The Presentations Japan Series

"Greg is all style and no substance", my erstwhile colleague happily told everyone who would listen, while I was on stage. It was an occasion where each Division Head presented to the entire company on what they were doing and where they were taking their part of the firm. He had preceded me and immediately felt his own inadequacy as a presenter, seeing me work the room. His preferred option was to attack, to stitch his pathetic, wounded ego back together again. When his remark was relayed to me later, I just outright laughed. Not a shy, timid, embarrassed laugh, but a real "that is so pathetic, it is funny" laugh. He obviously had no clue then and I would guess he still has no clue today wherever he is. Unfortunately, I have run into several versions of him since that time.

In these cases, the speaker is grappling with what they see as a two-dimensional choice between being "content heavy" and using "spurious techniques" to deliver the talk. I was watching a group of engineers giving their talks to inspire the audience to vote them on to the committee of a prestigious volunteer business organisation. If I listed up their firms for you, everyone would know them, because these were the representatives in Japan of serious brand name companies. Initially, I was sold on the brand power. Sitting there, I was expecting some excellent five-minute talks on why they should join the committee. They were mostly shockers, barely able to string two sentences together and seemed to me incredibly dull candidates for consideration. Their technical education had not prepared them for this eventuality and it showed.

We also get this phenomenon in our High Impact Presentation Course classes, where the speaker is wedded to their content and just dismisses the importance of the delivery component. Somehow, in their mind, the incredible quality of their information is all they need to be a successful communicator. The latest statistics, in-depth findings from recent research, industry white papers, buyer surveys, referencing scientific papers etc., are seen as the Holy Grail for being an effective speaker.

It was hard enough for this concept to survive before, once the internet made the access to information and free information at that, so widely available. When I was at University, the library stacks housed the limits of possible knowledge and the choices were made simple. For my son, his educational experience has been different. He has spent his time trying to sort out which bits of the information from the internet firehose are the most relevant, as he drowns in readily available data.

Now ChatGPT and all the other AI driven information sources have made instant information and data more of a commodity than ever before in human history. Yes, some of it is fake news, like that dodgy American lawyer who recently used AI to do his research and it created legal cases and precedents which were completely fictitious. Reflect, though, that we are at the starting point of the AI charge and these systems will only get better. Why do we need to be impressed by the fact you have data, when we can easily access it ourselves? Insight based on the data is the value pivot we speakers need to make to elevate our content to make it powerful, relevant and attractive. We still need to deliver it in a way however which completely resonates, engages and persuades our audience.

There is an opposite problem, though. This is the fluffy talk delivered with tremendous verve and vigour. I saw such a speaker, who was very good with the delivery. At first blush, it seemed impressive as a talk. When I sat back though and reflected on what he was telling us, it was only then that I realised that his actual content was totally unremarkable. My metaphor is that the value of his content was more like drinking the warm froth on a beer, rather than enjoying the cold body of the refreshing craft ale, on a humid Tokyo summer day.

So we have to be more than just one dimension. We need to be both good at talking and good at content. That changes our perspective about what is our role as the speaker. When I tested ChatGPT on putting together the outline of a talk on leadership in Japan, it did a workman like job. It wasn't remarkable stuff, but if you were someone who wasn't skilled in this creative activity, it would provide you with a base from which to further refine the content. Even if it produced something truly brilliant, you still have to get up on your hind quarters and deliver it to the audience.

You can read it to me, of course, but in that event, just send it and I will read it for myself, so I don't need you hanging around. Much better would be studying how to be a competent speaker who can bring the content to life. This is all knowable by the way and there are few mysteries involved. Hard work in rehearsal with proper coaching will lift 99% of the speaker dross we are assaulted with in business to a much more digestible and impressive level. Eye contact, voice modulation, gestures, body language, pacing, pauses, emphasising keywords and phrases are some of the key basics which we can and should master.

Getting the content to sing is our goal and we do this with the idea of building our personal and professional brands. Regardless of what you do, you are affecting your personal and professional brands anyway, when you present, for good or bad and we must never forget that. Given the choice, we should aim to bolster the quality of the content with an excellent delivery, based on coachable skills. Make that the goal and you will never go wrong.

I gave a speech recently to a room full of managers, some foreigners and some Japanese. It was an internal talk and the purpose was to get the leaders motivated and get their mojo going, after having been hammered by three years of Covid. They recently passed across the feedback and it was quite confusing. Some said, "love the passion, dynamism" etc., and some said, "too loud, too strong", etc. What do you make of this? What I made of it was, judging by the faces when I was presenting, the vast majority of people were accepting of the energised style. For a small minority, it was too powerful. Okay, so what are we supposed to do with this feedback?

There are four purposes for our presentations. In business, the Inform style is the most common one, where we provide extensive information about project updates, results, introducing new policies, and explaining overall strategic direction. There are the Impress presentations. where we are selling our organisations' capabilities and credibility. We are trying to boost the brand of the firm and to encourage buyers to select us a trusted partner. Entertain speeches are often given before the festivities or as a classic after-dinner speech to put everyone in a positive and happy mood. Then there are the Motivate talks, where we want the audience to take some action. We have a powerful belief in what we are suggesting. Say we had the cure for cancer, through a particular regime, we would broadcast this far and wide and with a missionary zeal to convert people to the path we say is the right one.

The speech I was giving was in the Motivate category. They had suffered a downturn in motivation and zeal and my job was to restore that commitment to the cause. Naturally, this type of talk is going to feature a lot of energy, passion, commitment, belief. My audience was a mixed group from all different divisions within the organisation, so there was a big spread of personality types. The Amiable personality type is rather muted, reserved, self-contained. I would guess the "too strong" comments came from people in this group.

Should I have toned it down to suit this group? I don't think so. My mission was to motivate and to inspire, so energy and passion were needed for that purpose. Clearly, some people didn't respond to that. As speakers we have to try and seek the acceptance of the majority, rather than the minority. You quickly realize that it's impossible to please everyone and be everything to everyone. Do I want to spend my valuable time giving talks to Milquetoast audiences or do I want to talk to people who want to fired up? Clearly, with my personality, the latter is the correct answer.

So how dramatic can we be as a speaker? I certainly added dramatic flourishes to my talk with varied voice modulation and big and powerful gestures. I used my facial expression to drive home points, used movement, where needed, to underline a key point. Was it too much? Clearly for some it was, but did I get my message across? Did I break through the clutter occupying the minds of my audience? Did I stir passion in those who wanted to be fired up again? Yes, I did and if I was to give that talk again, I wouldn't change anything about how I delivered it.

When we speak, why would we give equal emphasis to every word in a sentence? Each word has a different value and the way we deliver the talk should correspond to that unique value. If there are keywords in that last sentence of mine, I should hit them harder or much softer than the other words, to highlight them, making them standout, elevating them above the others. For example, I could highlight key words and phrases like this: Each word has a different value and the - way - we - deliver the talk should correspond to that different value. When I use these phrases "Each word", "the way we deliver" and "different value", I need to highlight them by using speed and strength - either slowing down or speeding up, going hard or going soft.

When delivering the sentence, I can add more dynamism to the phrases with gestures and body language. The combination of the word delivery, the appropriate gesture and the overall body language come together for a very dramatic combination of emphasis supporting the message, which will break through and grab the attention of the listeners.

What we want to avoid is sameness – all strong or all soft. Either is guaranteed to have audiences leaping to grab their phones to elude us and succumb to the magnetic force field of the internet. We want them to get our message, so we need to mix it up and keep them with us. I often use the example of classical music – it has tremendous variance and that is why we keep listening. Our talks should have ebbs and flows, crescendos and lulls.

There are plenty of people delivering "Johnny One Note" boring, grey, uninspiring talks, so we don't need more of those. Try to seek micro areas where you can bring a bit of pizzazz and flair to the talk. Not constant across the whole talk so it becomes tiring, but add flashes of drama and sprinkle these into the speech, to keep your audience with you. Trust me - it is a lot more fun when you do it this way.

TikTok, Reels and all of the other super short form visual media are creating a nightmare for presenters. Twitter started things off with the very limited number of words allowed per tweet, forcing people into tiny corners of the mind. The trend toward short form rather than long form has meant that audiences are getting trained to absorb information in tiny little blocks.

What happens though when we have a forty-minute presentation? The audience become restless and their minds start to wander, because they are not getting mini-hits every minute. The ubiquitous mobile phone with that drug like mainliner effect straight to the internet enables them to escape from us immediately. They leave us for the lure and charm of something more interesting to pay attention to.

Is this going to get better? "No" is the answer, so what can we do about it? One thing I notice when teaching our High Impact Presentations Course is that presenters make things more difficult for themselves by offering up additional distractions to the audience. There are a range of these, so let's go through some of them.

1. A soft voice

Speaking to a colleague or a friend up close and personal doesn't require a lot of voice projection, so we tend not to raise our voice when speaking in these situations. Presenting though is a different occasion. It requires us to engage our audience to keep their attention. Adding volume to our voice sends out a strong vibration which commands attention to what we are saying. We sound more confident and credible to the listener. Coaching class participants to up the ante on voice projection often bothers them, because they feel they are screaming at their audience. When we play back their video of their presentation they realise it isn't too loud and in fact they see they are coming across as capable and competent.

2. Pointless gestures

Any gesture maintained for longer than 15 seconds immediately becomes irrelevant and annoying to the audience. This is a simple enough guideline, but we sometimes find the class participants may be using one hand to gesture, but they have completely forgotten about the other hand. They have parked it somewhere across their body, adding zero value to the proceedings. We want our gestures to help us highlight words and ideas, such that they rise above the noise and register with the listener in support of our message. If the hand is floating around somewhere and not being used, just "turn it off" and let it hang by your side, out of trouble.

3. Wooden faces

Professor Albert Mehrabian's research has helped us to understand the importance of congruency when we speak. His central thesis is that what we are saying has to match up with the way we are saying it. For example, how many times have you seen the speaker maintain the one facial expression throughout their talk? In that talk though there were probably areas of good and bad news. Good results, disappointing results, opportunities, challenges are all being reported, yet their face doesn't reflect any of that. Congruency would mean a smile or a happy face for good results and opportunities and a serious face for bad results and challenges. Mehrabian found that when we are not congruent, the audience gets distracted by how we look and sound and they are only hearing the message 7% of the time. That means 93% of the time what we are saying is not connecting. That type of poor result should definitely warrant a "serious" face.

4. Twitching and swaying around

When the body starts swaying around, we are setting up visual competition for our message. The knees and hips are circling around as if to some soul music groove. Our eyes are drawn to the movement and we tune out the message from the presenter.

In addition, many participants will wander around on stage moving forward and then moving back to the same spot. What was the point of the movement? Actually it had no point and all they are doing is distracting us from their message.

Sometimes the speaker will adjust their feet to face one side of the room and then do a little soft shoe shuffle, to move around and face the other direction. All of this is competing with the words coming out of their mouth. We have this wonderful thing called the neck and it can rotate enough degrees to allow us to plant our feet in one spot and yet be able to look at the audience members to our extreme left and right sides with no difficulty whatsoever.

5. Rambling and using filler words

Puzzling audiences with the point of what you are saying is guaranteed to lose them in a split second. I was listening to a podcast the other day and the guest was rambling away and for the life of me I couldn't get the point of the message and I lost interest immediately. Ums and Ahs and other filler words are another turn off as the speaker struggles to string two words together. We abandon ship and desert the messenger.

The presenter's job is only going to become more fraught and we need to lift our game as communicators, if we are going to have any hope of getting our message through. Let's purge ourselves of these distracting habits we have accumulated and clean up our act. The good news is all of the other presenters out there will change nothing and we will look like rock stars by comparison.

The vast majority of the time in our company we are teaching presentation training to groups of fourteen. We have two instructors and we video everything. We provide an enormous amount of one-on-one coaching during the training and the results are spectacular. All good. From time to time, we provide one-on-one coaching to company Presidents. Usually, they have a special talk coming up and they need to really nail it.

Being able to customise the training exclusively for them is a joy for the instructors, because we can go so much deeper. Having more time with them makes an enormous difference. The power of repetition comes into play and that completely changes their results. Doing their talk once is the usual experience for most businesspeople. Most don't rehearse. Well that isn't quite true – sadly, they rehearse on their live audience. Not the greatest idea in the world and to top it off, they only ever deliver that talk once. This ensures there is no real growth associated with the activity.

When we do one-on-one coaching, we help with the design of the talk and the crafting of the delivery. This is where the expertise of the trainer really comes into play. If the trainer is also an experienced public speaker, that is even more ideal. Getting the design right for the occasion is critical. As trainers and public speakers, we have a broad range of ideas to draw upon to help with the design phase. Most businesspeople don't get that much practice to design their talks in a year, so they are always struggling to create the excellence the talk deserves. As trainers, we have heard thousands of talks and have found areas where we can coach and transform them into something special. Being able to see possibilities the client cannot see ensures we can add real value. Also, because we are outside of the system, we can challenge what is being offered. A subordinate will probably conclude they should not make any waves around the boss, but we are presentation professionals and we can offer our insights and perspectives freely.

The individual time with the speaker is simply gold. We can have extended hours running continuously and really work on every aspect of the talk, from the design right through to the delivery. Getting the visuals right is always a big point of improvement in the added sophistication of the presentation. Most senior executives in my experience still get this wrong. The most common issue is too much confusion on the screen. There are too many competing pieces of visual stimulation distracting the audience. Being able to clean up the visuals on the spot is so valuable because the speaker can see the difference immediately and it makes their job of presenting the information much easier.

Sometimes the logic of the flow can be improved to make the points clearer and more compelling. The author of the design can sometimes be too close to their material and everything makes sense to them, but to the uninitiated, it can lead to gaps in understanding which make the content hard to absorb. Having that unbiased coach there to challenge the presenter's assumptions is an excellent opportunity to catch any problems before the audience hears the talk. There is often the problem of too much information for the time to present it and it is very hard to eliminate slides you have fallen in love with. The coach has no such restrictions and can help to slim it down to fit the time slot. Often the President's' speech is created for them by their staff. This can often lead to some pretty ordinary content being created, because the staff are not presentation experts. The coach can weigh in at this point and work on improving the content coverage to further increase the professionalism of the presentation.

The delivery piece is where the real magic occurs. There is so much power in doing the same presentation over and over and over again, polishing every small aspect of the talk to make it perfect or as close to perfect as possible. This is where you need time, because if it is forty-minute speech for example, doing a few repetitions really burns through the clock very quickly. The ability to recast a part of the speech and then elevate the next rendition makes the progress tangible and permanent. Usually the engagement of the audience part is neglected because the speaker is concentrating on the content rather than the delivery. This is a big mistake which the coach can work on getting the balance right. The audience won't remember the details on the slides, but they will remember the presenter and how they felt during their presentation.

It is what we say and how we say it that is key. Small changes in cadence, word emphasis, pauses, gestures, posture and facial expression can have a dynamic impact on the way the audience receives the talk. Voice modulation is how we keep the audience with us and how we don't allow them to escape through distraction. The repetition component is what we need to make this complex construct really work for the speaker.

If you ever have an important talk to give, don't try to work it out by yourself – get a professional to work with you. Never forget, every time we speak in public, we are putting our personal and professional brands out on display. This is not something we can afford to get wrong, nor an opportunity to squander the chance to build both of those brands.

Most foreigner delivered presentations in Japan will be delivered in English and have a mixed audience of both Japanese and non-Japanese. There is the tendency to imagine, because it is in English, that any necessary Japanese cultural components can be over-looked. The presumption is the presentation can be delivered, just as it would be, for a foreigner only audience. Why would we imagine that? The Japanese audience members may speak English in their firms, but often the language capability will vary and very, very few will be operating at native speaker levels. If we are not clued in, we could lose a sizeable chunk of our audience.

The speed of delivery is usually the first barrier we erect, to keep our Japanese speaking audience from getting our message. We are speaking in English, so we assume we can speak as we normally would, without ever considering the needs of our audience. It is extremely rare in my experience to listen to a presenter who is speaking too slowly. In fact, I cannot recall anyone having that issue. The opposite, though, is the norm and unfortunately, I am guilty of this too. I get passionate about my subject and I start really leaning into it. Invariably I speed up. The cure for this is to keep in mind that too fast a speed will lose a lot of the audience and that I need to keep a slower pace than normal. Also, by using pauses, I can regulate the delivery in a way which will stop the speed from revving up.

Idioms are the nemesis of international understanding. I grew up in Australia, so we were bombarded with American and English television programming. In this way, we learned the dual languages and the idioms associated with them. One of the tricky problems I have is to deduce which idioms are international and which are purely of Australian invention. There is a surprising amount I found. I know this because the non-Australians I am speaking to go blank when I let loose with one of these little Aussie specials and I realise my message is not getting through. As a presenter in Japan, it is better to delete idioms entirely and find alternative methods of expressing the same idea.

Sporting references are the other barrier to communication. Australia is a very sporty nation, so we have tons of these too. Americans have their own favourites and many times I have to ask what they mean and I am a native speaker, so imagine how quickly you lose your audience of Japanese guests. It is better to just cut these out of the presentation delivery entirely and look for more easily accessible expressions to convey the point we want to make.

In Japan, in normal polite society, we know that looking someone straight in the eye isn't done and we have to look at their forehead, or throat or chin instead. What about eye contact with our Japanese members in the audience – should we just ignore them to make certain they don't feel too uncomfortable? There is eye contact and there is eye contact. Anything under 5 seconds is too short to make a connection and anything over six seconds is too intrusive. We can still engage our Japanese members in the audience with eye contact if we keep it within these bounds. When we look at audience members, we are creating a one-on-one personal connection which is very strong. We are saying, "You are the only person in this room and I am talking directly with you". Japanese guests are not used to this, so when it happens, the impact is enormous and they really gravitate to us.

Here is a hint – don't worry about the expression on their faces. Sometimes it can look like they are rejecting what we are saying, but in fact they are just concentrating hard on the content to catch it. What we see is their serious face, not their angry face, but it's hard to divine which is which for foreigners. I had my breakthrough moment on Japanese physiognomy in Kobe, when I was speaking in Japanese to a hundred salespeople about Australian education. Midway down on the left he was sitting there throughout my hour-long presentation, with the angriest look on his face, as if he was not buying one thing I said.

When I finished, he leapt out of his chair and hurried down the center aisle to where I was standing. I honestly thought he was going to punch me in the face and was getting ready to defend myself. To my astonishment, he started double pumping my hand and telling me in Japanese what a terrific talk that was and how much he learnt about Australia. Assume the Japanese guest is concentrating on what you are saying and don't be put off what may appear to be a hostile reception to your message.

Don't worry if Japanese don't ask questions at the end. Often, nobody wants to be the first in anything, so they are waiting for someone else to go first. Also, there is a complex calculation going on in their minds about how they will be perceived by this question. Is it a veiled insult to the speaker, implying that they were not clear enough in their talk? Will others think they are stupid for asking this basic question? Shouldn't they defer to others who are maybe older or more senior or with women, defer to men to ask the questions. If there are foreigners in the room, there is usually no shortage of people wanting to ask questions, but we should specifically encourage the Japanese to speak up.

We can say, "In my culture, asking questions is never seen negatively, it just shows an interest in the topic. I know Japan is different, but let me encourage our Japanese guests to ask questions they may have. If you would like to ask me questions after the talk, I will be here for about fifteen minutes and would welcome questions you may have". This shows a great deal of sensitivity to those Japanese in the audience and they will feel much closer to you as the speaker.

There were three experts on the panel for this luncheon event. One man and two women. They were using microphones but that didn't help in one case. A very well presented, professional woman was adding her insights and point of view on the topic, but I couldn't catch what she was saying. My table was situated right in front of her but to no avail. The man had a strong voice, as did the other woman expert and I had no problem gathering in their contributions. This other panellist however was beyond my ken.

I was wondering about why this was the case. There were a couple of problems and one was microphone technique she was using. Most of us don't use a microphone very often so we are not always au fait with the tech. Definitely her technique wasn't working. Waving the microphone around while speaking defeats the purpose and the audio engineering. If she had held it a little higher, in the one spot and spoken across the mesh of the microphone, then we probably would have had a better chance of hearing what she was saying. Here is a hint – don't wave the microphone around folks!

The other issue is she had a rather soft voice to start with. Many people have this attribute, which can be quite charming in a one-on-one situation, but generally doesn't work all that well in a formal speaking situation. It is often the case with women speakers also I have noticed, but men too can be speaking up, but their voices are not carrying. I see it as a mindset shift which hasn't taken place for the speaker, in order to be effective as a presenter. When we are sitting with someone, one on one, we don't need to project our voice. They can hear us just fine. Having said that, I have noticed many Americans can be quite loud in these same situations, so the whole conversation is audible, if you are sitting close by. Being an Aussie, I guess that is a cultural aspect and probably Americans are not the only ones who do this, but I have noticed this aspect of their behaviour. I would see that as a plus though because it means they are better equipped to go from a one-on-one situations to speaking to a crowd and adjusting their volume accordingly.

If we are not used to using microphones and we are softly spoken, then we need to make some adjustments when we are presenting. Using the equipment, as it is designed, is a must. Speaking more loudly is also called for, but this is very difficult for softly spoken people to them, it sounds like they are screaming. I notice this in pour presentations training. I am asking some of the participants in the class to raise their volume and they adjust it only microscopically. They cannot imagine speaking more loudly and so they restrain themselves. In these cases, I turn to the rest of the class and I ask them if they think the speaker is screaming or speaking too loudly. They, of course, say no and I need to keep encouraging the presenter to go bigger with their voice range.

Why do they need to speak more loudly? Being a presenter is different to chatting with your mate or girlfriend over coffee. You are there to be taken seriously, your personal and professional brands are on display. We will make a judgement not only about you, but we will extend it to your whole organisation. If you are a dud, we think everyone down at your shop is a dud. If you are brilliant, we think the whole crew are brilliant. By bringing enough volume to the presentation, you lift your credibility, because it comes across as more confident and considered. Obviously, you also increase the odds of the audience actually hearing what you are saying as well.

We video the participants presentation and we have a separate coach in the review room analyse it and then coach them. When we play the video back, they can hear the first coach in the main room asking them to increase the volume. We ask them in the review room, "does that seem too loud or too crazy?". They always answer "no" and they start to realise that they can get out of their comfort zone and improve their presentations, as a consequence of making a few small changes in volume delivered to the audience.

It is always a good practice to get to the venue early and practice with the microphone to work out the right distance and elevation from your mouth, in order to make sure you are going to be heard and appreciated. Getting it right doesn't take long and will make a big difference in how you come across. When you are tool loud the equipment tells you straight away with the static you produce but being too soft has no warning signal.

In general, we buy confidence and presenters who speak with a strong voice come across as confident. If you don't have a strong voice, at least try to speak louder than normal and if possible, always request a microphone to allow the tech to help you be understood by your audience.

When I exchange business cards in Japan, I select from the one designed for a Western audience and another for a Japanese audience. Often, I will hand one over to a foreigner and then a different one to the Japanese person accompanying them. This will draw a remark, "Oh, the back of the cards are quite different". I like to ask the Japanese person what do they think is the difference when they compare the two? Some see it and for others I have to explain to them that the English one has the five core course we teach for the English version and the Japanese version has ten things we teach. The reason being that Japanese are data vampires and they cannot get enough information. For a Western audience, five things are about the maximum complexity they want to handle. Actually three is probably better for them, but I push it a bit. When I make this point about the data preference for Japanese, they respond with a nervous little laugh which says the "jig is up" and underlines the truth about presenting to Western and Japanese audiences.

This throws up a dilemma when presenting in Japan. Who do we prepare the presentation for – ourselves as Westerners, who like simplicity, clarity, brevity or the massively data hungry Japanese audience? The danger part in Japan is that when they prepare their presentations, they suit themselves and go all out for massive troves of data. Just to really accentuate the cultural differences, they decide the smartest thing is to put as much data on each slide as physically possible. To make it even more exciting, they leaven things up a bit with six colours and five different fonts. It is a total mess.

When we present we always have to begin with two thoughts – who is my audience and what is my main message for them. If we have a Japanese only audience, then that is easy – we can go bananas on the amount of data we offer. If it is a Western audience, we can be very zen like and chilled. If it is a mixed audience that is a bit more complex. What should we do?

Whether it is a Japanese or Western audience, we should absolutely not make the mistake of going crazy and putting up too much information on the one slide. The Golden Rule is one idea per slide and the clearer the access to the key information the better. Slides cost nothing to make, so we can split information across five different slides, rather than the typical Japanese approach, of cramming all of the same information on to one slide.

For a Japanese audience, we need more data than we may think is necessary. They want the references also to where the data came from, so we cannot miss that point, as it is critical for the credibility of what we present. Often audience members will check on what we say on screen and do it in real time.

I make a joke that data hungry people of any persuasion are comfortable and happy with three decimal places for numbers. That would include many Japanese in the audience. The usual Japanese approach though is to put the whole spreadsheet up on screen, even when there is a very small possibility that anyone seated in the room can actually see the numbers in the cells because they are so tiny. We can put the spreadsheet up on screen, like screen wallpaper, to give the presentation some credibility. We should then use animation and create a pop up cloud with a key number in it, which is overlayed on top of the spreadsheet. Usually in a spreadsheet, there will only be a few numbers we want to highlight, so we select those out and place them in the animated pop up cloud, in large font, making it easy to see. We can then talk to the numbers and make our point.

One of the best ways to satisfy a Japanese data hungry audience is to take a two step approach. Either have some additional physical materials prepared for distribution after the event or give them a URL, where they can access the data. This makes the audience very happy to get the information. Never distribute the data before your talk though. If you do that, everyone will be focused on the data and not on you the speaker. Hold it until the end and then make it available, so there is no competition with your message delivery.

One of the issues with data in Japan is that most official statistics are out of date by the time they are made available. Usually they are three years old, so that is a big disadvantage when giving presentations, because as we all know a three year Covid period has completely turned everything upside down. The only compensating factor is everyone suffers from the same fate with official figures. The better approach is to look for recent industry sector surveys or more current private sector information releases, by research institutes etc. It is very credibility sapping to see the speaker pop up data which is clearly out of date and expect us to believe what they are saying. It happens all the time here, but let's not be part of that crowd.

When presenting in Japan, always remember you cannot satisfy the need for more and more data, but you can present it in a way which maintains your professionalism and allows your key messages to break through all the clutter.

I was reading a post on LinkedIn by an American lady, who spilt coffee over her blouse, just moments before she was due to give a key presentation to a group of executives. That got me thinking about how to handle these types of disasters which arise when we are presenting. Most of them are tech related – nothing works, it partially works or it suddenly stops working. Some disasters are down to the ambush presentations, for when we had no idea we would have to speak and suddenly we have to say a few words. Some are things like black coffee over your nicely pressed white blouse or business shirt and it is totally obvious to everyone.

The key to avoiding ninety percent of disasters is to get to the venue early and check the tech. If you get there early enough, there is a strong chance the tech geniuses on hand will be found and be able to fix it for you. Often, with early morning presentations, the tech wizards are not in the building and so there is no solution – you are solo! This is why it is always a good idea to print out your slides, as these are visible to you and form a navigation for you through the talk. If you don't have access to the copy of the slides, then just sit down and write down the main key words for each chapter for the talk.

I was attending a Harvard Business School week long course on Leading Professional Service Firms and one of the professors gave a three hour long lecture with no notes. Well that is what it appeared to be, but the Prof was crafty. It was one of those lecture theatres with tiered seating from top leading down to the bottom, where the stage was located. As we were filing up the stairs out of the lecture theater, to go outside, I happened to notice a large piece of paper stuck to the back wall, with ten words on it. Those ten words were his lecture notes and only he could see them. It gave him the order and he just filled in the blanks with his talk.

We usually only get a chance to give our talk once and unlike the good Prof, we are not giving this talk every semester, so we don't know the content cold. It doesn't matter. Write down the key points you want to talk to and then use the list as your guide when giving the talk. No one is going to jump to their feet and denounce you are a scoundrel and fraud because you are glancing down at your list. They are in fact relieved that you are not reading the whole text to them and are only finding your place, as you proceed with the talk.

Another thing is laziness. I am inherently lazy and this particular talk was a packed lunch and a passport away in distance terms, so lugging my laptop that far seemed like a chore to avoid. In a genius moment I thought, "I know, I will just take the USB and plug it into the host's computer". I was an idiot. What I didn't consider was I use a Mac and they were using a different system and immediately the slide layout was thrown into chaos. Fortunately, I do what I advise and I got there early, so I had time to reformat the whole slide deck. I was sweating I can tell you and I got it done with fifteen seconds to spare!

Rather than being ambushed, I suggest that you never let that occur because you are always prepared to speak at any event, with either a question or a comment. We take anticipatory steps to protect ourselves. While you are sitting there, think what is a question you would like to ask and have that ready for the Q&A or in case some smarty pants MC decides to include you in the proceedings, without a by your leave.

If we have a personal presentation disaster such as the coffee incident, what do we do? This lady was vigorously trying to scrub the stain away, but it wasn't working, so she had to present coffee stains and all. I wouldn't recommend just carrying on, as if everything was normal. I would acknowledge what has happened and then carry on. Call it out and get it out of the way at the start. I would say, "My apologies for adding a coffee stain to today's proceedings, but let's get going regardless".

If my brain wasn't totally fried with nerves, shame and embarrassment, I might attempt some self-depreciating humour and say, "Today's coffee stain on my shirt is sponsored by Blue Mountain from Kenya, it tastes great and wears exceptionally well. Now, let's get into today's topic".

Humour is difficult at the best of times and being able to funny, when you have just spilt coffee all over yourself before a major audience is a big ask. If you can pull it off, make yourself the target of the humor, rather than someone else. Don't say things like, "I would like to give a big shout out to the waiter for spilling coffee all over me just before I was ready to go on today". Take responsibility for your appearance, deal with it, then ignore it and carry on with aplomb.

In the end, no one cares. Sure, you provided some light relief to their day, but they are all more focused on themselves, than on the fact you have coffee all over you. Do a professional job and focus on engaging the audience with your key messages and your personal and professional brands will be safeguarded.

Presenting online is difficult. Presenting in person is difficult. The new hybrid version is a combination of the worst of both online and in-person worlds for the presenter. We teach presentation skills and one of the big breakthroughs for our class participants is the ability to get engagement with their audience. In the online world of presenting this is almost impossible. You become this tiny talking head, trapped in a tiny box on screen, every time you are using slides. If there are no slides it gets better. It also gets better if you stop the sharing function as you get a little more screen real estate. The trouble is this feature is clunky every time you want to go back to using the slides again and the interchanges are not very elegant. If you can have the speaker view only function working, then you get a lot of screen ratio focused on the speaker and that is good. Usually though, we are using slides and so it is back to the tiny box for all of us on-screen.

The real dilemma with hybrid is where some members of the audience are sitting there right in front of you and the rest are scattered to the four winds, coming in via the hosting platform, be that Zoom or Teams or Webex or whatever. There are issues with the camera angles, the camera zoom-in function and especially with the audio quality. If the camera is mounted at the back of the room, then the audience on-line gets a wide shot of those in the room, as well as the speaker up at the front of the room. In this case, we are very remote from the people watching from home. This insignificance factor is intensified by the fact we are highly diminished on screen, stuck in that tiny little box and being presented at a distance to our audience. Our facial expression power is greatly reduced and even our gestures are not having much impact, because they seem so small when on screen.

I was giving a talk recently using the hybrid system and I realised this particular set up was for people who don't know how to present and actually favoured those who like to lecture. By that I mean the speaker is there to convey information and isn't thinking how to engage the audience. The camera was mounted on a screen to my right, up high. There was a distance between that camera and my face and if I moved toward my audience in the room, I found I was tracking away from the camera set up for those at home. Don't forget, for those viewing from home, I was doing all this while trapped in that tiny box on screen, because I was using slides.

The set up meant I couldn't move much from the spot and that spot was set behind a podium. Now I don't recommend moving around too much when speaking because it can be distracting from the message. However, being able to use your full body language is a powerful tool we don't want to negate if we can avoid it and getting out from behind the podium is preferred. In this case that wasn't possible, so the audience in the room wasn't getting full access to me as the speaker.

The easy out is to ignore the needs of the audience coming in online and just present to those in the room. For those at home the video presentation is like that for a third party. They are there watching remotely and there is zero connection and engagement with the person on screen. If we go the other way, then we just engage those at home and don't worry about those in the room. That isn't a very natural or an easy thing for a speaker to do, when all of these faces are sitting there and staring up at you in the room.

We have to accept that so far, we cannot easily get this to work perfectly when using two competing mediums. Having said that, we can try and improve on it being a disaster by a couple of tweaks. If the camera is close to us, then regularly switching our attention from those in the room, to those at home is possible. We just look straight into the camera and we can speak directly to this segment of the audience. We can make our point to this audience and then switch back to those in the room and make our next point. The key is to look at the camera and not the screen. We just treat the on-line camera as another member of the in-room audience.

Eye height is ideal for the camera mounting, so adjust it if you can, to get that perspective. Make sure the audio quality is well served by having a good microphone set up, so that people online can hear you. If the in-room audience is under 30 people, then you can get away with not needing a separate microphone for them.

The better solution requires some preparation. Have a monitor at the back so the speaker can see the remote audience and also themselves, with everyone equally trapped in their little boxes on-line. The slide deck is also being shown through Zoom etc., so that the remote audience can see what is going on, while the live audience has a screen in the room they can see. Have the speaker fitted with a pin mic, so that they can move and not be trapped behind a podium or a desk.

Have three video cameras set up. One zoomed in on the speaker for a tight shot and one for a wider, more full body shot. Have another set up at the front of the room to capture the shot of the audience. This requires a connection to a control box, where the camera angles can be switched easily by a controller. The speaker now only has to engage the live audience. The camera angles are set up from the in-room audience perspective so that those at home get the same sense of the presentation as those present. They are getting the video of the speech live and all the speaker has to do is engage by looking straight at the cameras while giving the speech, to help the remote audience feel included. We spend six seconds each time looking at our live audience members and we just do the same with the two cameras facing us, as if they were also audience members.

The setup I had for my recent talk was not satisfactory and I felt both the remote and in-person audiences had been cheated. I also felt my personal brand had been tarnished by this less than satisfactory experience. When we are invited to speak we have little control over how the hosts arrange the venue and the equipment. One of my take aways for next time was to engage the hosts more in depth on how they are going to handle this hybrid medium presentation. If they are not going to do it in a way which builds, or at least maintains, my professional brand, then I would decline the offer to speak. I might offer to give two talks - one for those in the room and do a separate one for those at home. That isn't always possible, but as the speaker, tasting the bitter ash residue of a failed, half-baked presentation isn't great either.