The Presentations Japan Series

They are usually a bunch of strangers attending out talk. We may know one or two people in the audience, but generally we have no clue about most of them. The feeling is likewise. They may have perfunctorily glanced at our introduction in the blurb advertising the event but who are we as a person? How smart are we, how useful is this time allocation going to be, can we speak well, are we adding any value to them? Here are twelve ideas to build rapport with the audience.

1. Consider ourselves honoured to be asked to address an audience and say so. However, don't do this at the start of the talk. You hear this all the time, "Thank you for inviting me today, it is a great honour to be able to speak to such a distinguished audience". Boring!!! Design a powerful opening to grab everyone's attention and only then thank the organisers and the audience for the chance to speak.

1. Give our listeners sincere appreciation. Arrive early and meet some members of the audience and thank them for coming to listen to you. At the end of the talk, we can also express our appreciation for their attendance. Don't make this the last comment though. We reserve that for our final close, where we make sure our key message is reverberating in their ears, as they walk out of the venue.

1. Mention the names of some listeners. Getting there early allows us to meet the guests and then when we get up on stage we can refer to a conversation we had before the start of the speech. For example, "I was chatting with Suzuki san and she made a very interesting point about…." There is an invisible wall between the speaker and the audience and this connecting with people in the audience breaks that wall down and we feel as one unit.

1. Play ourselves down – not up. Nobody likes someone who is egotistical and acting superior. We should always be humble and never talk about ourselves, as if we were something special, just because we are the speaker. Yes, you need some degree of ego to stand up and speak to an audience, but let's keep the full dimensions of that ego to ourselves.

1. Say "we" not "you". When we use "we", it is inclusive language and we want to have our audience to feel as if we are one united team. "You should do…" doesn't work as well as "we should do", when we want to appeal to our audience. Let's remove all barriers between ourselves and our listeners.

1. Don't talk with a "scowling face an upbraiding voice". I never do that you say. Really? Check the video. When we are concentrating, without knowing it, our face can look like we are scowling at our audience. Smiling is a great way to make sure we are not doing that, as long as the smile is congruent with what we are saying. If it is a serious topic, then our face should be serious. But a scowling face is too much, because it looks like we are angry and admonishing our audience.

1. Talk in terms of your listener's interests. We might have a great love of a subject and we get a lot of satisfaction from talking about it, but are our audience members interested. We need to design the talk, looking at things from their point of view and their likely interest. What is in it for them? What can they take away from this talk which they can apply in theIr world?

1. Have a good time delivering your talk. If we look like giving this talk is killing us, it will make our audience feel uncomfortable and will have a very negative impact on our personal and professional brands. If we are nervous, we can come across as a wounded animal on stage. Best to mask that wounded animal look, as much as possible. Keep all of that type of "I'm nervous" information to yourself.

1. Don't apologise. This is a very common way to start talks in Japan, but we should start with a well designed opening that breaks through all of the competing distractions for our message and grabs the listener's attention. Apologies are all about us, when we should be totally focused on the audience and not ourselves.

1. Appeal to the nobler emotions of your audience. People turn up to hear us speak on the basis they want us to succeed. We should assume that and then be very sincere in our preparations, so that we can match their high expectations of us.

1. Welcome criticism instead of resenting it. If some audience member takes issue with the logic of what we have said or the conclusions we have drawn from the data, we shouldn't get into an argument. We should just say "thank you" and say we will take that on board and have another look at our assumptions. If we are receiving some feedback on the delivery of the talk, then we should not allow our emotions to get involved. We should just take it as helpful feedback so that we improve.

1. Be "a good person skilled in speaking". The most clever criminals around the world all have something in common- they are good talkers. We want to be better than just being a smooth talker. We want to have our audience's best interests upper most in our minds at all times. They will feel the difference.

Try these twelve ideas when you are preparing for and delivering your next presentation and you will do a much better job of connecting with your audience.

We all stumble into public speaking in business. We don't start our first job with a grand plan for our future public speaking career. We just work as hard as we can. If we knew at the start how important this facility was, we would definitely plot out the path forward, corresponding to each stage in our careers. However, we are left to our own devices and we have no guidelines for presenting. Let's fill in that gap in our business education and take a look at some useful guidelines on the basis it is never too late to start becoming a better presenter.

Here are nine guidelines to adopt.

1. Make brief notes in the order you want to mention them.

This is your navigation and could be on notes sitting on the podium or you might place a big sheet of paper on the backwall, behind the audience and use code words that only you understand. There is nothing wrong with quickly consulting your notes if you need to. Audience members will not jump to their feet and start denouncing us as frauds just because we took a peek at our notes. No one cares that much.

2. Unless absolutely necessary for legal reasons etc., do not read your speech. I have had the experience of representing my boss and reading his speech word for word. So painful. Yes, preparing the whole speech as a document is fine to help you practice. Just don't read it to us. You can send it by email instead and we won't need you or your presentation.

3. Never memorise a speech word for word.

This is no fun doing it this way because of the enormous mental strain it places on us. A thirty minute speech fully recalled from memory is pointless. We should enjoy giving talks so let's not burden ourselves with that massive memory expectation. Just have the key points you want to cover and talk to them.

4. Use evidence to substantiate your points

We have to be very careful with general sweeping statements we may make. We will attract skepticism from our audience and we may find ourselves under attack during the Q&A. Always back up what is being said with evidence, proof, statistics, expert testimony, etc.

5. Know far more about your subject than you can use.

We don't know what we will be asked in the Q&A, so we have to make sure we can answer any reasonable question, otherwise our personal and professional brands can be damaged. If we can't answer a relevant question on our topic, then people will immediately doubt our credibility as a business professional.

6. Rehearse your presentation in front of your professional associates.

However, never, ever ask them "what do you think?". All you will hear will be annoying negative comments that will ruin your day and your confidence. Instead, ask them "what was good" and "how can I make it better?".

7. Use visual aids where appropriate.

We don't automatically need slides. If they add value then absolutely use them. Visual aids are helpful because a picture is worth a thousand words, as we say. Pictures with people in them are the best. Also the visuals provide our navigation through the content of the speech, so we don't have to remember all of the detail. We only have to talk to the information or the point on the slide and this is much easier.

8. Control "butterflies" in the tummy by taking in deep, slow, lower diaphragm breaths. This will help lower our pulse rate, reduce body heat and calm us down. We can also do some strenuous walking around, out of sight, to burn off excess nervous energy. For other people, they may need to lift up their energy levels, by giving themselves a pep talk.

9. Don't imitate others: be yourself

It is tempting to copy other speakers, but we don't need to do that. Life is short, so why try and become a facsimile of someone else? Be you every time and be the best version of you possible. If we work hard on the design, rehearsal and delivery of our talk we will develop our own natural style.

These guidelines are not exhaustive by any means, but they encompass some basics we should apply to our talks. I ran away from public speaking for my first thirty years. Why? Because I didn't know what to do. I had no guidelines, no training and no clue. Even worse, I didn't understand that I should go and get the training. I got there eventually, but I wasted so much time and opportunity by being in denial. Don't be like me – don't wait, go and get trained.

We all stumble into public speaking in business. We don't start our first job with a grand plan for our future public speaking career. We just work as hard as we can. If we knew at the start how important this facility was, we would definitely plot out the path forward, corresponding to each stage in our careers. However, we are left to our own devices and we have no guidelines for presenting. Let's fill in that gap in our business education and take a look at some useful guidelines on the basis it is never too late to start becoming a better presenter.

Usually for most businesspeople we don't really know what we are doing when it comes to presentations. We grow up in business concentrating on our tasks and getting the work done. As we rise through the ranks, we start to give updates on the results or project progress reports. As we rise a bit further we may start reporting what our Section or Division has been doing, or introducing the business strategy to senior leaders. In some cases, we may be presenting to shareholders, the media, chambers of commerce or industry groups.

Along this continuum we just bumble our way along, copying what our bosses are doing. They actually had the same presentation education we have been getting – none. So we have the blind leading the blind, generation after generation. Nobody inside the company thinks that people moving into leadership positions need to become powerful persuaders and influencers through their communication skillS. These are attributes that somehow those rising through the ranks have to pick up for themselves. If the company said, "You need to get presentation training and you will have to pay for it yourself, because we are not going to", that would be one thing. Unfortunately, that conversation about need is never breached and there is no guidance whatsoever.

In the absence of any hints from senior leadership, on what we need to be doing around getting better at presenting, here are some starters:

1. Know your material so well, you feel you own it.

We should be an expert in the area we are talking about. That means we have gained experience, have read the relevant materials and have been active in this field. Whenever we present we should feel we have reserve power, to be able to add additional information, respond to questions during Q&A and demonstrate that we know our topic in great depth. We are limited by how much time we have to speak but we should always over prepare. There is nothing more embarrassing than being shown you don't know much about your talk topic. You will see your credibility fall off the podium and shatter into a thousand shards before your very eyes.

1. Have a positive feeling about the subject you are about to present.

You may have experienced this at School or University, where some Teachers and Professors are just going through the materials in a very perfunctory, detached way. Others however were on fire with real passion for their subject. Naturally we all gravitate toward those with massive passion for their topic.

The audience won't remember all of the detail of our talk, but they will remember our passion for the subject and therefore they will remember us. That is what we want in business isn't it – to be differentiated, memorable, admired.

If you have to present on a topic which doesn't particularly excite you then try and find some elements which are interesting and bring your passion to those parts. It is not great but better to have flashes of passion than a continual, consistent, humdrum, boring delivery.

1. Project to your audience the value and significance of your message.

If we don't sound convinced about our message, then there is zero chance anyone listening will be convinced. In sales we say, "selling is the transfer of enthusiasm from the seller to the buyer". Presenting is where we sell our information or our ideas.

We have done the hard work to master our subject area. We have worked on our delivery skills as a presenter. We have every right to be talking on the subject. We should also be excited by the topic and enthusiastic to share all of this wonderful knowledge and information with our audience.

Our listeners can feel whether we are positive about our content or not. They can tell if we are just going through the motions or not. We have all seen speakers like this. They have been told to give the talk and they have no interest in doing it and are just following orders. It is painful to be in that type of audience. We are trying to bring value to the audience and we have this uppermost in our mind.

If you become important in business then you will need to become an excellent presenter. You can become important in business and be a crap speaker, but you will always be eclipsed by those who have invested the time to gain the fundamental skills.

The idea of having enthusiasm would seem to be pretty obvious for someone presenting. In some cases, though we are just presenting information and getting massively enthusiastic about a bunch of not particularly illuminating numbers would be difficult. Often internal meetings are like this. We have to give our report on the revenue and client numbers or the trend with visitors to our stores or whatever. These are factual reports and if we were to suddenly start gushing with breathless enthusiasm, our bosses and colleagues may regard us with deep suspicion that we had lost our marbles. If we want our listeners to agree with our suggestions or to take action, then we definitely need enthusiasm. If we are in the persuasion business, then enthusiasm has to be a staple of our presentations.

Last week's episode was all about the dark failings of Prime Minister Suga as a communicator. I had the unfortunate bad luck to be watching his media conference announcing the extension of the state of emergency. It was seriously painful to watch. I was reminded of how important enthusiasm was, by sitting through his long press conference, where there wasn't a trace of enthusiasm in his presentation. In the end, I couldn't take any more and turned the television off.

I am not being facetious, when I talk about pain in this case. Whether it is Suga or anyone else, if their job is to influence us or persuade us and they attempt that without marshalling any enthusiasm, it is physically painful to sit there and be exposed to that. So let's flip it around and think about when it is our turn to be the influencer, the persuader. How are we approaching this task? Are we just buffeting our audience with a data dump, with an extended avalanche of statistics?

Numbers are dead, by the way. They only have life injected into them by having context applied. When we do that, the relativities become clearer. Explaining the background helps explain their relevance. How often though have we been served up spreadsheets on screen or a bunch of line graphs, crowded together on screen? This is very common speaker behaviour and a big pain receptor.

We need to find poignant stories about those numbers that make them really come alive. We need to place them in context with the current business situation and commercial trends. What do they portend for the organisation? We need to contrast them with other figures, so we have some sense of perspective.

Instead, what do we get? "I know you can't see this but….", as the speaker drones on throwing up a spreadsheet in tiny fonts, overwhelming us with a blizzard of numbers. Why do they do that? Obviously no clue and no training would be the answer. Rather, they could use animation and show a pop up a balloon, with a single number displayed in very large font, so we can read it easily. They can then enthusiastically tell us the story of that number and what it represents. That will be memorable and impactful.

When speakers talk with zero or very low energy like Suga, they mystically suck all of the energy out of the room and suddenly you feel worse than before they started. In the opposite case, that transfer of speaker energy to the audience has an uplifting effect and the world looks better immediately. Their enthusiasm becomes contagious and suddenly the world looks a lot better to us. Which variety of speaker would you like to be known as – the uplifter or the energy thief?

Having passion for your subject is required. Even if the topic itself is rather humdrum and mundane, let's try and find something in there that will be of interest to an audience. When we tell the stories we have selected, let's do so with verve. We don't need to be at max power all of the time, but at certain key junctures, we need to rev up the engine and go hard.

Watching Suga, you felt like this guy never gets out of first gear and the engine is barely ticking over. Until we can find the techniques for bringing energy to our talks, we should refrain from giving them, because the world doesn't need another energy assassin roaming free.

We should get coaching, get the training, work hard and put a lot of emphasis on rehearsal. No one is born as a great presenter. It is a learnt skill and one we can achieve, if we give it the priority it deserves. Never forget, once we get up to speak, our personal and professional brands are in jeopardy. Suga will leave the Prime Ministership a total nobody and will soon be forgotten, except perhaps as an abject lesson in what not to do. We don't want to join that crowd do we?

Let's bring our enthusiasm to our subject and inject it into our audience, thereby adding to our reputation and making the whole exercise a personal branding triumph.

The news cycle is awash with Prime Minister Suga's shock announcement that he will not continue as Japan's leader. His predecessor Shinzo Abe quit on health concerns and handed over the Covid crisis to Suga. Here we are twelve months later and Suga is gone. His inability to communicate as a leader has been seized upon as one of the key reasons for his failure. In Episode #233, I focused on Suga's challenges with communication. Here we are five months later and he has joined that large community of entirely forgetable Japanese leaders. From his own admission, he has reflected that he wasn't able to communicate his thoughts in an authentic way. That would be a case of delusional thinking.

He was entirely authentic. He was boring, showed no passion, had a single facial expression regardless of the content, had no variation in the speed or strength of his delivery and never smiled. Apart from that, he was totally forgettable, especially regarding his message. His supporters, fellow politicians, have lamented that he should have spoken more from his heart. More delusion. He read all of his speeches, because he couldn't string two words together by himself and so had to read it to us. Those speeches were no doubt prepared by bureaucrats in the relevant Ministries depending on the subject or by his staff. Every time he tried to speak to reporters without notes, he was obviously struggling and he kept those occasions as short as possible. If there was any opportunity to use teleprompters, he grabbed at it like a drowning man going down for the third time. No heart at play in any of these speeches.

He is a abject lesson for everyone about the importance of having a skilled capacity as a public speaker. This might be one of those urban myths, but apparently some parents wouldn't let their kids listen to him, in case he created a negative influence on their communication skills. Even if it isn't true it is still not a bad idea, because he can only instruct through negative example.

Basically, he has been a so called "retail politician" his whole career. Someone without privileges or an array of silver spoons like Abe and Previous Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Taro Aso, who through his own dint of hard work and cunning managed to climb to the highest post in the land. This is a classic tale of patronage, backroom deals and obligations running out of gas. What was also needed was a personal strength in persuasion power through public speaking. In the end, his colleagues, fully concentrated on saving their own necks, forced him out because they were concerned about an electoral backlash of voter unhappiness.

As we rise through the ranks in our careers we will be called on to become more persuasive. That will involve public speaking. Shinzo Abe version Mark 2, when he came back into the Prime Ministership, had obviously had public speaking training. He was much better than the earlier Mark 1 version. So what happened with Suga? If he in fact did receive coaching on speaking, then let's find out who was his coach and make sure we never use them. Watching him speak in public from his time as Chief Cabinet Secretary since 2012, until he became Prime Minister in 2020, he hasn't changed at all. It is more likely he has never sought any professional coaching on how to become more persuasive.

Why would that be? My guess would be he didn't see the need until it was too late. By too late, I mean having to announce he was quitting. When he became the leader, he inherited the Covid crisis from Abe. During Suga's watch it has gone on to the fifth wave, with epic numbers of people becoming infected. Let's also toss in the Olympics, just to really turn the heat up. Probably not a lot of spare time for coaching on how to be more persuasive and get his message across to the Japanese voters.

This is the point. Don't wait until it is too late like Suga. Get the training now and keep getting it right throughout your career. If you want to be persuasive, if you want to get your message across, then it takes work and requires concentrated time. When you get to the top like Suga, it is too late because you don't have time. We all need to be working on this speaking facility before we get to the top. In fact, this same facility will become an engine to power us to get to the top. Get trained and keep polishing your communication skills as a lifelong learning commitment. In a few months time, Suga will have been replaced and forgotten. It could have been totally different if he had learnt how to be persuasive. He could have delivered his message, authentically and professionally, expressing clearly and succinctly what was in his heart. Sayonara Suga san.

Have you heard of XiaoIce? According to the media it is a "cutting edge artificial intelligence system designed to create emotional bonds with its six hundred and sixty million users worldwide". It already accounts for sixty percent of all global human-AI interactions, making it the largest. Here is the terrifying punchline, "It was designed to hook users through life-like, empathetic conversations, satisfying emotional needs where real-life communications too often fall short". It is claimed that the AI is better than humans at listening attentively. What?

Are our modern communication skills so atrophied, that we have to switch to a chatbot? Is this a function of growth, off the back of the pandemic? We are working from home, so many people feel isolated and as if there is no solid foundation in their human relations anymore. This is ironic really, because today we are in the most "wired" ecosystem in history. We have online calls, hand held mobile phones and multiple text chat options. How could we be suffering from a lack of connectivity?

The problem then is not the hardware. Generationally, we can observe that the current younger generation prefers to text than speak. Texting is less complex than trying to phrase what you want to say on the fly. Text is also less complex when trying to parse what the other party is actually saying. We don't have to interpret the voice tone or the cadence of the message. Text is flat in tone and very fortunately editable before we send it.

The point about listening though is a good one – we have become very poor listeners. The wonderful technology we have access to today is a double edged sword, because we are now chained to our devices and the days are twenty four hours long, with no respite. We have our phones by the bedside, so we can connect to the internet immediately and we do.

What can we do to improve our communication skills? Here are a few timeless Principles of successful communications.

1. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

This sounds pretty easy, but we don't do it. We are so focused on ourselves, we stop listening to what the other person is saying. We are churning the words around in our own mind, prepping for what we will say in the conversation, such that the concentration is on ourselves and not on the person speaking.

We don't encourage the other person to speak either, because we want to do all the talking. We think what we have to say is the higher priority and they are there just to hear us out. We need to suspend our desire to do all the talking and instead just relax and let the other person do most of the talking. People are so starved of being listened to, they will be so grateful that we allowed them to talk and they will regard us very highly.

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.

Sadly we are very selfish and are primarily interested in ourselves and what is going on in our lives. It is all "me, me, me". The young people falling in love with the XiaoIce virtual chatbox are fooling themselves into believing that their emotions can be reciprocated by a machine. They are seeking attention, someone to listen to them, someone to be empathetic with their situation. It is counterintuitive, but the best way to build relationships is to become "genuinely" interested in other people. The key word there is "genuinely". If we do this, we will become part of their world and our world will improve as well.

1. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

The key word here is "sincerely", otherwise it is just manipulation. Our sense of self-worth is closely linked to how important others make us feel. People with low self-esteem and low self-worth are now talking to chatbots, in a desperate attempt to feel better about themselves.

All they need is for us to communicate they are important to us. Often we don't do this because we presume "they already know that". Actually they probably need to hear it a lot more than we imagine. So look for areas where we can recognise their contribution or their worth and most importantly communicate we appreciate them.

Chatbots are not a substitute for real human relations. If our society degrades to the point where chatbots are the main source of human relationships then the end of civilisation is nye. We cannot allow that to happen. So let's start using these simple Principles and build real relationships with each other, before it is too late.

When I am running half day or full day training sessions there is no rehearsal. There is a lot of participant interaction in our sessions, so you need to have the participants for that bit, if you were going to do a rehearsal. Instead, I plan the training down to the last second. I have a roadmap of the training, which nominates precisely what will need to be happening at every minute during the training and I follow that religiously. If the timing speeds up or slows down I know where I am relative to the plan, so I can make the necessary adjustments. I need to do that because we must not go over the time allotted for the training. It is the same with speaking and presenting. The organisers have a programme to get through and they absolutely don't want the speaker to go beyond their allotted time. Are you planning your talks down to the last minute?

What do we see? Speakers who go too long on their subject or who go crazy and try to cram fifteen minutes of content into two minutes. They start whipping through their slide deck like deranged people. Sitting in the audience, your head starts spinning because you cannot keep up. Their point of departure is always, "I will need to move through this next section quickly". Why is that? They knew from the start how much time they had and they knew that when they started the talk.

The "I will need to move through this next section quickly" statement is notification that this person is not professional. Consequently, their personal and organisation brands suffer. If they cannot figure out how to give a forty minute talk in forty minutes, do you really want them in charge of some work for you? We also extrapolate their lack of professionalism to the rest of the people who work down there. Without really thinking about it, we tar them all with the same brush, so this is a major unforced error we have here.

The quality of your presentation also suffers because often you had some really killer content, but you cannot really utilise it fully, because you are moving so fast. All of this self-inflicted reputational damage could easily be avoided if you spent time to rehearse the content. When you allocate the time for the first rehearsal, you quickly realise that you have too much material for the length of time to present it or the other way around. In my experience though, it is usually too much information and not a lack of information, which is the problem. We have this great slide we want to use and oh, yeah, there is that other great slide too. Before you know it, you have a perfect presentation for an hour, the problem is they have only given you forty minutes.

So instead of embarrassing yourself in front of others, you can make the adjustments beforehand. The subsequent rehearsals can now focus on the delivery component. There is always plenty to work on in this regard and it requires dedicated time. What do busy leaders lack? Time. The tendency is to short change the preparation for the talk and spend that time on something else. This is a mixing up of priorities. Most of that other stuff won't be you in public exposing yourself to the world as a professional. It will be internal projects, meetings and reporting, which are hidden to judgmental outsiders.

We need to get the content right, the timing within the limit and then we need to really impress the audience with our delivery. Senior company representatives having to read their talks is unthinkable, but you still see it. How shameful that you don't know your business well enough to talk to key points and instead you read the whole thing to us. Just send us an email with the text, and we can all stay at home and read it for ourselves. You need to practice before you get in front of any audience. What they should see is the polished you, the confident you, the persuasive you, not the frantic, disorganised you.

When rehearsing, video review yourself and have others give you "good/better" feedback. Polish the performance, because that is what it is, a performance. When you understand that then your approach changes. We remain business like though and don't attempt to transform ourselves into amateur thespians. We present as professionals, in our particular field of expertise. If you can organise it, video yourself presenting live to the audience and then study that later for areas where you can improve. Professionals rehearse, review, improve and above all else keep to the time allotted. Are you a professional?

Many Japanese companies have expanded their operations outside of Japan to enlarge their business, as the population decline guarantees to keep shrinking the domestic market. Many multi-national companies have established a strong presence on the ground here, because they like the rule of law and freedom to conduct their business, without having to hand over their IP to domestic partners. One of the things which keeps popping up as a request from Japanese and multi-national companies here is the challenge of how to ensure their Japanese leaders have more "executive presence" on the international stage.

What do they mean by "executive presence"? Usually, they are asking their leaders to be better presenters by getting to the key points concisely, clearly and convincingly. They want persuasion power. A big barrier for Japan has always been speaking in English, the international business lingua franca. Yet, this is not the major barrier to having "executive presence" when dealing internationally in business.

Mindset Inhibitors For Japanese Presenters

There are two mindset aspects which make it extremely difficult for Japanese executives to operate at the international professional presentation level. One is perfectionism. Japan is a country with no defects allowed, no mistakes tolerated and no errors entertained. It is a product and service heaven for consumers here and totally aspirational for the rest of the world. The idea that "we will make more money, if we allow for a defect rate of 5%", doesn't exist here and no CFO will ever be able to push this idea through the organisation. This "no error culture" extends to presenting in a foreign language.

I had the same difficulty when I first started learning Japanese. I would be forming the perfect Japanese sentence in my mind, all ready to go forth and launch it into the conversation, only to see the topic suddenly switched to something else. I learnt to launch forth perfect or otherwise, if I ever wanted to be able to speak the language in public. Japanese executives have trouble making that leap into imperfection and so are often very, very quiet in international meetings. They often avoid giving presentations if it is possible and if they have to, then they love to read the whole thing, either off a script or off the slides. Perfect English, but pretty boring and guaranteed to produce zero "executive presence".

No "Braveheart Speeches" For Japan

The other mindset issue is that presentation skills are not as highly valued. In the West, we still hearken back to Athens and Rome, to the great orators and their stirring speeches. Hollywood has had a field day with this trope. In Japan, there were no Mel Gibson Braveheart style speeches being given by the warlords. Battle commanders would sit in a guarded, cordoned off area and receive reports and give orders from there, as the hostilities raged forth. There were no modern movie style stirring entreaties, while riding up and down in front of the troops, urging them on to fight and win. The samurai leadership class didn't make mass public speeches. If the local authorities needed you to know something, they would post it on a notice board.

Yukichi Fukuzawa, one of Japan's most famous Westernisers, opened the Enzetsukan or Speech Hall on May 1st, 1875 on the campus of his new Keio University. It is still there and you can visit it when travel resumes. We could call this the foundation of Western style speech making in Japan. That was only 150 years ago, so compared to Athens and Rome, public speaking is quite a recent phenomenon here in Japan.

Standing in front of people and speaking has an element of assumed superior status, which usually requires the Japanese speaker to apologise at the start for standing above others, while everyone else is seated. Often, when I was asked to give one of the 200 plus speeches I have given so far in Japanese, a table, chair and a microphone stand were automatically prepared. The idea of standing and speaking was thought to be tiring for the speaker and it also got us all seated at the same height. Quite clever because no awkward "status" faux pas were possible. Being confident and outspoken isn't valued in Japanese culture. Here we should be humble, shy, modest and self-effacing.

Is There A Japanese Way Of Public Speaking?

Reading your speech, word for word, to achieve linguistic purity and carefully displaying no great confidence as a speaker is the accepted formula. Not a great platform for achieving "executive presence" in an international environment. Can Japanese become great public speakers? Yes, but they have to overcome a few mindset issues first. We teach public speaking here and sometimes will get pushback about the "Japanese way" of public speaking being different to that in the West. This is a false flag. It is a wily justification for a lack of competence by poor speakers. We are producing plenty of professional competent speakers in our classes, so we know it can be done and that Japanese executives can become excellent presenters. There are common basics for effective presentations that will transcend national borders.

One of our arrogant faults in the mono-lingual, Anglo Saxon West is we presume people who are not articulate, especially in English and who cannot present well, are not up to snuff. Big mistake. Skill absorption is the key. With proper training, I believe every Japanese leader can achieve "executive presence". Some may take longer than others to throw off their mindset issues. Gaining proficiency means we will all improve international mutual trust and enjoy clearer communication. This is really one of the last global frontiers for Japan.

Many internationally oriented Japanese executives here, will eventually catch up in English communication skills. Korean, Chinese and numerous other Asian nation's executives, for whom the international language of English is not their mother tongue, have managed it. International conferences are where you realise the gap between Japan and the rest of Asia is vast. Japanese executives can certainly manage it as well. It might be right or it may be wrong, it may be fair or unfair, but it is a reality. Being capable of giving professional presentations in English is how to garner "executive presence".

I was confirmed into the Anglican Church when I was twelve years of age. I remember it was the first time I ever wore a tie in my life. Prior to that, every week I had to ride my bicycle to the church after school and do bible studies with other kids with the Minister in order to pass the test to be able to confirmed. My parents were not religious at all, but I guess because Christianity is such a central component to our belief systems and literature, that they wanted me to get the basics.

Years later I discovered Zig Ziglar, one of the most famous modern day sales trainers. He was raised in the Deep South of America where bible studies is very big. I have read his books and watched his videos. I am fan. I noticed he was an incredible communicator. I also noticed that a lot of his sales stories where like the parables he would have read in his "red letter" bible, that is where the words attributed to Jesus are written in red. Australians are not particularly religious like Americans are, but I did recognise the power of these parables in communication. I don't mean the actual quotation of the parables themselves, but the storytelling structure.

The parable structure always has a learning component wrapped up in the story being told. Often in business, we want to achieve the same thing for our audience. We might be giving a "persuade" speech rather than simple "inform" speech" or we may be calling for the audience to "take action" rather than just "entertain" them.

The parables are always from real life, rather than being a confection created for effect. This makes it easy for us to identify with the story. When I mentioned going through the confirmation process as a child, I am sure many readers went through a similar experience, including those who are from Muslim or Buddhist religious belief systems. Our real life stories make it easy to connect with our audience, because they can understand or emphasise with what we are saying.

The parables are also very easy to understand. The message is crystal clear. Do this and things will be good. Do that and things will be bad. This simplicity is what makes the storytelling so effective. Zig Ziglar was a master of telling his stories which each had a lesson there for us in sales to absorb. They were from his experience or the experience of others from the real world, not from the "how it should be world".

This is the danger when we become speakers. We pontificate from on high, from way above the clouds, as if we were superhumans who never made a mistake or had a failure. The ego has to be strong to tell a story against yourself. We have grown up supersensitive to being criticised and so it is like kryptonite, we avoid it completely. Criticising yourself sounds crazy, so we only talk about what a legend we are.

Zig understood that audiences love a good redemption tale. Of course we like to hear how to do things so that they go well, that parable is always in fashion. Interestingly though, we often feel distant from this model story of bravery, perseverance against the odds, intelligence, strength and wisdom. We naturally aspire to those things, but they can feel like they are a million miles away from where we are at this moment. Now failure, disaster, train wrecks all feel much closer to our reality and of course we want to avoid those. Parable stories on what no to do are much more popular than the ones on what we should be doing.

When things go pear shaped, don't miss the chance to take a note on that for a future talk. The events may feel radioactive at the time, but get it down on the record, so that you can retell it when the pain has subsided. Particularly include the characters involved, the extent of the damage and the depth of the heroics or stupidity involved. Don't be limited to your own disasters. Comb through the media and books for other people's disasters, which can then be trotted out as a parable for doom and gloom.

Storytelling master Zig Ziglar copied the parables, probably without even giving it a second thought, because it was so much a part of his cultural upbringings in Yazoo City, Mississippi. As presenters we can find our own blue ribbon stories of triumph and catastrophe. We can wrap these up in simple, true renditions of reality that our audience can identify with and easily recall. The parables are well remembered for a reason – they work as a storytelling structure and we can adopt it for our own talks too. In ten minutes, I bet you can come up with at least two or three good incidents that have parable like qualities, which can then be fleshed out into mini-stories of business good and evil for an audience. Give it a try!

Whenever I hear that Jesper Koll, CEO of WisdomTree Investments Japan,

is going to give a talk here in Tokyo, I want to attend. I have heard him speak before and he is very good, so my anticipation level of another great presentation is high. I am not alone in thinking like this and his talks are always packed. This underlines why being able to present at a professional level builds your personal brand. The basis for a professional presentation is receiving high level training and then getting a lot of practice to hone the craft. You might be thinking, "well I don't get that many opportunities to give talks, so the frequency index is a bit low for me". Fair enough, but you can get the training and that is the starting point to get the speaking spots. All professional business speakers did a lot of speaking for free, before they ever got paid. In business, we will have to give excellent talks from the very start and then at every opportunity, to build our reputation. This is why the training needs to come first and the frequency becomes a consequence of the training results.

For those who are not in the "established reputation" group, which obviously is the majority, there are things we can do very easily to join them. While we are working in our companies, there will be chances to give updates, reports, represent the section, etc., and this is where we need to start building our reputation. Fortunately, there is rarely a queue formed on the right to give these talks. Most people hate speaking in public, because they have no clue what they are doing. They just bumble along, shuffling forward like the army of the dead reluctant presenters. Good, keep bumbling. That means we can get the opportunity to volunteer our services instead.

When the top bosses see you give your report and your slides are crystal clear, well presented and your delivery is really excellent, you will be noted as someone who can represent the firm. It may not happen quickly, but don't worry, those very same abilities as a competent presenter are also the requirements for leading others. You are likely to be promoted in your firm because you are seen as a skilled communicator, someone with persuasion power.

Rising through the ranks opens up more possibilities for giving presentations. Often the big bosses themselves hate presenting too and will be very happy to throw you the speaking spot. Grab it every time. Once you get into the public arena, other will start to notice you. More invitations will come. I have never asked Jesper about this, but I will bet he wasn't an overnight success as a speaker. I am sure he took years to polish his delivery. As you wise up to how the system works, you will start creating your own chances. You will be nominating yourself to give pertinent talks, on some worthy subjects for the local burghers. Don't let "imposter syndrome" hold you back. Remember that 99% of people giving business presentations range in skill from average to rubbish. You have every right to be out there and because you have received the training, you are automatically in the top 5% straight away.

Picking topics which are hot is a no-brainer. This is where your copy writing skills are called upon to draft the gripping blurb advertising your talk. Don't rely on the hosts to do this for you. This is your brand we are talking about here and you must have total control over how you are represented to an audience. This is what the people will see and on that basis they will attend, until such time as you are well regarded speaker and people will turn up to hear whatever you have to say regardless, because they are fans.

This is what happens for me when Jesper's name is bandied about as a speaker. I just go straight to the signup page and register, without reading the finer details, because I know it will be good. The other dimension is that not everyone will be able to attend your talk but many, many more will see the notification. They will start to associate your name with a particular topic. In Jesper's case it will be Japan's economy, because he is an expert economist and that is what he talks about. Your name in lights as an expert on a topic is part of building an audience and personal brand for the future.

When we get to the delivery stage, we can also build anticipation. You are introduced by the MC, who is absolutely quoting from the brilliant introduction of yourself, which you prepared in advance. I say "absolutely" because you need to nobble the MC beforehand and give firm instructions they follow the script and don't go off piste. It should be brimming to overflow with credibility and this starts to build a positive anticipation in those who don't know anything about you as yet.

When the MC introduction is finished and you are on stage, don't start immediately. Just hold the proceedings for a few seconds, which by the way can seem like an eternity and then start. If you want to see an anticipation build of stupendous proportions, then watch the video of Michael Jackson, when he performed at the Super Bowl in 1993. He didn't move a muscle for one minute and thirteen seconds. At that point, all he did was change his head direction to the left. He then held that new pose until the one minute thirty two mark and then he began his performance. It takes a huge amount of guts to hold an audience for that long. Well folks we are not Michael Jackson, so we can only hold our audience for a short time, but we should still hold them in order to build that anticipation.

Keep close the idea of creating anticipation in the mind of your audience and develop your presentations accordingly. If you start this way, you can anticipate a lot of success for your personal and professional brands.