourself into the public eye. If you don't have big brackets of time available, then just work on pieces at a time, over time. That means start early, so there is no mad rush at the end.

I made a genius decision once to prepare my presentation on the flight from Osaka to Sydney. No sleep and subsequently plenty of irritability upon landing made for a combustible cocktail. When someone in my audience had the temerity, the audacity, the gall to challenge my assertions in the presentation, it didn't go well. I vowed NEVER to try that exercise in efficiency ever again.

Turning up just before kick off, to find there is some technical issue with your slides or the laptop or the audio is a life shortening experience. Always make the time to go early. I was giving a presentation to the Japan Market Expansion Competition and dutifully brought along my USB to plug into their laptop. Their Microsoft environment didn't like my Mac presentation layout, so it changed the whole thing. I arrived early and found myself sweating like a maniac, as I tried to fix every single slide before the start. I finished with one minute to go, but I was a nervous wreck. If I am not using my own laptop, I go even earlier now.

First impressions start from the moment the organisers advertise the event and include elements of your bio. People are forming biases and opinions about you, which they are going to size up against what they see in front of them. Get there early, check the tech and then gracefully mingle with the punters. Do your best to be charming. Being an introvert, that is no easy task for me. Do your best to schmooze people in the crowd before you start and build supporters in the room.

Don't eat too much at the lunch or dinner prior to your talk. Try instead to engage your table colleagues, again building rapport. You can always eat later if you are starving. When they call your name stride confidently and effortlessly to the stage. Have zero interaction with the laptop – don't even touch it. Instead get straight into your opening. You don't need any slides to begin with, so concentrate of creating a powerful and positive first impression. Once you have done that, then you can look down at your laptop and start the slide deck rolling. By the way, many balding presenters proffer a brilliant view of their sparse, patchy pate, as they lean forward over the laptop, fiddling with the machine. Don't be one of them.

Start off with a power opening to grab attention. Remember, we are all self-focused and supremely interested in what happened to us this morning, what we need to do after the talk and what is coming up for us tomorrow. The speaker is competing with all of these high value items in the minds of the audience. We need to supplant all of that inner-focus with our ideas, views, suggestions and recommendations. Make sure to raise your voice tone from the get go, to set the energy level at the right point to carry through to the rest of the proceedings. It is very hard to start soft, then work your way up, so start strong then vary the tone from there.

Keep your eyes on the crowd the whole time. Read their faces. Are they buying what you are saying, are they bored, are they surreptitiously or furtively looking at their phones under the table, are they nodding in agreement? This is why, if some helpful venue flunkey turns the lights down, so that you are dominated by the screen, you should stop speaking immediately and ask for the lights to be brought back up. In my experience, the moment those lights go down, a big proportion of a Japanese audience is lost, because they are sleeping. It seems to be a bit like the rhythmic rocking of the trains here, that induces slumber. Lights go down and off they go Pavlovian like, to the land of Nod. I have seen that scenario play out a number of times here. I find stopping speaking for about ten seconds interrupts the pattern and then resuming with a powerful burst of energy and voice volume wakes them right up again.

Keep the main body to around three major points in a thirty minute talk. Pile on the evidence though, because we are always speaking to a room full of sceptics recently force fed a diet of "fake news". Save the heavy detail for the Q& A, if you need it. Keep the points clear and accessible, pitched at the level of expertise of your audience. Forego all the acronyms and jargon which appeal to the cognoscenti, if the audience are mere mortal ordinary punters.

Don't get into arguments in the Q&A. There may be hot questions hurled forth by provocateurs, self-aggrandising show offs, flouting their knowledge in front of the great unwashed. Answer them to the best of your ability and then say sweetly, "let's continue this discussion after the talk. Who has the next question" and move on, giving them no more eye contact or recognition for the rest of the talk.

Always prepare a second close after the Q&A, so that you dominate the last item to linger in the memory banks of your audience. The conversation triggered by a final question can be completely tangential or even totally unrelated to what you were there to talk about. Don't let someone hijack your purpose. Seize back control of the point of this presentation, by unfurling your final close. Thank the audience and then elegantly descend from the stage to mingle with the masses. Leave everything on the podium and pack the gear up at the very end.

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 people as a model. They are in the class because they need to become more persuasive and more professional when they speak. Our High Impact Presentations Course is the Rolls Royce of presenting, so allow me to encapsulate some of the big breakthroughs I see in our classes, as tips that you can immediately adopt for yourself.

1. Stand up straight.

Well come on, you may be saying, is that a tip? How hard could that be? Surprisingly many people can't stand up straight. They put more weight on one leg than the other, kick out one hip and so look way too casual. Others are swaying about the place from the hips, like a drunken sailor. This swaying makes them look like they lack confidence and conviction about their messaging, which is extremely bad, but simply fixed. Stand straight and don't' sway about.

1. Turn your neck

Do not turn your shoulders or feet, when looking at people in the audience sitting on the sides. Amazingly, some presenters even half lean over toward someone who is sitting off to the side of the speaker. Or, even more fascinatingly, they do this cute little soft shoe shuffle with their feet to face that person. You look clunky, way too casual and unconvincing. Stand up straight on the one spot and just simply turn your head to look at people to the sides of the audience.

1. Start strong

It is very hard to build up the energy after you start. For whatever reason it is easier to start strong and then adjust the strength later. When you begin softly you tend to get stuck there. Remember, this is the Age of Distraction and we face the toughest audiences ever created. When they hit that room to hear your talk, their brains are chock full of stuff already. We have to break into their brain and open them up for our message. A strong start cuts through the crowd noise and grabs immediate attention.

1. Use gestures intelligently

The gesture needs to be congruent with what we are saying. A simple way to understand this is, if I was saying, "this is a huge global project" and had brought my palms together in front of my body facing each other only a few centimetres apart, showing a very narrow range, the words and hand position don't match. For that sentence, I need to have my arms up around shoulder height and stretching wide, almost at 180 degrees to my body.

What many people miss is the opportunity to pair the gesture with the concept. Use your hands as a measuring stick to indicate high, low, big, small etc. When the students do this type of gesture in the class, they feel a bit shy, as if it is too exaggerated. However, once they get into the review room with the other instructor, they see themselves on video and realise it looks very natural and normal.

1. Eyeball your audience

If we want to persuade our audience we need to engage them. The most powerful way to do that is give them eye contact. Politicians are geniuses at getting this wrong. They do eye contact quick sweeps of the assembled punters, effectively connecting with no one. This is fake eye contact.

We want to pick up people in the crowd and give one person solid uninterrupted eye contact for six seconds, then immediately move to the next person at random in the audience and give them six seconds of eye contact. We just keep repeating this throughout the entire talk. Six seconds is long enough to engage without becoming intrusive. Depending on the size of the audience, you may have been able to personally connect with everyone there. That is powerful.

1. Use your voice

Speakers speak with their voice, but many are not really using it properly. Using it properly would be to select certain key words in a sentence and either hit them harder or make them softer than the surrounding words. It might be used to slow----things----down or SPEEDTHEMUP when we speak. Also we can go high and low in modulation for more variety.

1. Turn the energy switch on

We speak with a certain energy output, when we are having a normal conversation. We cannot transfer that same energy to the stage or to the online world when we are presenting. We need to really ramp up the energy output.

We have a different role when we are in the limelight. We need to project our confidence, our belief in what we are saying. An easy way to do that is drive up the energy output and radiate that to the audience. We need to vary the power of course, throughout the speech, but the baseline will be about 20% higher than what we would experience in normal conversation.

If you start adopting these seven tips into your next presentation, it will be remarkably more effective. Are any of these tips especially hard? Not at all. What is required is self awareness and the ability to adjust what you are doing to make it better.

A bonus tip is to rehearse. Don't experiment or practice on your audience. Don't spend all your prep time on beating the slide deck into submission. Allocate time to practice the talk and if possible video it for review. You will be better at getting the time limits of the speech correct and will be so much more confident when the big day comes for your talk.

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 away upon completed admiration, the lightest of touches that doesn't linger long. Of course we hope that our sparkling witticisms, deeply pondered points and clear messages stay with the audience forever. We want to move them to action, making changes, altering lifetime habits and generally changing their world. In the case of a business audience, we are usually talking to a small group of individuals, so our scope of influence is rather minute. How can we extend the reach of our message?

Video is an obvious technology that allows us to capture our speech live and ourselves in full flight. How often though, do you see speakers videoing their talks? It is not like people are constantly giving public speeches in business. Apart from myself, I don't recall seeing anyone else doing it. You need to tell the audience this is for your own purposes and they will not be in the shot, otherwise you have to get everyone to give you their written permission to be filmed. You may get criticism about being a narcistic lunatic for wanting to capture yourself on video, but the only people who make that type of comment are idiots, so ignore them.

With video, instead of a standard business audience of under fifty people, you can broadcast your message to thousands. The video is also an evergreen capture which allows you to keep using the content for many years. Video has the added benefit that you can cut it up and create snippets to take the content even further. You can have ten videos sprung from the original. This again extends the ways in which you can use the medium. People have different appetites for information, so some may want to feast on the whole speech, whereas others want the digest or just the part on a particular topic of most interest.

Video has two tracks – the video and audio components and these can be separated out. Very easily you can produce the audio record of the talk. Everyone is a firm multi-tasker these days. I sometimes hear people pontificating that you cannot multi-task, blah, blah, blah. What nonsense. Walking, exercising, shopping and listening to audio content are typical multitasking activities. Busy people love audio because it saves them time and allows two things to be done at once. Now your audio content can be accessed by even more people.

Did you know that in August 2019 Google announced that in addition to text search they were employing AI to enable voice search too. This will take a while to roll out but this is the future and audio books have recently overtaken e-book sales. The audio track can become a podcast episode and be on any of the major podcast platforms. Also we can produce a transcript of the talk. There are transcribing technologies that are very good today which can reduce the cost and time of this exercise. Now we have a text version, we can project the value of the content further. It may go out as an email, a social media post or be reworked into a magazine article, or it may become a blog on your website.

Repurposing of content is the name of the game. The video and or the snippets can be sent out to your email list, put up on social media and always sit there on YouTube. The same can be done with the audio track. Now what was a simple, ephemeral interlude in a room of fifty punters, has developed a life of its own and is being pushed out far and wide. The same message and messenger, but a vastly different impact and duration. If our object is to influence, then we need to make sure we are supporting the effort to give the speech with the tools available to maximise the results.

This requires some planning and some expense. But as I mentioned, we are not leaping to our feet every month giving a public speech to a business audience. This is something we would be lucky to do two or three times a year. When you take that into account and consider how much we can leverage what we are doing, we get a lot more bang for our buck. We are going to give the talk anyway, so all the preparation is the same, yet the influence factor can be so much grander.

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 need data and data needs stories". Do we get any stories though? No, and that is why we cannot remember the person or what they said.

There is another problem with why we can't remember the person, which when you think about it, is a disaster from the presenter's point of view. What a waste of time to be a speaker and no one remembers what you said or you yourself. That means that their personal and professional brands are not being built through this activity.

To get engagement we need to use the Persuasion Power Vortex. We combine eyes, face, voice, gestures and "ki" or our intrinsic energy and we focus all of this power on one point of concentration - on the single, left eye of the audience member. Here is what we are aiming for:

1. Eyes

Normally in Japan, we don't make eye contact, but our role as a presenter gives us permission to do so. By staring straight into the left eye of the listeners we create a powerful bond with that person, such that they feel there are only the two of us in this venue and the speaker, the authority power figure in the room, is talking directly to me. We choose the left eye as a single point of concentration, because looking at two things at once is difficult and because most people are right-handed. The right side of the body tends to be the most powerful, so we choose their softer side to concentrate our power, to have the most impact.

The intensity of the eye power is such that we can only turn it on for around six seconds at a time or it is too intrusive. Longer and we make the person we are looking at feel very uncomfortable.

2. Face

Our face can be a million watt power source because we can project our emotions. Sad, surprised, shocked, happy, inquisitive, puzzled, excited, dubious, opposed, in agreement – the list is long and we should be using these expressions during our talk. The secret is to match the facial expression with the content of what we are saying, so that we are congruent. When we combine one of these expression with a direct look into the eye of the audience member the impact is strong. That facial expression doesn't have to look mean and scary - we can lock on with a warm smile – it just depends on the congruency with the content of what we are saying.

3. Voice

We don't have to have that silky smooth, deep baritone DJ voice to be an effective communicator. We go with what we have regardless of how unhappy we may be with it. My husky voice is the product of thousands of karate kiai over five decades of training in the dojo. I can't change that, so I ignore how I feel about it and just get on with it. You should do the same thing too.

The tool has power when we know how to use it. Most people have one setting – the monotone and so the tool is ineffective. Like classical music we want to employ crescendos and lulls to create variety. Too soft or too strong all of the time defeats our aim of capturing the attention of our audience.

When he hit the audience member with a power stare straight into their left eye, combine it with a strong facial expression and then use our voice to emphasise key words, the effect is instant and tremendous.

4. Gestures are silent, powerful amplifiers of what we are saying. We know that any gesture held longer than 15 seconds loses all power, so like a faucet, we turn the gesture on and off to have the most effect. When I gesture directly to you in the crowd, lock on to your left eye with my power stare, coordinate my facial expression with what I am saying and then hit a key word at the same time, you will really feel the power of what I am saying. The hitting of the key word doesn't have to be loud – it could be a conspiratorial whisper and still be highly effective.

5. Ki – intrinsic energy

When we are presenting, our aim to is to project our body language energy right to the back wall, rather than letting it get trapped within our body. We create an electric current with our ki energy and we zap our audience members, one at a time, as we move our gaze around the room, covering ten people a minute.

Hitting someone in the audience with this amount of ki energy, and combining our six second power stare, strong facial expression, voice coordination with the key words in our message and indicating directly to them with our gesture, brings everything to the single vortex of their left eye. They get zapped and feel total engagement, almost hypnotic, with us and what we are saying. We will never be forgotten by the people in that venue, as a powerful and professional speaker. This is what we want, isn't it?

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 of eye contact to engage their audience. I was coaching the Japanese President of a huge company with branches all over the world. I only had an hour because of his hectic schedule, but we got through the basics for the presentation he was going to be giving. We worked on the six pockets and six seconds rules together. The six pockets is an exercise where we grid the audience. Imagine a baseball diamond configuration. They have a left, centre, right, inner, outer field breakdown, which gives us the six pockets.

The simple idea is to engage those audience members sitting in these six pockets during the talk. I am sure you have seen it, I certainly have, where the speaker only looks at one half of their audience and just blanks everyone else. This is not the way to engage people. The reason for this is their incorrect foot placement. Our feet should be pointed straight at 90 degrees to the audience and we use our neck to turn in the direction we want, without moving our legs, hips or shoulders.

When we break the audience up into six pockets, we are conscious that we need to be including the entire crowd in our talk. There is no advantage to organise the six pockets, but then select one and spread the eye contact across the whole pocket, at the same time. I am sure you have seen this too, where the speaker scans the crowd and gives eye contact to everyone simultaneously and therefore to no one in particular.

This will not improve audience engagement. Instead, we need to select one person sitting in one of those six pockets, look them straight in the eye and hold their gaze for six seconds. Less than that is fake eye contact and longer becomes psycho axe killer intrusive. After giving that person the full six seconds, we now switch gears and pick up someone sitting in one of the other pockets, and do it at random. This is important, because we must stay unpredictable. We don't want the audience to relax and just switch us off. Keep them on their toes, so that they are concentrating on what we are saying and not secretly glancing at their phone.

In one minute, we can make a direct one-on-one connection with ten people scattered around the room. For those seated at the back, at that distance, the ten people seated around the person we have selected, all think we are making direct eye contact with them. In this way, we can really amplify the sense of personal connection.

Now I went through all of this with the President. He really nailed the posture, energy projection, gestures, voice modulation, but the eye contact was always fleeting and lasting only around two or three seconds. This is not enough to grab the person you are looking at. He also did a so-so job working the six pockets. Actually, I would say he got to the people sitting in the centre and pretty much ignored those at the extremes or in the cheap seats down the back. Later, I was thinking, "why is this eye contact thing so hard for people?" Intellectually, he got it, but he didn't have the patience or discipline to apply it properly.

My conclusion is the lacking ingredient is correct rehearsal. In our High Impact Presentations classes, if we find someone isn't getting the eye contact completed long enough, we ask everyone in the class to stand up and stay standing until they receive six seconds of sustained eye contact. Making eye contact and then looking away and resuming eye contact once again doesn't come under the term "sustained", so it doesn't count.

We actually worked on this sustained eye contact with the President in rehearsal, but the time we had together wasn't enough. My recommendation is to find a partner and then in Round One, practice holding eye contact with them for one minute, until it feels more comfortable. To take it to the next level in Round Two, stare at them intently with a strong gaze for thirty seconds and no looking away or breaking off the eye contact. In Round Three, maintain that powerful eye lock and keep it for six seconds, then relax. Previously, you had done a minute and then completed thirty seconds, so you will find that a measly six seconds feels like nothing.

Like everything, creating new habits takes time and effort. Make the time to practice because, as I have outlined, this ability is not within the grasp of most people. In this regard, it is relatively easy to stand out amongst other speakers and presenters. In most areas of business, this is extremely difficult. When we get to the world of presenting, because most people are so hopeless, there are many chances for us to shine.

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, professional brands and company brands. The only problem is that as soon as it sounds like propaganda, the audience just us switches off.

Here are some ideas on how to bridge this tricky divide.

1. Tell Stories

Get straight into a story about the firm and keep sprinkling stories throughout the talk. In the case of the President, he mentioned that the firm was a venture business when it started decades ago with just three people. They came up with a breakthrough technology for the audio business which made this firm a household name and we all owned their products.

He could have done a lot more with this. Why were there three people at the start? Who were they? What did they do to build the business? In particular, we needed to hear about their struggles, which set up the basis for their ultimate triumph. There is bound to be a tremendous amount of drama hidden away in there. We are all trained to absorb drama, which is why we have favourite movies and TV series. The drama remained well hidden by the President, so the opportunity went begging.

Their breakthrough technology was overtaken by new technologies and they had to exit that business. Here is a treasure trove of stories about how they made that pivot, all the problems they faced, and the struggles they went through. Nothing from the President about these details, but this is the type of drama we thirst to hear more about.

2. Provide Insights

As the audience, we are seeking insights and guidance on what to do and not to do. We are seeking hints, lessons and direction on what we can do with our own firms for when we face the same struggles. Yes, the details about what happened in the stories are great, but we have to move things up to a higher level and get into the take aways for the audience. Tell us what we can learn from what they did wrong. Inform us of the pitfalls to be careful about. Warn us about the hidden dangers lurking in the shadows which could bring us down.

3. Provide Valuable Data

Not all data can be shared publicly, but wherever possible, expose the numbers, tell us about the key data and results from the actions which were taken. Even if we can only talk in terms of percentages, rather than raw numbers, these are great indicators for the audience to latch on to in order to add colour to the story.

"Data needs stories and stories need data" is a good mantra to work off. Usually at business talks, all we get is the data and no stories or insights. This tells us that there is a tremendous opportunity to build our brand, because it is so easy to differentiate ourselves from all the other boring, mediocre, unprofessional business speakers.

4. Engage Through Questions

Rhetorical questions are a gold mine for speakers. They allow us to really engage the audience and get them on our wavelength. If their concentration is flagging or they are distracted by their phone, tossing out a question to the assembled masses is a great way to get them back and focused on us. The power comes from the fact that nobody, except the speaker, knows this is a rhetorical question which the audience won't have to answer and only the speaker will provide the response. That tension acts like an attention magnet for us to grab our listeners and hold them tight

5. Third Party Endorsements

Saying we are great doesn't fly, but quoting a reputable third party who says we are great is well accepted. We think our Dale Carnegie Course is terrific and if we say that, for the audience, this is a "so what" moment. Instead, we can say, and this is true, that Warren Buffett thinks the course is terrific and it changed his life. This is gold. Warren is the most impressive investor of all time and he is well respected. His endorsement carries a lot of credibility. Who can you find as a third party authority figure to add lustre to your firm's story?

We should promote our companies when we have the chance to speak in public, but in a ninja way, which doesn't provoke scepticism or disdain. The line is clear about this and we have to navigate that divide with great caution and be adept at making the most of the opportunity without blowing the chance. Remember, people don't recall what you said in detail, but they do recall you. Always start your talk design with how you want to be remembered by the audience and go forward from there. The upside is unbounded because the competition is so lacking and unremarkable. Our time to stand tall and shine.

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.