The Presentations Japan Series

We flagged this point last episode and today we are going to look at the use of evidence when giving presentations. I often mention the two modern dilemmas of being a presenter. We now live in the Age of Distraction where audiences will rapidly escape from us to the internet, if we haven't sufficiently captured their attention. Sometimes, even when they are interested, they are still multi-tasking. They are listening to us and scrolling through their social media at the same time. This habit has solidified and it is a nightmare today to get our message across. The other dilemma is we are in the Era of Cynicism. Fake news is now a thing and our audience's sensitivity to the validity of information has become more acute.

Both of these drivers make our job even harder than in the past. If we fill our presentations with "editorial" or "opinion" we are likely to lose the attention of the listeners. They are there to gain some benefit from giving us their attention and as riveting as our opinion may be to us, it may not ignite much interest in the audience. If we don't bring some concrete insights, backed up with proof and evidence then the hands will be reaching for their phones immediately. The Era of Cynicism means the evidence had better be highly credible and employing numerous sources. Talking about findings from your own research is good, but could be greeted with doubt, if you don't mention the detail on how the findings were assembled.

When we are designing our talk, we have access to some useful tools. DEFEATS is a handy acronym for remembering the different types of evidence we can draw upon to convince or impress our audience that what we say is true.

D-Demonstration. This might be something that can be shown physically during the presentation or something that we can show on screen, using software, audio or video. It has to be congruent with the point we are making and provide a visual reinforcement of our key point.

E-Example. The best examples are those which are most relevant to the members of the audience. We should try and know who is in our audience and think what would be an example that will resonate with as many people as possible. If the example is from the same industry and a similarly sized organisation then it becomes more meaningful for the audience. I attended a talk given by a senior executive from a major organisation, who used examples within that context. The problem was that the audience were all small to medium sized companies and there was nothing to relate to.

F-Facts. Facts are provable and can be verified independently. A claim is not a fact. We need to be able to cite where the fact can be checked, if we are asked. When we show graphs, for example, we should have the source of the data prominently displayed. Most people won't bother to check the data, but they feel better knowing they can do so if they wish.

E-Exhibits. This is usually something physical we can show to the audience. In some cases, it may also be shown as an image. In both cases we have to make sure the audience can see it easily. If it is a physical object, hold it up around shoulder height, rather down around the waist. Also, don't wave it around – hold it still, so it easy for the audience to see.

A-Analogies. We referred to Analogies in Openings Part One in Episode #264. We are trying to simplify something complex for our audience. We compare two things which have no natural connection to make the point clearer. For examples, we compare flying a passenger aircraft and speech making. There is no natural connection between them. Now we connect them. "Flying a passenger plane is like giving a speech. The take off and landing for aircraft are the most dangerous periods of the flight. In the same way for speeches, openings and closing determine our impression with our audience". This connects two ideas and makes them more accessible for the listeners.

T-Testimonials. Social proof has become extremely powerful today. Testimonials are not our primary form of evidence, but they lend credibility to what we are saying. A recognized expert supporting what we are saying gives our point more power. In our case, the most famous investor in the world Warren Buffett is a huge fan of Dale Carnegie and often mentions the impact the training had on his career. We could never afford to pay him to do that, but he does it anyway, because he is a true believer and that make it even more powerful.

S-Statistics. The best statistics are third-party numbers. If we quote our own research, that is okay, but it is not as convincing as also having an independent organisation's statistics.

When we are designing our main argument, as we get to the key points, we should be trying to match them with hard evidence to prove the point. If we do that, then we will have a much better chance of keeping the audience with us right through to the end of our presentation. If we can do that in today's distracted and cynical environment, we will have been highly successful.

In some recent episodes we looked at how to open the presentation. Today we are going to look at designing the main body of our talk. The design process of our talks is counterintuitive. We always start with the end, then do the main body and then the opening last. The close defines the key message we want to impart to the audience. The opening breaks through all the competition for our audience's attention. The main body is made up of the chapters of the talk. In a thirty minute to forty minute speech, we can probably get through three to five key points, to back up our key assertion. This is where we make our case, so it has to be well planned.

In the main body we need a lot of evidence. We will deal with evidence in much more detail next week. The key is to focus on the strongest supporting arguments to back up our key message. There will be many choices about how to make the main argument, but we have limited time, so only choose the strongest possible content. I support the Japan Market Expansion Competition (JMEC) here in Japan. I advise teams on how to write and present their business plans, in order to win the competition. Often, I notice that there are real gems, actual diamonds in their main body, but they are being trampled into the mud and you have trouble noticing or appreciating them. We have to identify our strongest points supporting our contention and then give that evidence pride of place, so that the listener gets the point immediately. We should never make the audience work hard to understand what we are saying. Audiences have decreasing levels of concentration, so we need to get the gems up the front, to hook the listener's interest. This keeps them with us for the rest of the talk.

Like a good novel, the chapters need to logically flow one into each other. We have to make sure the audience can follow our line of reasoning. The way we navigate the story for the listeners is critical. Using stories to illustrate our points is a must. Dry statistics and facts are not enough. People won't remember them, but they will remember a gripping story. Try to get people, places and seasons into the story, preferably those already known to the audience. Our objective is that the audience can picture the scene in their minds.

Remember, we are all being fed a steady diet of videos, films and novels where the power of the story is taken to the greatest heights. In the visual media, writers for these works are often crafting away in high powered teams and getting paid a lot of money to find ways of drawing us into the story and keeping us in their grip throughout. Then we occasional speakers turn up to give our little talk. We have to understand we are competing with the professionals and the audience is expecting us to be professional as well. If we cannot match their expectations, then our personal and professional brands are damaged.

The unveiling of the main body has to be well thought through. Each chapter needs a change of pace. It might be raising our energy or going the other direction and lowering the tension. It doesn't matter which way we go, but we cannot keep going at the same pace throughout the whole talk. We need variation to keep people with us. In sales, we talk about designing hooks to jag the interest of the buyer. Presenting is the same. We need hooks that will jag the interest of the audience and they will be wanting to know what comes next. This doesn't happen by chance. We need to carefully design these hooks.

For example, we might start a chapter of the main body with a statement, "Losing ten million dollars was the best education I ever received in business". Everyone hearing that wants to hear the rest of the story. What happened to you? Why did you lose the ten million? Why was it such a great education? What happened next? This is an example of a power hook. We need a series of these scattered throughout our chapters. If we can do that, then the main body will never be a drag on the attention of the audience. If we do it well, they will be on the edge of their seats, eager to find out what we are going to say next. If we don't, the audience will be reaching for their phones, to escape to the siren call of the internet.

The main body does all of the heavy lifting to make our case. It is also the segment which occupies the majority of the time for the talk, so it must be crafted extremely well. Break it down into segments or chapters and pile on the evidence. Don't just read out a bunch of dry data points. Get the data assembled into stories which will resonate with the audience. I once had to read the Australian Ambassador Ashton Calvert's speech in Japanese, when I was Consul General in Osaka, as he couldn't make the event. These types of speeches are prepared by Embassy staff for the Ambassador. It was a classic tale of trade statistics and no stories. I was giving this speech, thinking to myself, we could have done a lot more with this content to make it more engaging and grab the emotions of the audience. Departing from the script in that type of case would get you fired, so you have to do it word perfect. An opportunity gone begging, was my conclusion and a good lesson for me when preparing my own talks.

The main body has the advantage of following your grabber opening, so you have everyone's attention. Don't blow it. Keep the hooks coming in the chapters of the main body and keep the audience with you right through to the end.

This speaker has it all. You are sitting down the back of the room, yet you can sense their inner energy, confidence, surety of what they are saying. You feel they have charisma, that compelling attractiveness as a presenter. You want to be like that too, but how? Let's see how you can increase your presence and appeal as a speaker.

What the audience won't see you doing is rehearsing on them. This sounds infinitely logical, yet so many speakers deliver their talk once. They are practicing on their live audience. Is this what professionals do? Of course not. Professionals walk on stage after they have given their talk many, many times in rehearsal. They have worked out the correct length, the high points, the cadence, the humour and every small detail needed to make the talk a success. For feedback, they never ask, "what do you think?". Instead, they ask "what was good?" and "how could I make it better?". They use video and audio review to improve. If they are travelling to make the talk, they know that with the lights out, a hotel room's windows become mirrors, so that they can check their delivery.

Fully Prepared

When you get to the venue, the speaker is already there and in fact has been there an hour earlier checking everything is ready. They get a sense of the room. They sit in the cheap seats and see how they will appear up on stage. They make sure their slide deck is loaded and working correctly. They know how to work the slide advancer correctly and have worked out the sound levels for the microphone. You never see them bashing the microphone and asking "can you hear me down the back". They have told the venue crew to leave the lights up and not dim them down to suit the screen. While waiting for people to arrive, they have diplomatically instructed the MC to read their introduction exactly as it has been crafted to project their personal brand.

They are standing near the door as people arrive, introducing themselves and asking what attracted them to today's topic. They are working the room before the event kicks off. They give each person they engage with 100% of their attention, listening quietly, never interrupting them, finishing their sentences nor jumping in with their own clever comment. They are building tremendous good will with as many people in the audience as possible before they get anywhere near the stage. They remember your name and the main details of what you said. They are genuinely interested to meet you and find out what you are doing. They have demolished that invisible barrier between speaker and audience.

They are perfectly dressed for the occasion. They look the part of success. Every detail has been thought through. They don't allow bright ties, puffy pocket chiefs or big scarves to compete with their face. They know their face is a million watt power source and they make it the main reference point for the audience, rather than being dominated by the slides.

Dominate The Space

The MC calls them on to the stage, after reciting their turbo charged credibility resume, exactly as requested. They walk to the center of the stage and start immediately, spending no time switching computers and loading their files. They have arranged for such pedestrian logistics to be handled by their support crew. They have purposely freed themselves up to absolutely nail the first two seconds impression window. They know that we live in the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism and all we have is two seconds for the audience to decide their first impression of us. They don't waste that opportunity. Their opening is a real grabber that cuts through all the competition for audience mind space. They reference a couple of the people they were speaking with earlier in the audience. "Mary made a good point about….", "Bill had a wonderful insight on today's topic….". They are broadcasting to everyone that we are all one unit today and there is no longer any space separating speaker and listener.

They are projecting their ki bouncing it off the rear walls, pumping out high energy to their audience. What they say is clear, concise, well structured, supported by slides which are on point and Zen like in their clarity. The key message is crystal clear and their evidence is unassailable. They are engaging each individual audience member in six seconds of eye contact creating the feeling that the speaker is talking directly to them and no one else. What they say and how they say it is totally congruent.

Control The Final impression

They finish the talk with their first close and smoothly transition to Q&A stating how many minutes for questions. They paraphrase the questions, so that everyone in the audience can hear what was asked. As they answer, they give the questioner six seconds of eye contact and then work the room with six seconds of eye contact each for the other members of the audience. They don't try and duck difficult questions. They mention, "I don't know, but I will find out and get back to you. Who has the next question?".

At the end of question time, they seize back the initiative to focus on their key message. They don't allow the talk to finish with a question which may be totally off topic. They use their second close to repeat their key point and have that ringing in the ears of the audience as everyone departs the venue. They determine their final impression with the audience. They have organised their schedule to be able to invite audience members to swap business cards and chat after the talk. They are gracious and charming with everyone and cement their fan base for the next talk. They have it all, they are charismatic.

Reading this headline you might be thinking, "Oh yeah, this guy says he is an expert? Is that really true?". In this fake news world, that is an entirely reasonable caution. Would the following qualify me: this TEDx talk was my 546th public speech, I am a Master Trainer for Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan and I am a certified High Impact Presentations Instructor having taught thousands of people how to present over the last twenty plus years and I am about to publish my book Japan Presentations Mastery? I thought it might be interesting to pull back the velvet curtain and reveal how I prepared for this talk, expert or otherwise, but at least someone with substantial public speaking experience.

TEDx has certain restrictions around what you can talk about and how long you can talk for. The TED mission is to research and discover "ideas worth spreading". I needed a topic which was a fit for the format and I had up to thirteen minutes to deliver my talk. There are many things I could have addressed on stage, but I thought "Transform Our Relationships" would have universal appeal, because TED talks are broadcast all around the world.

The first thing to consider was how to end the talk. I needed to clarify what was the central message I wanted to impart. The title was the central message, so "transform your relationships for the better" became my choice of the close. I also linked the close back to some remarks I made right at the start, so I was able to tie a neat bow on the talk. There are no questions in the TED format, so there was only need to design that one close.

I next did some research on what others were saying about transforming relationships. I found a report entitled "Relationships in the 21st Century". When I read the report, I thought the findings were rather unremarkable and that it would be perfect for debunking at the start. Even a slightly controversial start can be an attention grabber. I left the final design of the opening until the end though. The start has only one aim and that is to grab audience attention to listen to what it is we have to say.

I had the end clearly in mind and a vague idea about the opening, so now I needed to build chapters for the talk. Thirteen minutes is quite short, so every word is gold. I thought Dale Carnegie's human relations principles were the perfect tool which I could pass on to the audience to apply in their own relationships. There are thirty human relations principles, so that was too many. I selected seven.

Each principle formed a chapter, so that made the construction of the talk quite easy. I needed some flesh on the bones of this skeleton of the talk though, so I selected some easy to access examples of how to use the principles. Some of these story vignettes were created to make the point and some were actual examples from real life.

I needed a bridge between the start of the talk and the Dale Carnegie human relations principles, which would set the scene for what was to come. I drew on some well known influencers – Mahatma Gandhi and Isaac Newton. I wanted to make the point that the secret of achieving a transformation was to start with yourself, rather than expecting everyone else to change to suit you. Gandhi's quote is well known: "become the change you wish to see in the world". Perfect.

Also, every high school student has studied Newtonian Physics and so remember his proclamation that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". Perfect. I could make the point that if we want to transform our relationships, we can change the angle of approach with others and we will get a different reaction. This was extremely easy for an audience to grasp as a concept to transform their relationships. I made this a core message linking each chapter back to the central thesis of "start with changing your angle of approach".

My final design task was to go back and polish the opening, so that it would grab attention. I selected the conclusion from the report and then denounced it as too obvious. By doing so I have now engaged the audience to anticipate what I am going to say, if I am not accepting this report's conclusion as sufficient enough to understand relationship building in the 21st century. I wasn't doing this for dramatic effect. I honestly thought it was all too obvious. If it had delivered some earth shattering insight, then I would have used that instead as an authority reinforcement.

Rehearsal is so critical in giving talks. I soon discovered I had too much material for the time allowed, so one of the human relations principles had to be jettisoned overboard. I had organised the talk into chapters, so each one was complete in itself. Rather than trying to water down the other chapters to squeeze in chapter seven, it was better to keep the others powerful and reduce one chapter. I then took all of that content and then wrote it up a complete script. I don't normally do this step. However, I knew there was no way I would remember every single word of a thirteen minute talk, but this script gave me the core content to draw on. Obviously, I wasn't going to read it to the audience – that would be a fake expert! I recorded it and played it over and over to myself about ten times, until I had absorbed flow of the talk in my mind.

I did another three live rehearsals with the cut down materials and kept editing to make sure I could get through it in under thirteen minutes. At the beginning I had toyed with the idea of no slides so that all of the attention would be on me. In the end, I decided that slides would help me with the navigation. This talk goes around the world, so my personal and professional reputations were on the line here, especially when you go around saying you are an expert on public speaking. I thought it was better to be smooth in my delivery and not to lose my place or have a brain whiteout while on live streaming camera, especially as that means no edit rescue capability.

Once I had selected the slides I wanted, I made sure I owned the use of these slide images. I could have just taken some images down off the internet, but there is a copyright issue right there. We all need to respect the IP of the owners of those images. I also made sure I had pictures with people in them where ever possible. This is always of more interest to an audience.

On the day before the talk, I did five full blood, full power rehearsals and recorded them, so I could check how I sounded. On the day of the delivery, I recorded ten full power rehearsals at home, one after another, checking the time to make sure I didn't go over the thirteen minutes limit. Full rehearsal, full power, with many repetitions is key.

Of course this was very tiring, but I didn't worry about peaking before the event. I knew my nervous energy would kick in once I was on stage under the lights, facing the live streaming cameras and the assembled audience.

On the day, there was a technical issue with the screen in front of the stage. It is located so that the speaker can see what is being displayed on the main screen behind them. I wasn't worried. I had confidence thanks to my rehearsals, that I could do the talk without slides, if I needed to. For whatever reason it worked perfectly for me, so I reproduced my delivery as I had practiced it over and over and over.

In the Green Room I didn't chat with the other speakers. I concentrated on slowing my breathing down to make sure I was calm and quietly read the full script again. When I was being wired up for the talk, I made sure the head attachment microphone was pulled out away from my cheek and mouth, because I knew I would be pr4ojecting a lot of power to my audience. I didn't want any audio dissonance from my being loud, to find its way on to the recording.

As it turned out, four seconds before I was due to go on, they needed to fix a technical issue, so they decided to show a TED video instead. Naturally I was fully psyched up ready to go and then had to stop everything. This type of stop-start thing can throw your equilibrium off balance. I had had this experience before when I was a karate athlete in competition finals, when there was an interruption and a sudden delay before you go on to the mats to fight.

I immediately moved away from the people there in order to keep my concentration at full peak condition. I happened to notice there was a mirror around the corner of the back stage area. While they ran the video, I began quietly starting my talk while looking at the mirror, so that I could see my gestures etc., as I got ready to go on. We cannot allow anything to cause us to lose our concentration or peak energy levels, before we hit the stage.

I walked confidently to the round red carpet, which was my spot from which to talk, paused to enjoy the applause and create some anticipation. I then hit the opening hard with a strong voice and a big double arm gesture. The rest of the talk went pretty close to my plan. The key thing to note is, only I knew what the plan was! At the end I bowed, stayed there to receive the applause and then unhurriedly, I walked off, again showing confidence. First and last impressions are being formed as soon as we move to and from our positions and we have to have those planned as well. Someone rushing from the stage leaves a different impression to someone staying there momentarily and then walking off with purpose.f

Today we are going to look at Part Two of Opening our speech. In the last episode we used an analogy, the startling statement and starting with some good news. We also covered the dos and don'ts of how to use questions with the audience. Here are two more openings we can apply to our talks - storytelling and using compliments.

Start with an incident

Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools in the speaker's toolkit. Every day we are bombarded with stories. It could be dramas on television, novels we are reading, movies we are watching and even the news programmes. When we were children our parents read stories to us at bedtime and so we are incredibly open to stories, in a way we are not open to hearing opinions or statements.

Stories do not have to be long. Today, with an abundance of impatience, massive distraction everywhere and people's ever decreasing micro concentration spans, the opportunity to tell a long story in business is gone. We can tell a short story and still take our audience with us employing their mind's eye to be with us in the location, in the season, with the people and absorbed with the drama of the situation. Let's look at some varieties of stories we can employ for a business context.

1. Personal experience. This is the most powerful story because it is real life. We love to learn from the successes and even better, the failures of others. Which speech opening would grab your attention more, "Let me tell you how I made my first ten million dollars" or "Let me tell you how I lost my first ten million dollars"?

I think we would all want to hear how I lost the ten million, because that sounds more dramatic and we can learn from other's mistakes. Relating corporate victory after victory and outlining the perfect coalition of circumstances to explain what a triumph it has been for our organization is reeking of propaganda and our audience cannot identify with what we are saying.

Telling them war stories of failure and redemption tend to work extremely well, because in exposing our failures, we have shown we are like everyone else and the audience can more easily identify with us.

1. Third Party. We have a limited number of personal experiences to draw on, but we have unlimited experiences available, if we include those of others. Sometimes we prefer to use a third party, if we need some strong evidence or credibility.

We are exposed to third party stories all of the time, but we let them slip away. It may be something we saw on the news, or in documentaries or we read in magazines or in biographies. We come across a great story, but we just move on without thinking, "well that will be a great story for a talk, let me capture that and store it away for a future speech". We should be trawling through whatever we are reading with a part of our brain looking for speech material and having a good system to be able to access it easily at a future point.

1. When we add our personal experiences, the experiences of others and then the entire history of experiences in the world throughout history, we have an unbelievable resource available to us to draw upon. There is an avalanche of material coming to us down through the ages, where people have faced similar situations to what we are facing today. We are often accessing this information, but not capturing it. We should capture it for our talks.

Pay a compliment

1. We can relate our topic to all of the people in the room in the audience. For example, "Have you heard that most people are scared of public speaking? This is only because they have not received any training. No one is born a gifted speaker, it is a learnt skill. If you get the training, then your fear of public speaking will disappear completely". Every person has been scared of public speaking at one time or another, so they can immediately bond with us when we bring it up. They will be all ears to hear what we have to say on the subject

1. We relate our topic to the broader organisation, rather than to individuals. For example, "Your organisation has such a phenomenal reputation for excellence. Let me tell you why". When you hear that opening, you are very interested to hear what comes next, because you like compliments and you are also keen to make sure what the speaker says is accurate.

1. We can relate what we are saying to one person. For example, "I was chatting with Tanaka san before we started and she made a very insightful comment". Everyone will want to know what Tanaka san said and Tanaka san will be delighted with the recognition.

The speaker first impression is vital. We have to plan to make it a success and there are many tools available to us. Try the tools I have included in Parts One and Two of how to open your talk. Remember public speaking has never had this degree of difficulty ever in history. The internet is a click away and people will leave us in a heartbeat, if what we say doesn't sound interesting or valuable. The way they determine if it is worth listening to, is from how we start. We must get the design right or our messages will not transmit to the audience and if that is the case, we have missed a great opportunity to build our personal and professional brands.

First impressions are now down to seven seconds or less. Our opening begins from the moment we are introduced, even before we get up on stage or move to the center of the stage. We must walk briskly, confidently and elegantly to our speaking position. I remember seeing US President Biden on television, walking very swiftly to convey he was still dynamic, despite the years and the grey hair. He was trying to control a narrative about his suitability to be the US President. He understood the power of first impression. As speakers we must understand the speech starts well before the speech. What we write for the event information and what we hand over to the MC to read about us on stage, all are setting up a first impression. The conversations we have with the attendees before we speak are all building a first impression.

What we do on stage is important. If there is a logistical change over of laptops or files, try to get someone else to do that, so that you can straight into your opening. We are wasting valuable "first impression" seconds with our head down looking at the laptop screen, rather than looking at the audience. We need to be able to move straight to the center of the stage and get going with our well designed opening. We have to be able to stay the hands of the restless in the audience to not go for their smart phones and disappear into the world of the internet.

The first words out of our mouth have to grab the attention of the audience, so we must raise the vocal strength of our opening, to break through the mental distraction of our audience members. We should walk to center stage and then purposely pause slightly before we begin. This raises the anticipation level of the audience and quietens any chatting that may be going on in the background. How can we start, what should we say, how do we do it – let's explore some techniques.

The captivating statement technique uses three methods to get the audience engaged.

1. This is where we can try to make complex subjects more easily understood by comparing two things, which have no natural connection, with each other. For example, "Launching a strategic initiative, is like driving a car. Learning to drive a car looks easy, but in fact is quite complicated. Launching this new strategic initiative looks easy on paper, but we need to expect it will require a lot of good preparation in order for it to be successful". We open with the analogy statement and then explain the analogy to make the point clear for the audience.

1. We use this to grab attention by introducing a pattern interrupt with our audience. We provide some information which is not only new, but potentially shocking. For example, "The latest statistics are clear - we are running out of young people in Japan. If we don't get busy planning to win the war for talent, we will go out of business". This will get everyone's attention. People are vaguely aware that we are seeing a decline in the population in Japan, but here we are connecting it to the very survival of the organisation.

1. Good news. This relaying of some good news will lift the positive feelings of the audience for the talk to come. We mention some industry statistics or consumer trends or R&D breakthrough news. There is always a lot of doom and gloom in business, so going the other direction is also a great way to grab attention. They are now anticipating this will be a valuable talk.

1. The question technique has three aspects.

1. Gain information. We can ask a real question which requires an answer by having the audience raise their hands. This gets audience involvement, which is good, but we shouldn't overdo it.

1. Get participation. Raising hands, calling out answers, getting people to stand are all good physical actions to have the audience feel part of the talk. Again, don't overdo it.

1. Create agreement on a need or interest. We could also ask a rhetorical question which doesn't require an answer from the audience, because we are going to supply the answer. This allows us to get everyone engaged with their thoughts on the topic. We ask it in such a way that it is easy for the audience to agree with.

The opening has to be planned carefully. We only have one shot to make a good first impression and this is where we do that. We will continue in the next episode with other techniques we use to open our talk.

Every time we speak, we are representing our professional and personal brands. People judge us and then they project that same judgment on to our organization. If we are very professional, then they see everyone in our organisation in a positive light. If we are bumbling and disorganised, then they see our whole organisation the same way. If we want the audience to believe our message, then they have to believe in us first. This is why having credibility is so important when speaking.

If we overstate our organisation's capabilities, it arouses suspicion and damages our credibility. Remember this is the Era of Cynicism and fake news. Any time we make a statement, then we need to back it up with evidence. The evidence has to resonate by being vivid, interesting and memorable. We have to show the benefits of what we are suggesting because facts by themselves cannot be enough. In particular, we need to show how they can apply these benefits in their own organisations.

We want to present a positive image of our organisation but how do we do this without it being rejected as corporate propaganda? Being confident when we deliver the key messages makes a tremendous difference. Uncertain speech, hesitation, struggling for words, using filler words like um and ah, all conspire to defeat our efforts to appear confident in what we are saying. Fluency in delivery is what we need and that takes practice. We don't have to memorise great chunks of content. We can use the slide deck for navigation purposes to guide us through the flow of the talk. We just talk to the point of the slide, because we have designed this talk, so obviously we know what we want to say.

We must project tremendous enthusiasm. I am thinking of two speakers who surprised me with their total lack of enthusiasm for their own amazing companies. One was a luxury marque car brand and the other a resource captain of industry. Both had phenomenal sagas of defeat and triumph, of business breakthroughs and of spectacular R&D success. It would have been much more interesting if they had included these in their talks. They managed to replace these exciting stories with the bland and boring. If they had spoken as if possessed with total belief in the righteousness of their company's contribution to the world, they would have had much greater impact with their audiences. They would have attracted fans for themselves and their companies.

The structure for a talk to impress an audience about our organisation looks like this:

Opening. The opening has only one purpose. That objective is to create a positive impression so powerful, it breaks through all of the distractions occupying the minds of the listeners. The first sentence out of the speaker's mouth has to command our attention and interest. Pithy quotes, grabber statistics, total killer stories, will all do the trick.

Message. We need to clearly state the key messages. Within the first five minutes of the talk are the audience clear on where we are going with this speech? Have we honed our key messages down to the bone, to eliminate psychobabble, pap and make sure we have eliminated our data dump proclivities. We need to reiterate the most important message in the speech close, before we bridge to the Q&A and again, during the final close at the end, after the Q&A.

Evidence. We must establish credibility and inspire trust, respect and confidence in what we are saying by using powerful evidence. So often speakers make sweeping statements and audiences are left to ponder whether that statement about their company is true or are we listening to a re-incarnation of Joseph Goebbels, one of the most evil and notorious propagandists in history? Carefully inspect every utterance where you are making a broad statement and then check to see if there is sufficient evidence accompanying it. You will surprise yourself with how often we make statements and offer no proof whatsoever.

Closing. As mentioned there are two closes. Close number one, prior to Q&A is designed to capture the essence of your message, in order to reinforce its potency for the audience. The second close for after the Q&A is designed to leave the audience with a favourable, memorable impression of you, your organisation and your message.

The impress talk structure is not complex, but the delivery requires a lot of rehearsal. Practicing on your audience is self delusion in the making. So many speakers give their speech once – when they are in front of the assembled mass of sceptics, doubters, critics and cynics. Anytime you are talking up your own organisation, then you are really asking for trouble. Get the required fluency in the delivery, so that you are radiating confidence and credibility. If you do that your message will be bought by the audience. If you don't, your personal and professional brands will take a big hit. The choice is embarrassingly clear.

Are we clear enough about our message? There are some common problems around getting the messaging right. We have no clear message and the audience don't quite know what to make of the talk. Or we have so many messages, the audience are confused and cannot attach to any of the messages. This is an exaggeration, but we should be able to write our one key message on a grain of rice. The point is to make the message clear and get it down to the minimum number of words to describe it. This is really tough. Rambling and waffling on are easy, whereas being precise is hard work. This explains why most talks haven't boiled everything down to one clear message and the presentation fails or misses the mark.

If we are thinking of a topic to speak on or if we are asked to speak on a certain topic, the first major effort will be to find the key message. This sounds straightforward, but there are so many angles from which to approach a topic, we need to select the best one and then clarify it. The best one will be determined by our audience analysis. Who are we going to be speaking to and what message will resonate the most strongly with them? If we don't know who our audience is we need to find out. In episode number 260 we went into more detail on just how to do that, so please go back and listen to that episode.

Getting the key message clear is also important when it comes to promoting the talk. Our title will get sent out to the prospective audience and if we have done our audience analysis well, then there will be a high degree of resonance with our target group. Getting the title right makes such a difference and we all know that. We respond to certain titles more than others. If we can hone in on the key interest, then our audience numbers will fill up and we will set the stage to deliver our message. I was attending a talk recently and there were only about 30 people online. Given the speaker and the quality of the content, it should have been 100 people at least. The title let the talk down and didn't grab attention, because the message and the audience analysis hadn't been given enough attention.

Once we have crafted our one key message, we need to look for content which supports that key message. These are like chapters in a thesis. When you write your thesis, you have your central proposition, your key finding from the research and the rest of the document is set about backing up what you are pontificating about. We need evidence – hard evidence rather than broad statements about what we think. Nobody cares what we think. In this Era of Cynicism built on a fear of falling for fake news, evidence has become even more vital than in the past. A speech is a similar situation. We have a number of chapters in the speech which are crammed to the gunwales with evidence proving what we are saying is true. Inside these chapters there may be some sub-messages, again providing hard evidence, which when added together validate our one big key message.

The usual problem with messaging though is too many messages. We teach public speaking and we have a tool called the Magic Formula where we provide the context, background, data, proof, evidence, then the call to action and the benefit of that call to action. I notice that our participants are always adding and adding points to bolster the benefit, rather than grabbing the most powerful benefit. The effect is the key message about the benefit is being diluted by what follows. This is the Age of Distraction and when we pile on the detail our audience gets lost and loses interest. We need to make sure the sub-messages are supporting and proving the main message and not competing with it.

This is where pruning a speech becomes very important. We need to ask if we can reduce the content by 10% to see if the message becomes clearer. This is a lot harder than it sounds and I am as guilty as anyone in this regard. What we normally do is keep adding to the speech. We find a great slide and we add that. Then we find another and add that. We keep adding more slides or more messages and we create confusion for our audience. Being forced to chop out 10% is a good discipline to force us to be as clear as possible. This is painful, but it will improve the whole presentation by adding more clarity to what we want people to absorb.

So have one central message and look for a number of ways to get that one message across. If we can do that, then the audience will absorb what we are saying and we can count the talk as a success. Go for quality rather than quantity of messages when presenting.

Before we tackle the purpose of our presentation we need to understand who is our audience. We covered this in Episode #260, so please go back and review that episode if you haven't already heard it. Basically, don't put pen to paper or start assembling a slide deck, until you are crystal clear on who is going to be in the audience. Once we know what level to frame the content, we can get started on the next step and that is being very clear on the purpose of the talk.

Perhaps it is an internal presentation. An All Hands Meeting, a Town Hall, a regular weekly report on your division or section's numbers, the update on the marketing spend results, etc. It could be for an external audience drawn from your industry, a speech for the Chamber of Commerce, a benkyokai or study group, a public gathering, etc.

There are four things to consider regarding the type of talk we can give.

1. Inform - This is a very common structure for internal and industry presentations. These are often rich data and deep insight talks. We will have statistics, expert opinion, the latest research findings. We have our finger on the pulse of the industry trends and what our company's outcomes have been. We want to provide value to the audience and so we try to bring something to them which they didn't know or hadn't thought about.

These types of public talks will often have titles such as, "The Top Five Things Regarding X", "The Latest Research Results on Y", etc. There will be detailed case studies from the front line that cast light on what is and isn't working. The question is which data and how much data. We have to be careful, because we can quickly become data dump junkies. We are always tending to cram too much information into the talk and this can dilute the impact of the messages. Choosing what to keep and what not to use can be very difficult, but we must be disciplined. Always go for the gold and leave the silver and bronze to question time as reserve power.

1. Convince or Impress - As speakers we often think the task is selling our message. I am sure you have had this experience. You toddle off to hear a talk and the speaker is a dud. They are completely hopeless and can either barely string two words together or they read the text or the screen to us, or even worse they do both! Sub-consciously, we have now extended this buffoonery to the entire organisation and have developed a lack of confidence in this entire group.

We are musing that if this is who they put forward to the wider public, they must all be stupid and so how can you trust a company like that? Remember every time we stand up to speak, we are also selling ourselves and by extension our section, division or company.

We must believe that what we are sharing is important and we want our audience to think that too. Sadly, audiences today are living in the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism, so as presenters we have to work super hard to overcome both. We need to be excellent presenters, really professional presenters. Plus, we also have to prove what we are saying is true. We have to show the value and we have to emphasise the importance of our message.

1. Persuade or Inspire to Action - This is a particular skill always needed by leaders. We may have a message which we think is very important and we want our audience to benefit from it. To do so they need to change what they are doing now or start doing something new. We want to get them to take some specific action. The only tools we have are our delivery excellence and our content relevancy and quality. Unless we have really assembled a quality content offer and have delivered it in a highly professional manner we won't be persuading anyone to do anything, be that internally or externally.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the keynote speaker to Harrow, his old College, in October 1941, as Britain alone faced the Nazis domination of all of Europe. He said slowly, "Never, ever ever ever ever give up". Those seven words were electrifying. Now that is persuasion, that is inspiration. We are all facing Covid's war on our companies, on our businesses, on our livelihoods. Are we rising to the occasion with our persuasive, take action presentations to our troops?

1. Entertain – do we have to be stand up comedians? Great if you have that facility, but it is not required for speakers. Humour is a very difficult thing to master for an amateur business presenter, who only speaks a few times a year, at the most. We can bring passion to our talk and transfer our positive energy to the audience. If we say something and the audience laughs – write that down baby, because that is humorous, even though that may not have been our intention.

Know who is in our audience, craft the talk to match that audience and decide what is the purpose of our talk. Once you have that sorted, then get to work on the detailed design of close #1, close #2, the main body with tons of evidence and finally the opening and design it in that order.

Before we do anything, we need to ask just who is going to be in our audience? If we don't know that information, then we are thrashing around in the dark, trying to find the light switch. It may be an internal group we are speaking to, so we will have a pretty clear idea who will be in the room. It might be an industry association talk, so we can expect there will be people similar to us in the audience. It might be a public talk, sponsored by a chamber of commerce and so there could be people from many different industries gathered to hear us speak.

The key point is to try and find out who will be in the audience, by asking the organisers, if you are not sure who is coming. If for privacy reasons, you cannot get a list of attendees, then at least ask for as much detail as possible around age, rank and gender. A benefit of going to the venue early is usually all the name badges of the audience are lined up outside the room, so you can spend a bit of time seeing who is coming. The name badge will give you the company name but it won't give you the rank or the status of the individuals. There is a simple solution for this issue.

Position yourself at the door and then try to greet as many people as possible. Japan is great, because handing over all your key private information is acceptable, because we exchange our meishi or business cards. You can see the position they hold and looking at their face, you can guess the age bracket. As you engage them you can ascertain why they have given up their time to attend, so you can gauge their motivations and interests. We can make adjustments on the fly in terms of our angle of delivery with these insights.

I heard a talk on Personal Branding, which completely missed the mark. The speaker was talking about how she elevated her personal brand in one of the biggest companies on the planet. Her audience were not in that company size bracket, so there was little to relate to. If she had spent time talking to people beforehand she would have realised she needed to make made some changes in order to accommodate her audience. Sadly that didn't happen and the dry chicken for lunch was the only reward for attending.

Here are some ideas for preparing the talk, taking into consideration the likely composition of your audience:

1. Knowledge – are they novices on the subject or are they veterans? It is hard to know beforehand, so it is always a safe bet to assume there will be some very knowledgeable people in attendance and prepare on that basis.
2. Expertise - if we can understand the level of knowledge of the audience, we can pitch the content at the right level. We don't want to go too high or too low with the complexity of what we are talking about. If we get this wrong, we can alienate our listeners and they will tune us out and even worse, escape to the internet to fill in the time remaining. When we have a mixed audience, it is a lot more complex, so we need to search for the right balance.
3. Experience-are the audience members theoreticians or are they people from the field? Experience in the laboratory is quite different from that of the practitioner on the front line.
4. Bias-strong views can lead some people to have a particular bias regarding the subject we are addressing. If we know what those biases are, it will help us when preparing for the Q&A. This is where "working the room" as people arrive is important, to flush these out before you start.
5. Needs – As mentioned, when we arrive early and spend some time mixing with the audience members, we can get a sense of what some of the needs around this subject may be. We want to leave them with some valuable take-aways which they will find useful. This needs to be baked into the design before we get there or we need to focus in on some key points based on what we heard when asking people why they came.
6. Wants – Needs and wants are not the same. We again use our pre-talk audience informal survey, when chatting with the early arrivals, about what are some things they would want from the talk. As a result, we may only need to change our delivery by a few degrees, but it can have a tremendous leverage benefit for resonating with our audience.
7. Goals – when we start planning the talk, we need to think what might be some of the goals for the audience members, which are inspiring them to make the effort to attend the speech. How can they apply some of the insights we are going to impart, the experiences, the data, the detail?

As always, the key is to plan the talk in detail and not just spend all the time on assembling the slide deck. Rehearse, record, review. Listening to yourself, is what you are saying valuable or is it pap? Is it corporate propaganda or is it beneficial, practical, applicable? Plan with the audience reaction in your mind and things will go much better.