The Presentations Japan Series

"Don't round your back", "Stand up straight", "Pull your shoulders back", are common parental commands when we were growing up. Kids do tend to have rounded shoulders and don't stand up straight, but so what? Why are parents worried about their kids deciding to have a rounded rather than straight posture? The concerns relate to health based on a straighter posture allows better breathing to take place and better aligns the spine. The concerns also relate to public perception. A confident person has a straight back and stands tall, ergo anyone slouching around, obviously lacks confidence. We have all seen those studies that correlate height, with those in leadership positions. This leads to an idea that being taller and therefore standing straighter to enhance our height is a good idea. Now this may or may not be true, but there is that perception.

A speaker whether striding across the stage or plonked down in front of their laptop on screen, has to be sure they have the right posture. As speakers, we are trying to convince others to buy our philosophy, ideas, decisions, direction, strategy or suggestions. We want to marshal all of our resources behind that aim. Standing up straight and holding our chin up, so that we are looking ahead, rather than looking down is a good idea, if you want to instil confidence in you from the audience. We may choose to drop our chin and even lean forward toward the audience if we want to make a strong assertion, as we literally point our body language at the audience. That is a conscious choice, as opposed to a posture achieved through habit, that is permanently leaning forward.

When we get older, we start to lean forward from the hips. We can no longer stand up straight, as our backs become bent over. We basically look physically weaker compared to younger people standing up ramrod straight. Consequently, there is a mental linkage to poor posture and weakness in the common mind. As the presenter, we don't want to appear to be weak, as this will negatively impact our credibility. So straight posture becomes associated with trust, reliability and respect.

When we are presenting online we have to be conscious of posture as well. I was on a webinar recently with multiple expert speakers, talking about how the current Covid-19 crisis has impacted their businesses. Two of them stood out, but in a negative way. One speaker had excellent, straight back posture but no clue on how to align the camera lens. He had the laptop on the desk and the lens was pointing up at him. He looked distant, superior, disdainful and aloof, because of the way he was engaging the camera. If he had raised the camera lens to eye level, he would have been projecting a completely different image, as a respectful, knowledgeable businessperson.

Another speaker had better height control of the camera lens, but was rounding his shoulders and leaning down and into the camera. It really stood out on the broadcast, how his rounded posture compared with everyone else. He didn't look confident or knowledgeable. He also did a lot of umming and ahhing as well, which didn't help his cause to appear an expert member of the panel. So the speech hesitation, combined with the posture hesitation, added up to a big loss of credibility on what he was saying.

We need to get that camera height up to eye level. If we can stand up when presenting all the better. One of the speakers did just that and he was much better able than the others to use his body language to support the points he was making. He had the most authority amongst all of the speakers, just by how he presented himself. When presenting online, we need to sit up straight and keep looking into the camera lens. We have to maintain that posture throughout the session. Absolutely never sink into the back of your chair or slump into the back support. It looks way too casual when presenting. Sit up and a few centimetres away from the back support and try to be as vertical as possible in front of the camera.

Perception becomes a bigger factor when we are on the small screen of webinars. We have limited ways of expressing ourselves and so we have to make the most of the tools available to us. Getting the correct eye line and straight back doesn't cost anything or take any great preparation. Having the right posture can make a huge difference to how we are perceived and how well our message is received.

We have all migrated back to our homes, waiting for the great pandemic to subside, so that when the coast is clear we can scuttle back to the office in safety. Or maybe, we have concluded that we don't need to be at the office as much anymore or at all. The end result is that we have been relegated to a low tech environment, with almost zero tech support. If we were presenting in a meeting room, we would have the crowd right there in front of us. Perfect communication conditions, where we can marshal all of our persuasion capabilities and let them loose on the audience. We would have a big screen with our slides up there for all to see. If the room was big enough, we would have a high quality microphone at our disposal.

Meanwhile, back at home, we have our laptop and that is about all. I was on a webinar which featured some heavyweights from the public and private Japanese financial sector, as well as other worthies. No one on that call had a clue about how to arrange their laptops so that the camera angle was correct or so that the lighting was done properly. If we want to get our message across we have to show up in a way that has credibility, visibility and reliability. Of course, everyone was seated when doing the calls, which meant their body language was truncated. I didn't see much animation in the faces or much tapping into body language going on either.

If we are just an attendee at an online meeting or a participant in a webinar presentation, as one of the audience, then just sitting there makes perfect sense. Nothing better for multitasking when boring presenters are on screen than sitting down to easily access all the tech escape routes. Unfortunately when it is us on screen presenting, we want none of that to be occurring. We want everyone hanging on our every word, diligently taking notes of the gold nuggets, we are delivering and exercising total absorption in our message.

The cameras in the laptops are invariably wide angle only. If we are going to be presenting regularly online, we should consider buying a separate attachable camera and look for one which has a narrower range of field. We want to be in closeup mode as much as possible, in order to diminish the competition in our background. We also should invest in getting some better lighting arrangements, so that we are in full shot and not too much else. I was watching a webinar a few days ago and one of the participants, who I know quite well, had so little light on his face, he looked like an extra in a horror movie, as he wafted into shot emerging from the gloomy darkness of his home.

We should also arrange the height of our laptop so that we can stand up. This of course means wearing a suit, including the trousers, as we will be getting an almost full body shot. We will still be very close to the camera, so we are still going to be clearly visible for the audience. If you think about a presentation at a venue, the speaker can be anywhere from three to thirty meters away from the audience. We will seem much closer in our onscreen version, than what a typical audience sitting in the cheap seats at the back, would experience.

Standing helps us to release our body language and particularly our gestures. The seated non-use of our hands is one of the biggest presenting mistakes in this current online meeting universe. When we are seated, we are also very much constricted in terms of how much energy we can put out. Standing will enable us to seem more powerful, dynamic and persuasive. It is also a lot more relaxing to be standing, I have found, because of the freedom it supplies.

As always, the key is to keep looking at the camera lens and not the faces on the screen. If we have slides, then we should do what we always do and use a slide advancer of some configuration. It might just be a cordless mouse or something a bit more elaborate. You can also ask your producer to relieve you of all the tech related duties, so that you can concentrate on your message and your audience. As speakers, standing is a more natural situation and one which has been presenter normality until recently.

This work from home situation and therefore, present from home reality, isn't going away anytime soon. Short term thinking, employing jerry-built solutions, is what amateurs do. The professionals understand the situation and adjust accordingly. Which one are you?

"Don't waste a good crisis" is the sort of advice you don't really wish to receive. Who wants a crisis at any time? The pandemic however has certainly created economic and social turmoil. It has also created instant experts, charlatans, wannabees and plenty of dodgy advice. I have been watching webinars on how to present online by people so incompetent it is breathtaking. I admire their pluck, front, chutzpah to have a go, but am less convinced of their questionable sense of civic duty, to help out during a crisis. When things get tough, I like the competent to get going, not just the tough.

Individuals with no track record of ever delivering anything online are now self inducted experts on the "how to" bits. This extends from the equipment salespeople all the way up to the various Chamber captains of industry. The tech is the most fun because it is the simplest. Just get the gadgetry, the whizbang and away you go. Live streaming is great as long as you are great when "live". That would automatically cancel out most people. Being able to string two words together, with no editing fallback, means you are up on the high wire with no safety net. You need to be an expert in your field, lucid, confident, articulate and practiced. That wipes out most "self proclaimed experts of online presenting" right there.

A high tech rendition of you umming and ahhing is no help. The audience will soon lose focus and in this Age of Distraction will quickly move on to more interesting things. The camera technology is so good today, it is mind boggling. A great close up, crystal clear of you struggling is fantastic for production values, but no so great for persuading anyone of what you are saying. If the live video is later worked on, those ums and ahs can be edited out, but depending on your frequency of usage, that may mean a lot of transitions in the final video.

The real bug bear with the tech is the fact that most people are not in a studio, surrounded by tech heaven. Fundamentally, we don't want to travel to the studio. We are bundled up at home, at the mercy of the lens in our laptop and the dubious lighting in our room. At the beginning, everyone thought we would all be back to normal – "the boys will be home for Christmas" before the slaughter started type of Phony War. So, don't worry about the sound or the lighting, but here we are, with no end in sight. So, we do need to get a little excited about upping the ante on our tech and technique.

Buy the light you need for when you are on camera. Get the lens up to eye level so you are not shooting up your nostrils. Look at the lens rather than the faces on the screen. Wear a headset with mic, so you have access to the clearest sound. If you find you need a separate mic then get one. This global isolation ward we find ourselves in is destined to continue for some time longer. Accept that none of the platforms are reliable, so have an emergency crew on hand, ready to rescue people swept overboard from the webinar into sound loss hell.

Lift your energy by 40% at least, to compensate for the draining effect of the camera. Be much more animated than normal. Move your head angle, so it is not always simply one dimensional, straight on to the camera. If you want to know what I mean, just watch the professional broadcasters on television. They have realised a static head position is dull and leads to people switching their attention to all of the other multitasking goodies they have at their fingertips.

The good thing with these platforms is that you can record yourself for review. Here is a pro hint – do that before the broadcast, not just reviewing the carnage, after the fact. You can experiment with angles, heights, lighting, fake greenscreen backdrops, content and delivery. See how you will look on the small screen. You will also have time without pressure, to learn how to share your screen, get your slide deck up and control what the audience can see. Get your first impression nailed. Your online buddies may be a mess, but you don't have to join them in that regard. It might be a bit disarming to learn how boring you are on playback. Better to adjust to that truth before the curtain goes up and then make the necessary adjustments beforehand.

Maintaining the audiences' attention presumes you actually have their interest in the first place, doesn't it. Gaining and keeping attention are no simple achievements in this Age of Distraction. One of the interesting findings of online meeting studies is the miniscule number of people who are attending, who are NOT multitasking in the background. This means that the content and the delivery are not sufficiently gripping, to keep a grip on our listener's attention.

We know that most people who present are pretty boring in the first place. This has been the case in the face to face world. So it is no surprise that these nefarious time wasters and energy sappers, should be up to their same old tricks on whichever semi-functional platform we all forced to struggle with. Escaping to a better place then is the easy choice and we tune out and check email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram or just surf the internet. In other words, we are not short of choices if we get disinterested in you as the speaker.

To grab interest at the start when in the room with the audience, we need to pare down every possible distraction, hesitation, segue, diversion or interruption possible. That means getting there early checking on the equipment, testing the microphone, ensuring the MC will do a proper job of introducing us to kick things off. We get right into a strong start, with a teaser of some sort to break through all the clutter in our audience's minds. Then we can move on to thank the sponsors, start launching our slide deck, introduce our company and set up the importance of the topic.

In a thirty minute talk, we will break things into five minute segments, so we are dividing the delivery up into six blocks. In each change of blocks we need a transition, something to wake the audience up they have started to drift. It might be launching a rhetorical question.

Jesper Koll, a well know economist and speaker here in Tokyo, is an absolute master at this. He is very flamboyant. He will boldly wander into the forward tables of the audience, stand over the top of you and hit you with his question. You are now diverting your full attention to him, because you imagine you will have to answer this little doozy he has proposed, and do it front of all these business people assembled in the room. Everyone else is nervous too, in case he switches to another member of the room.

Just as you break into nervous sweat, he sweeps in and answers the question he posed. With a silent, private sigh of immense relief you realise, "oh, that was a rhetorical question, so I don't have to front up with an answer". To keep us all on our toes, he sometimes does expect an answer, in case we regular Jesper speech attendees think we can start gaming the system.

We might change the pace of the energy we are expending to lift it up to much higher heights, for a short burst of adrenaline transfer into the crowd, to keep them with us for a bit longer. We might tell a fascinating story that grabs interest. Or it might be the supply of some stunning, unknown facts or hot off the presses data, that will be deemed valuable and make everyone happy they attended the talk, because they feel they are getting value from investing their time to be there.

In the online world, we should keep everyone out of the room, until it is time. This way they don't see the presenters for who they really are – tech novices, totally out of their depth with the platform, having side discussions in public about what they are going to do and who will be doing it. When it is time, be ready to go and go hard from the start, to kick things off well.

In the online world, we can't apply the five minute rule. The distraction factor is nuclear, so we have to apply the two minute rule. Every two minutes, we need to be doing something to keep people with us. That means fifteen things have to be pre-planned, for a thirty minute speech, before you go live. It can be the things already mentioned or doing a poll, getting a raised hand, a green check, a red cross, entering something in the chat or calling on someone to unmute and share their thoughts on the subject.

In person or online, the secret is in the planning. Expect total distraction and then work back from that possibility, minute by minute, as to what you have to do, to overcome the gap between where you want the audience to be and where they can wind up.

In Parts One and Two, we have covered the mentality needed to be a professional presenter, how to structure the talk and how to deal with hostile audience questions. Now we turn to the delivery components. In the online world and in person, our voice is such a powerful communication tool. We hear those deep throated DJs on the radio or actors in the movies and realise we don't have the same instrument.

Actually, no one cares. In business, we are all amateur presenters, because that is not our main job. If we want to be a full time professional speaker, then that is a different question. Our day to day job is running our section or the company or battling away in our defined professional field. We speak in front of audiences as a subset of our main tasks. So we go with the voice we have.

I have a rather husky voice. This is the product of 50 years of kiai or the yelling, that goes on in karate training. I would love to have a mellifluous, baritone voice that harkens the angels, but that is not going to happen. The chances are you are not going to throw your job in and become a full time DJ anytime soon either, so you go with what you have too.

What we can control is how clear and concise we are. Many people think out aloud. What escapes from their lips is the short form version of that internal conversation, in the form of ums and ahs. To eliminate this habit, learn how to purse your lips, ever so gently together, so that no sounds can emerge. When you speak, you open your mouth and when you are not speaking, your lips remain pursed. You decide what you are going to say and you hit it straight away, with no hesitation, then purse your lips when you finish. If you are thinking what it is you want to say, you do that while keeping your lips pursed. Keep practicing this technique and you will eliminate ums and ahs from your speech.

Who we speak to is also important. Now a lot of people speak fervently to their notes on the podium or their laptop screen or turn around and talk to the main screen in the room. They are certainly not talking to the audience. I remember Professor Walton teaching us about Pre-war Japanese history. He spent every lecture staring into space, about three meters above the heads of his audience. I don't recall him making any eye contact with anyone during the whole lecture series in that semester and I would guess, in his entire career as an academic.

As a presenter, we need to speak to our audience. Sounds simple, but so many people get this wrong. In the online world, they are talking down to the faces on screen, instead of talking to the camera mounted at the top of the laptop. In the real world, they are whizzing their eye contact around at lighting speed, effectively looking at everyone and no one at the same time. There is no engagement going on.

Eye power is so powerful, so let's use it. Lock eyes with your audience, one member at a time and engage that person for around six seconds and then pick up the next person at random. If you spend less time, it is not having any personal connection and if you keep burning a hole in their retina, it feels too intrusive. Don't connect with people in any predictable order – keep your audience on their toes, awake and with you throughout your presentation.

In person or online, watching your audience allows you to adjust for their situation. If they look puzzled, then they probably didn't get the point and you may need to rephrase it. If they are looking disengaged, then you need to get them involved using rhetorical questions. These are good because as the audience member, you don't know if you are going to be called upon to answer it or not. Getting people to raise their hands is good and probably twice is the maximum number of times, to use this technique before it feels manipulative. If they are raising hands or giving you a green check when online, you can use this more often during the presentation.

Energy in conversation with a colleague or a friend is not the energy you need when presenting, whether online or in person. Crank it up around 40% higher than usual and start pushing our your ki, your intrinsic power, to the audience. Stand up straight, if in person and sit up straight, if online. Also if you are giving a presentation online, then try and arrange it so that you can deliver it standing up. It will bring a lot more physical energy to the audience and bolster your confidence and credibility.

Use a headset when presenting online for the best audio quality possible and if using a microphone with a live audience, try to use a lavalier microphone, so that your hands are free for gestures. Gestures are critical exclamation points in you talk. They bring power to what you are saying, bolstering the power of the words. Online still use them, although when seated, the range of movement is a bit more constricted, but still employ them for emphasis.

Online or in person, the basics are the basics and we must master them. We make a few adjustments for the online world but they are not game breaking. Practice remains the key and so rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.

In Part One we looked at the opportunity available for people who want to improve their presentation, persuasion and speaking skills. We delved into why are we speaking at all and who are we speaking to, which will define the approach we will take. The planning part is an obvious, but usually overlooked, component of the presentations' world

Ironically, we begin with designing the end of the speech. How close can we get to compressing the key point of the talk into a single sentence. This discipline really forces us to be clear and concise about what it is we are going to say. So we start by writing the two closes of the talk. The first close is for prior to the Q&A, assuming there is going to be Q&A. The second is for after the Q&A.

Many speakers just allow the Q&A session to define the whole presentation. The issue here though is that, as the speaker, you have no control over what people will want to ask you. It is always astonishing to me, to hear audience members ask questions which are well off topic and unrelated to the point of the presentation. Why they do that is a mystery, but regardless, as the presenter there is nothing you can do to shepherd the audience toward asking relevant and insightful questions, to further tease out the gold from your humble offering.

This means the final impression from your talk, can be left dangling, wrapped around a remote and unremarkable subject, light years from the point you were making. We must seize back control. After the end of the Q&A, we repeat the key points we want the audience to have ringing in their skulls, as they file from the venue.

If you get a hard time during the Q&A, ranging from pushback to outright hostility, deal with it the same way. Do not allow your mouth to advance ahead of your brain and storm forth with the first random answer that pops into your head. Repeat the question in a substantially watered down form, which will suck all the invective and life power emanating from this incoming verbal missile.

If they say, "This is outrageous, your argument has been completely disavowed by all of the top experts, and you have the gall to be repeating it here today. In front of us. It is an insult". You sweetly paraphrase, "The question was about expert opinion on this subject". That reply took four seconds. You continue to buy yourself some more thinking time, by making a bland filler statement, such as, "This issue has aroused a lot of interest in our industry". Another four seconds. Having eight seconds to think first is a world of difference to opening up your mouth and letting "whatever" pour forth. With these eight seconds, you are now fully mentally prepared to form your well considered reply.

When you do so, hold the questioner's gaze for the first six seconds and then blank them for the rest of the proceedings. You show you are not afraid of them and then you spread your answer to all the other people in the room, engaging them with your eye contact. When you ignore the hostile questioner thereafter, you quickly drain all their negative, invective power from them.

Back to the structure of the talk. Having boiled down the whole brilliant concoction to a single sentence, we now work on the construction of the presentation. We need around three key pieces of evidence to support our assertions. Three is a good number, because it tends to make it easier for the audience to follow and yet also allows us enough room to go into reasonable depth. We work out the logical flow of the argument, to get the three points into order and then we add in the sub points and evidence to prove what we are saying. We have now framed the main body of the talk and this means it is time to work on the blockbuster opening.

The start of the speech has some key goals. We want everyone to stop multitasking and being distracted by their phones. We must make them cease chit chatting with their neighbours and devote their entire attention to us. Sounds easy. Today though, we all seem to have the attention span of a gnat, unless we are binge watching some popular series on Netflix. During lockdown, everyone was binge watching their hearts out, so their expectations have now reached stratospheric heights and here you are, about to present.

Unfortunately, as presenters, we can't compete with these multi-million dollar, big budget extravaganza shows. We are left to our own devices to keep people away from their hand held devices. As modern day speakers, we find ourselves marooned in this Age Of Distraction. Therefore our opening has to be really well planned, to cut through all the mental clutter.

Whatever you say, begin with a lot of energy and volume, to scythe through the white noise bubbling away in the back of the room. You will have been introduced before your talk, but modern audiences keep chatting away without compunction, so go hard at the start. Open with a vexing question, a pithy quote, a gripping episode from the front lines or a bald faced, semi controversial statement. These are all good attention grabbers.

In Part Three, we will deal with the finer points of the delivery. Many a great start faltered midstream and lost the attention of the audience. People today are merciless about reaching for their phones, to disappear to a better world than sitting there listening to you drone on and on. Find out how to avoid that disastrous fate in the next instalment.

It Is Not Back To Normal As A Presenter – Part One

Gradually people are streaming back to the office, after having been sequestered away at home for many months. As a presenter, whether you are the boss, one of the troops or representing the company in public, things are not going back to what they were pre-Covid-19. The chances of making a public speech in front of a live audience are slim to none at the moment and likely to remain that way for a little longer. Because of physical distancing protocols, our favourite venues can't handle the same numbers as before, so that changes the dynamics of the money needed to pay for the space. People are just staying with online presenting as a result. In the office though, bosses have to lead and team members reports have to be given.

A lot has been forgiven of public presenters since February. Online presentations are pretty bad. The audio is usually dodgy at best. The people delivering the presentation are rarely in charge of the tech. They compound this ignorance with a dead dog style delivery. Their monotonous voice deliveries are on full display. They point the laptop camera up their nose and they are constantly looking down at the screen, rather than up at the camera, so no engagement with the audience is possible.

People's exposure in Japan to excellent talks and presentations was pretty much missing pre-Covid-19. So for the vast majority of the population, the ugly experience of dealing with failing presenters, has just moved out of the meeting room or the public venue, on to the online world of trapped tiny faces, in tiny little boxes in the corner of the screen.

This is such an opportunity. I doubt many presenters have been busily honing their craft during the lockdown. So again, those with excellent skills are going to stand out. They will be more persuasive and more powerful in their messaging, than their colleagues and competitors. In any aspect of professional work in business, reaching the top one percent in any category is extremely difficult. Well, that is except when it comes to giving presentations. It is certainly not crowded at the top.

Being highly effective in getting people to buy your message makes an enormous difference in how many people will follow what you recommend. These are the types of people, the company upper echelons love to promote into leadership positions. They do this because they recognise these individuals can move people and therefore move the needle and produce out performance. No matter how smart or technically skilled people can be, if they are inarticulate, hesitant, lacking in confidence in what they are saying, can't be clear and concise they will not be convincing when speaking to others. Those on the receiving end will not follow them at all or with much enthusiasm. They are totally reliant on position power, because they themselves have zilch in terms of personal power.

Where do we start? No matter what the occasion or the audience, we need to begin by determining what is the purpose of this talk. Is it to inform, convince, inspire or entertain? This is such a simple step that most presenters miss. They dive straight into the details, labouring over the slide deck assembly, debating which slide to include and which to drop. Don't do that. Instead, start with your WHY. Once we know why we are giving this talk, we can begin to construct the format we need to deliver it.

Next, who is our audience? What degree of knowledge do they have already on this topic? What are their preconceptions about this subject? What is the age and gender range? What are main their interests? How will this talk fulfil a need they have? Forget about what you want to say. Knowing what they want to hear is the key and then we build backwards to make that a reality for them. How do we work out what they want. What has Covid-19 done to change people's expectations and outlook? We can't just mope back to February and pick up the threads, as if nothing has happened in the last four months.

If we don't know most of the audience members already and if we are not working together every day, we won't have a lot of pre-knowledge of who they are and what they want. We can query the organisers of the talk about why they chose this subject matter. Who has signed up and what sectors are they from? We can ask people we know in the same sectors about what are the current hot topics or the main pain points. If the hosts will release the details, we can call a small sample of those who registered and ask them what we could cover that would give them the most value.

In Part Two, we will go deeper on how to structure the talk, the delivery finer points and how to handle difficult or even outright hostile pushback to what you are saying.

Oh Yeah, Another Critical Thing For Both Online and In-Person Presenting Success

So far I have looked at the eye and voice power aspects when presenting, whether you are full form in front of an audience or struggling to get out of that tiny box in the corner of the screen that, Zoom or WebEx or whoever, has relegated you to, when you are online. What about body language? Does this remain the bastion of live presentations only and we are unable to muster much of its power, when we are looking down the barrel of a camera lens at the top of our laptop?

Certainly, it is very powerful when we are in person. We have three distances, three angles and three stage positions when in front of an audience. The three distances are as close as possible to the audience, standing somewhere mid-stage and moving to the back of the stage. Now these distances may be contained, when we are using slide decks and projecting on to a screen. If the screen is at head height, rather than lofted well above us, we need to be mindful of our position. We should be standing audience left next to the screen, so that the punters will look at us, read the screen and then look at us again. What we don't want them captivated by the screen content and oblivious to us.

Whether we are next to the screen or not, we can still change our distance engagement with the audience. When we want to make a strong point, we can move as close as possible to the audience. We can't stay there though, because the pressure on the audience is too much. So, we move back to the mid-stage area, a type of neutral ground. If we want to make an expansive point, we move to the rear of the stage area and embrace the whole audience at one time.

The three angles are chin straight, up and chin down. At the center position, our chin is straight. When we move to that expansive position, we need to slightly elevate our chin. When we are close to the audience, we tuck our chin in, ever so slightly. This chin adjusting business just strengthens the power of the position we are speaking from. Try it. Stand close to the audience with your chin up and it won't have anywhere as much power as when standing in the same position, with your chin being held slightly down.

There are also the three stage positions of center, left and right. This allows us to engage with all of our audience. Those sitting on the extreme sides, can feel remote from the speaker. By moving to the extreme left or extreme right, we bring them into our presentation. To engage those right at the back, we stand on the very apron of the stage with our chin up and looking at those in the distant "cheap seats". When moving across the stage apron, try not to fall into the orchestra pit. Don't laugh, stages are often curved and without too much difficulty you can be head up, watching your audience and not watching where you are going. Next thing, down you go.

What about in the online world? We are often seated, but if it is a presentation, why are we seated? Why not mount the laptop so that the camera is head height, when you are standing. I was giving a presentation on giving presentations, to this year's JMEC or Japan Market Expansion Competition participants and doing it online. I chose to stand when giving this presentation, because I wanted full access to my body language. That mean mounting a folding set of steps on my study desk and having my laptop precariously balanced on some books, so that I achieved the required eye height.

One thing I didn't figure well enough into the equation was that I need a dedicated light source for my face, rather than relying on the room lighting in my study. This is something we need to work on, when presenting online. It does make a big difference to the clarity of our presence on screen.

On camera we are more limited in our movement range, so we are more dependant on our facial expressions and gestures. We don't want to be swaying around like a drunken sailor, as that doesn't look terribly convincing on screen. We need to stand in the one spot, but stand up straight and project credibility, reliability and professionalism. We can move our hands forward, rather than sideways and stay in shot more easily. So rather than showing something large, by spreading our hands wide from left to right, we can hold one hand close to our body and move the other closer to the camera. It communicates the size concept, without us going out of camera range.

Energy is much easier to generate and project when we are presenting standing up. We can access our full body power. Then we combine this with our hands, face, eyes and voice for a total wall of power effect on the audience. We might be wearing a headset and microphone combination for the best audio quality and usually we are able to stand close enough to the laptop to connect the cables. If we have to stand, such that we are using only the laptop microphone, we can expect that the audio quality may not be as good. You might also get some room echo on the audio, when you are positioned away from the camera. We can also use slide advancer technology, so that we are released from the laptop or we can just use the remote mouse.

The key is to always maximise your body language power, regardless of whether you are in person or online.

One More Critical Key For Both Online And In-Person Presenting Success

Previously I talked about the importance of eye contact when presenting, whether online or in the venue with the audience. Another major element is how presenters use their voice when in front of their audience, be they sojourned in tiny boxes on screen or live in the room, standing right in front of us. You would think this was the easiest thing in the world. We talk to our friends, family and colleagues, so what is the big deal about talking when we are presenting? Good question and yet so many erstwhile presenters make a mess of it.

The online world is full of traps for presenters. The audio quality of every system I have used so far has been dodgy. This means that our voice is not easily heard and what we are saying is not always being comprehended. Some presenters just use the built-in microphone in their computers, rather than using a more specialised, sophiticated headset and microphone combination. This adds to the underlying issue with the various already flawed broadcast platforms. The lesson here is use a good quality headset and microphone combo.

In the live audience situation, we have those individuals who flee from the microphone, those who manhandle it, rendering it ineffective and those who know what they are doing. Leaning over to speak into a rostrum mounted microphone stand should only be allowed for those with lustrous and ample hair. Bald spot spotting is never a pleasant pastime. Actually even those with amply hirsute proportions, are forced to look down when they address the audience, when using a low microphone stand. Get there early and ask for a better microphone stand or a pin microphone. Lavalier microphones have the added benefit of freeing you from penal servitude, locked away behind the rostrum. You can move across the stage and engage members of the audience seated to the extreme left and right as well as those in the middle.

When holding a hand microphone, hold it by the handle and speak across the mesh. A common error is holding the microphone too low. Amazingly, I see people holding it at waste height and then expecting the equipment to pick up their sound waves. Please do not wrap your paws around the top, in a savage attempt to strangle the implement. I can never understand why some people cover the microphone top with their palm and then expect it to broadcast their contribution. By the way, if you are nervous and the microphone is now frantically wiggling in your palm, just pull your hand to your upper chest, hold it there and speak across the mesh. If you are really nervous, use both hands.

Apart from the tech issues there are the human own goals being scored with alarming frequency and consistency. The most common is the lack of understanding of that most wonderful instrument – our own voice and what it can do. When we are online, the microphone technology in headsets is very good, so we don't have to yell to be heard. Before you start your online presentation and before the participants are allowed into the virtual room, do a microphone check, for the right speaking level you will need throughout you talk. We normally do this in a room, before the audience arrives. Online presentations need this sound check too. Remember for online, we need to be able to speak with more energy than normal, without becoming deafening.

When we are speaking with friends, we don't need to project our voice very much because even with social distancing we are usually physically close to them and if we did, they would ask us to stop shouting at them. On stage, in front of an audience, we need to up our energy levels. When we push out our ki or our intrinsic energy, we connect with the audience physiologically. I have been practicing traditional Japanese karate for 50 years now. When I speak in public, without even thinking about it, I am directing a lot of ki to my audience. The audience literally feels the power of my conviction, in what I am saying and what I am recommending to them. This ki projection allows you to reach every member of the audience, no matter how far away they are seated. It also creates a type of powerful magnetic field that turns their mobile phones into kryptonite and keeps them attracted to what you are saying.

Online and in-person, the absolute message mangler is the monotone delivery. I hereby expose these nefarious presenters as card carrying members of the Guild of Public Speaking Flat Heads. This is not an organisation you want to join. They assault us with their flat delivery, flat energy and flat commitment.

In Japan, this means immediate and automatic audience slumber permission has been granted. It has a hypnotic effect on many Japanese, similar to the gentle swaying of the trains. Off they go to the Nipponese equivalent of the land of Nod. The cure for banishment to purgatory by monotone voicing is variety. There are three elements: tonal, strength and speed. European languages have that rise and fall tonal variety, whereas the Japanese language is spoken in a flat manner. Regardless of linguistic chauvinism regarding tone, all languages can access the acceleration and deacceleration of speaking speed. We can speed it up and slow -it - down. We can also vary the strength output, to go from a roar, to a conspiratorial stage whisper.

I opted to personally narrate my own two books "Japan Sales Mastery" and "Japan Business Mastery", despite the excruciating stamina involved, dragged out over many painful hours. There was only one reason for this insanity. I know which words I want to emphasis in my sentences, whereas a professional narrator won't have a clue. Whether we are speaking to people in the virtual world or those sitting in front of us, we must keep in mind that not every word in a sentence is created equally. Some are there for more emphasis, to help us sell our message. We have to either hit those words harder or softer for effect, to be an effective speaker.

Virtual or in-person, our voice carries the day. Presenting is a world of its own and we need to rise to the occasion to match its requirements. Variety is the key, so focus on that and your audience will be with you from the start until the finish. In this Age of Distraction, that is a big achievement.

One Critical Key For Both Online And In-Person Presenting Success

Lockdown has ended in Japan and we are caught in a sort of phony war, where neither online nor in-person has won the ultimate battle for audience attention. Online is still more prominent at the moment, but the cobwebs are being cleared away and the dust wiped off the "live and in the room with you" presenters. These two major delivery vehicles are fundamentally different.

Trapped in a tiny box at the top of the screen, we do our best to engage our audience when we are online. Our virtual background is perhaps marginally better than our humble abode's interior. All the stickybeak viewers ponder about the backgrounds of our homes, wondering what we have there on the shelf or the wall, rather than paying full attention to us as the speaker. The alternative is the green screen technology virtual backgrounds being employed. They are definitely dodgy though, as whenever we move, half of our head is quickly cleaved off the screen. The reality is that, as presenters, we will have to become like the skilled samurai of old, in the Miyamoto Musashi tradition of nitoryu or two swords mastery. We will have to become the modern masters of the presenting weaponry needed for both mediums.

Travelling to give talks may become redundant, as organisers have discovered they can run events virtually. The time, cost and general wear and tear factors speak in favour of everyone staying in the comfort and safety of their homes. Thankfully, battling through airport security may become a less frequent unedifying experience than it has been. So even if getting in a room, together with the multitude makes a comeback, the odds are that we will continue to be called upon to present online.

There is one key thing we need to do for both worlds - make expert eye contact.

On screen though, this is rather tricky. You have people faces right in front of you on screen and we are trained to talk to people's faces. The camera however is usually located many centimetres above or to the side of these faces. On most laptops and desktop computers, the camera is zeroing in on the top of our head and even though we are looking at people's faces, we have no actual eye contact with anyone.

We are allowed to look away, to consult our notes, so we don't have to maintain constant eye contact with the camera. Most presenters though, cannot manage to make any eye contact with the camera, so their ability to engage their audience is shredded. It takes concentration to suspend the reality you see in front of you and shift your eye contact to the camera and away from the faces on the screen.

In the face to face audience situation, we still have plenty of amateur and dud presenters who don't make eye contact with their audience. This is such a waste. We are no longer trapped in a little box, we are now full form and on stage. We should be making expert eye contact with the members of our audience. When we are online and on screen, we need to keep looking at one single point - the camera. But in the live situation, we need to move that eye contact around. We select someone in the audience and for the next six seconds we speak to that person, as if they were the only person in the world. We then move our gaze and repeat the process with the next person. We do this right throughout our talk and try to make eye contact with as many people as possible.

On screen, we cannot easily tell the reaction of the audience to what we have said, because either their cameras are off or they are also in a trapped in a little box in the corner. In real life though, by constantly using eye contact we can see if our audience are agreeing with us or if we are losing their attention. We can adjust our flow, energy or content to suit.

Audiences who are multitasking, while participating in an online event, are a nightmare for the speaker. One good tactic to deal with multitaskers is to stop speaking. It works in both the live situation and online. When we inject a pause, we break the rhythm of the talk and the audience members brains record there has been a change and now they need to pay attention again. Their brains are thinking the talk is over, so they engage with the speaker again, because they think it is time to get out of there.

Online is going to remain an important medium for presenters and we will be back in person at some stage soon. However, it is not a great joy being hopeless in one or both mediums, so let's at least get this one element of presenting right. Eye contact is a super power when you know how to use it, so let's make sure we master this facility as presenters, every time we present.