The Presentations Japan Series

How To Rehearse Your Presentation

We have planned our talk, all we need do now is deliver it. We have designed it, starting with the key punch line we will deliver in the first close of the speech, before we get to the Q & A. This is the essence of our message and it is from this key idea that we have derived the key talking points we want to make, that will be the "chapters" of our speech. In a thirty minute speech we will probably get to three to four of these, depending on the amount of depth we need to get into. Finally, we develop the opening and then do the final close design for after the Q & A. With this outline, we start to see if this will work in reality.

We have fleshed out the construct, have inserted stories into the talk to back up key points and have a first draft. Now designing something on paper and then giving it out aloud are quite different beasts. We often find that when we run through the talk aloud, the logic of the order isn't strong enough or the points seem a bit unclear. Unless there is some special reason to do so, we are not reading out the draft like a complete script.

We have sketched out speaking points, to which we will talk. These are the bare bones of the talk and this is what we use for the initial run through. When we do the speaking run through of the draft, we may find that additional or better points occur to us and this is when we do our editing. Some parts may be weak in promoting our argument, so we need to spend a bit more time bolstering those.

As we are not reading it, we will find that we will vary the content in the delivery every time we give it in rehearsal and probably in reality. Nothing at all wrong with that. Only we know what we are going to say, so there are no content police to catch us out on any variations from the original. It actually doesn't matter too much, because invariably we are refining and further polishing the speech.

So naturally this means we are running though the actual talk a number of times. How many times? No one answer here, but I would reckon we are talking probably between three to five times. If we have a thirty minute talk we have clocked up two and a half hours in rehearsal time quite easily. Most busy businesspeople lack two and half hours for practice , so it is more likely to fall into the three times maximum category. Obviously the more often we give it before we bring it to an audience, the better but we have to be realistic about our time availability. The three times realty is vastly better than the usual occurrence, which is zero rehearsal.

As we are practicing and further polishing the construct, content and quality of the stories we are going to be using, we will get a better sense of how long all of this will take. The usual no practice version of public speaking leaves most people with absolutely no clue as to how long they will need for the talk. Most are more likely to overshoot than undershoot. When we go too long, we run into trouble with the constraints of the occasion. The organisers start subtly telling us to "get off".

This practice run through is when we realize we have to prune our work of art and this is extremely difficult. Some parts may need to be dropped altogether – oh no! This can be painful because we love all of or children and can't bear to lose any of them. Nevertheless, we have to be showing some tough love to our draft presentation, otherwise we can't get it finished in the time allotted .

We don't want to find ourselves in the position of having to shunt the end together in a whirlwind of download that baffles the audience and leaves everyone with the impression that we are so disorganized, we can't manage to put together a thirty minute talk.

If we have the time and resources, having others listen to our speech is good but this is often difficult. By the way, limit them to good/better feedback, because otherwise they will straight to negative critique and you won't like that at all. If we can't do that, then videoing the talk so we can see ourselves is very good. All you need is your phone or ipad and a holder thingy attached to a tripod and you are in business and no film crew required. If that can't be done then use the voice memo on your phone to play back how it sounds.

When I am traveling to give talks, I find the Hotel room with the lights out allows the windows in the room to become a mirror and I can see myself pontificating, gesturing, pausing and delivering with aplomb.

Time is the killer when it comes to rehearsing. Remember the trade off though – 90 minutes of your time, versus eternal damnation as a hapless and hopeless presenter, who has just publically incinerated their personal and company brands.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Rhetorical Questions When Presenting

Are we talking at people, to people or with people when we are presenting? The "talking at" part is easy to pick. There is no attempt at rapport building with the audience. No stories and lot and lots of data dump going on. Technical experts love this type of presentation, because they can spend all the time sharing the data. Because they are an "expert" then they feel self justified to tell people stuff. They don't put much value on this presenting lark, because it is hardly a serious activity and people are here for the information – right? "All style, no substance" being the ultimate putdown of skilled presenters by this techie crowd. Detail is layered upon detail and density is never thought to be an issue. Especially when it comes to their slides, which are so dense, as to be impenetrable. Jargon is preferred too because that cuts down the need for explaining what you are talking about and overall, less words are needed. The point is not to persuade anyone but to hammer them with detail.

The "speak to people" presenters are more capable of building rapport. They are keen to get their message across and are careful about how they do that. They do try to engage with their audience. They think about the slide design to make sure it is it sharp looking yet easy to understand. They avoid jargon because they know it breaks the audience into an "us" and "them" divide. They are also aware that it also can come across as pretentious and somewhat condescending. They are conscious they are up on stage and they want to impart valuable knowledge to the audience.

The "speak with" presenters take things further. They get there early and try to meet the participants as they come in. They engage with them and find out their interests and motivations for joining this talk. They take some of these conversations into their talks and reference the people they have been chatting with earlier. "Suzuki san made an excellent point to me earlier about …." They know by doing this they can dispense with that mental barrier between those doing the speaking and those doing the listening. The audience and speaker have become one. They try to get the audience physically involved by asking them to raise their hands in response to their questions.

The "speak with" presenter does all of these things of the "speak to" presenter and more. They know that if they speak in a conversational tone this makes it easier to draw the audience in. They use their eye contact to connect with members of their audience, so that they feel they are almost having a private conversation. They wrap their key points up in stories to make them easier to remember and to understand on the first telling. Where possible, they try to make those stories their own personal experience. They are adding a degree of authenticity and vulnerability, without it becoming too much. They know where to draw the line to make the point, without the delivery becoming too clingy.

They use a mix of rhetorical questions and real questions. A rhetorical question is posed not for the purpose of extracting an answer, but to grab the attention of the audience. We know that audience concentration spans are becoming shorter and shorter. Sometimes we are being ignored and we need to corral everyone mentally back into the room. The beauty of a rhetorical question is that the audience are not quite sure if they are required to come up with a response, so it creates a bit of tension in the room. This tension is enough to grab their attention. Real questions can't be used too often, as the act becomes tedious and creates a feeling of " I am being manipulated" in the audience. Rhetorical questions however can be used quite a bit more, because there is no response required. It helps us to guide the audience's thinking along a glide path of our choosing, because we control both the context and the direction of the discussion. Framing the questions frames the debate.

So if you see your audience flagging, getting distracted or surreptitiously whipping out their phones under the desks, then hit them right between the eyes with a rhetorical question to get their full attention again. In the battle for audience attention, it is a zero sum game. Either they are listening to what we have to say or they are escaping from us. We need powerful weapons to keep them focused on us and not the myriad distractions on offer.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Giving Presentations: It Is Harder Than It Looks Folks

When you are an instructor and coach for presenters or a regular presenter, you tend to be immersed in that world and your sense of the degree of difficulty involved becomes numbed. I was reminded of this when we were doing a video shoot in Japanese the other day. We have employed an actor to appear in our videos advertising our core courses. I shoot a video almost everyday, but I am doing this in English. I have been debating with myself about whether I should be doing them in Japanese as well or whether we should have a native speaker do it. I can speak Japanese but naturally I have an accent. Also while I constantly struggle with English grammar, Japanese grammar perfection lifts the degree of ask so much higher.

In the end, we went for the Japanese native speaker and hired an actor to do the shoot. This was fascinating for me. As soon as we started, I realised that the skill sets to be an actor and to be a presenter are quite different in Japan. Reading lines on a teleprompter is a skill and is quite difficult and tiring because of the concentration involved. That is why the newscasters always takes breaks by alternating between two people or cutting to the visuals on screen and using just voice. With practice you can get better at this and he did too.

What was missing though was the ability to smile, use congruent facial expressions and gestures while all this teleprompter flow of words was whizzing by. As presentation trainers we know how to juggle many balls in the air at the same time. We are using our eyes to engage with the audience. We are also checking to see if we are getting agreement or resistance to our message. We are adding in our facial expressions to back up the eye power. Our gestures are chiming in to strengthen a point we are making.

If it is a point we are making, about which the evidence is not yet clear, a quizzical expression on our face combined with a hint of doubt in our voice tone really drives home the message that we are not sure what is going to happen next. If it is something we are definitely certain will happen next, then slowly, confidently nodding our head as if in agreement works very well. We add to it by strengthening the tone of our voice, our confidence level, when delivering the words and powerfully looking at members of the audience using our eye strength. This combined effect creates high levels of credibility for what we are saying.

Our actor needed some serious coaching on these points. This surprised me, but then I remembered "we are in Japan". The base level of understanding of what is required to give a professional presentation is very low here. In fact, the actor was making the excuse that Japanese don't know how to give proper presentations, which was why he was struggling with all of this stuff. The concept that just because Japanese are poor at presenting means we can all ignore professionalism wasn't an idea I was buying that day. But it does throw up the fundamental concept here that being poor or mediocre when presenting is somehow acceptable. It isn't.

A study published in 1967 by UCLA Professor of Psychology Albert Mehrabian pointed out an audience focus ratio of 7% from verbal, 38% vocal and 55% body language. The key caveat, which is often missed when quoting these research numbers, are the words "when incongruent". What Professor Mehrabian meant was that "when what you are saying is not congruent with the way you are saying it, only 7% of what you are actually saying is getting through to your audience". The rest of the time they are distracted from your key message by your voice and your clothing. This was the problem we had with our actor. He needed my coaching on how to get the words to be supported by the expression on his face, his gestures and his body language, so that we can make sure the viewer receives 100% of the message in the words he is delivering.

So if even actors can't automatically do this stuff, how much more difficult is it for everyone else here in Japan? I attended a business talk given by the President of one of the most well known brands in the world, on a very sexy topic. It turned out to be a nothing sort of presentation. Not bad, but not powerful either. I doubt anyone of us can recall one word of what was said. Our speaker had no impact and left no key messages with us. Personally, I would call that a rank failure as a presenter, big name brand or otherwise.

The answer isn't DNA, pedigree, big brand or luck. It is training. Get trained in how to present and join the top 1% in business who can stand up and capture their audience. I said capture their audience not just speak at them. There is a world of difference between the two. Remember in Japan, the 99% are really, really hopeless, so entry into the top 1% has a very low bar here.

I've Got My Eye On You

Eye line in Japan is a tricky subject. This is a non-confrontational, high harmony, consensus culture. Looking people straight in the eye is just too aggressive for polite society here. Children are taught to look at the forehead, the chin, the throat rather than the eyes of the person they are speaking with. This idea carries on into established and accepted societal norms of interpersonal interaction. Foreigners burning the retinas of their Japanese counterparts by maintaining continuous strong eye contact makes Japanese people feel very uncomfortable. As a foreigner living here, after a while you find yourself shying away from making eye contact. This creates another set of problems for when you are dealing with other foreigners here, or when you are going overseas. In the West we are trained to "look a man straight in the eye".

So, what happens when we are doing presentations and public speeches in Japan? Where should we be looking? Most Japanese speakers have no training and less of a clue about what they should be doing, when speaking in public. They are not much of a role model for us. No point modeling yourself on the hopeless. But won't the audience react negatively to us if we are making eye contact with them?

We need to distinguish between a social conversation and a presentation. The former is by nature informal and the latter is a more businesslike affair. We are not a member of the audience chatting with our neighbour. We have been given the opportunity to speak to an audience, we are on stage or at the podium, we have the microphone, we have everyone's attention. We are in the limelight. Our job is to inform, engage, persuade, impress, differentiate.

I was at a presentation about matching your wine glass with the variety of wine you are drinking. Our presenter had obviously given this type of presentation many times. One thing he did very well was engage with his audience, who were all senior businesspeople. He kept moving his eye line around the attendees, but not in a linear fashion. He was breaking it up, looking left, front, right, left, back etc. By keeping it unpredictable, the audience members couldn't drift off and lose touch with what he was saying. Our brains are quite smart. If we understand that the eye line is going around in a set order we get distracted and our thoughts are also subsumed by something other than what the speaker is talking about. Even worse today, they will be whipping out their phones and playing around with email or social media.

By engaging our eyes, to keep continuous contact with our audience, we can really control the proceedings. Be it Japan or anywhere else for that matter, we have to regulate the length of our eye contact. Making eye contact is good. Holding it for too long is not so good. Boring a hole into the head of our audience member becomes oppressive. Staring at someone continuously is hard to take for the recipient. Too short and it becomes fake eye contact, which has no benefit. Too long and it creates an uncomfortable feeling in our audience member, which pretty much defeats our purpose. There is no hard and fast rule but around six seconds allows sufficient eye contact to drive home the point we are making without it becoming too oppressive.

Combining voice, gestures and eye contact together professionally is the Power Three of public speaking. If you want to make a macro point, a big picture point, then make eye contact with someone at the very back of the room. You should also open up your arms in bigger gestures sizes to make the point feel more inclusive in a big room. By the way, as an additional bonus, depending on the size of the audience, the twenty people sitting around that person you have selected, will all imagine you are looking directly at them as well. So despite the distance you can engage with more people, more powerfully, in the time allotted to you.

If you want to make a micro point, a strong assertion, a powerful statement, then pick someone in the front row and address them directly. Stand on the very apron of the stage when you do this, if you can. Your physical proximity is also a big trigger for credibility, because you are turning the body language up to max power. Even those seated at the back will pick up on the power of your assertion, despite the fact you are not speaking to them directly. They will recognize this is an important statement, by the way you have presented it.

Outstanding Japanese Presenters

I spend a lot of time complaining about how poor is the professional quality of presenters in Japan. It is true, so when you come across people who can present properly, it so refreshing and gives you hope that the rest of them can do it too. I attended an American Chamber event here in Tokyo recently and the speaker was the President of Nestle Japan. In fact, Mr. Kozo Takaoka had become the first ever Japanese to succeed to the role of President for Nestle in Japan despite their 104 years in operation here. Watching his presentation it was easy to see why he was the leader of this well established operation in Japan.

He spoke in English, which was totally impressive, because so few Japanese company Presidents can give a half decent talk in English, unless they were reading it. He definitely didn't need to read his speech. He was too busy engaging with his audience. He did this with his eye contact, as he spoke to us. He kept his focus on his audience, who were mostly representatives of small-medium sized enterprises. He was using a slide deck, but it was subservient to him and what he wanted to say, rather than the usual Japanese penchant of being the second fiddle to the screen.

The slides were well designed and well presented. Easy to understand and grasp within two seconds of viewing them. That two second rule is a good one. If your slides are too complex or too busy to be understood in around two seconds, then you need to simplify them. That is often best achieved be eliminating the slide entirely. Often they add little actual additional benefit to what you can convey in words. We tend to use them because, well that is what everyone else is doing. We do this on autopilot, without really analyzing what strength that slide deck medium can bring to the message you want to convey.

One thing I liked was Takaoka san's use of video. They were very short and relevant to what he wanted to explain. What I really find irritating about Japanese company President presentations is how they will bung in a 10 minute video to pad out their talk. It is usually something cooked up by the PR or Marketing department and is aiming to be a propaganda triumph for the firm. Sadly, because it is all propaganda, we quickly switch off and take very little notice of it. It is also rarely related to the point the speaker is making. The real point is that it saves the speaker from having to speak, which sort of defeats the purpose doesn't it.

The flow of Takaoka san's talk was also well designed. It followed a logical order and was well supported by his delivery, his slide deck and his short videos. You would think this was a relatively straightforward thing but it surpasses the ability of most Japanese presenters. He was able to draw out highlights and then could show something in visual form, which backed what he had just said. Seeing is believing and if the point we want to make can be reinforced visually then we should be trying to achieve that outcome.

His use of humour was also spot on. When we think about humour in speaking we are often drawn to compare ourselves to stand up comedy speakers, which is a very unwise move. They are there 100% to entertain, rather than to inform, persuade or convince. The latter areas are where we are placing ourselves when we are in the role of speaker to a business audience. Takaoka san's humour was unforced and very natural. He was prepared to laugh at himself, which always goes down well. When we try to be funny as a speaker it usually flops. Professional comedians are refining their work on the content, timing and delivery side continuously, whereas we probably only get to speak publically a few times a year, if we are lucky.

Takaoka san also spoke from his own experience so he had total authenticity. Telling us about someone else's marketing successes and failures has a certain distant, academic feel to it. He was there, he was doing it and he was relating those coal face incidents, so it became real and credible for his audience. Where ever we can, we should always trying to draw on things which have happened to us in business, to make the points we want to get across. They don't need to be read to an audience, because we lived through them and so have no problem remembering them in detail.

Takaoka san was the full package and it was the best Japanese presentation I have seen to date. This type of role model forces all the excuses to disappear, because being Japanese is not a legitimate excuse to be unable to do a professional presentation. But that is often trotted out as the excuse. "We Japanese are no good at presenting, whereas you foreigners are all good". Two totally fallacious points if ever there were any.

Powerpoint Free Presentations

Visuals on a screen are very powerful communication tools when presenting. Being able to show graphs can really drive home the point. If numbers are not so easy to follow or accessible, then proportion differences, trend lines, bars, pies, colours can be persuasive. Explaining complex sequences with diagrams is good too. This makes the potentially confusing more accessible. Photos are really great for presentations. "One picture is worth a thousand words" was used in an advertisement way back in 1918 in San Antonio Texas, although the base idea has been around for centuries. Images are powerful communicators. Just the image by itself or with one word, or a line of text are also spicing up the speakers communication effort.

The problem is everyone is doing it. We all have our power point deck ready to go when we present. We are not differentiating ourselves from other presenters. Often the slides on screen don't actually add much to the presentation either. There is a herd mentality going on here. They say in banking, that it is acceptable to fail conventionally, but not by doing exotic stuff. The same in presenting. It is fine to be boring and dull, as long as you follow the railway track of what ever other presenter is doing. If that boring shtick suits you, then keep doing that. By the way, let me know how it is working out for you.

If you want to stand out amongst the average, the Lilliputians of Presenting, the nondescript and forgettable don't always go for the slide deck. Mix it up a bit. I saw Howard Schulz of Starbucks fame, give a presentation in Tokyo. He had one slide. That was the Starbucks logo. He was able to talk with just that image in the background and he kept the interest of the crowd. He spoke about something he knows a lot about – his company. We actually know a lot about our subject matter too and we can do it with out any slides.

One downside of slides is that it seeps the audience attention away from the speaker. We are shifting our eyes away from the speaker to what is on the screen. This is often compounded as an error, by some helpful "know nothing" who switches the lights off at the same time. Now the screen has won all the attention because the speaker has disappeared into the darkness, the void, and only their voice is apparent like some pre-recorded content for the light show. The entire repertoire of the facial expressions and body language available to the speaker have been neutralised.

The screen based presentations have the advantage of being milestones and markers along which the presentation can flow. You don't have to remember what comes next, because all you have to do is push a button. This is a quite handy. You can put something up on screen and talk to the point and this flow will progress logically and smoothly. When you are free-forming, you are up on the high wire and have no net. We have to remember though that only we know the order. If we mess it up and put one bit in the wrong place only we will know. The audience will be oblivious for the most part and we can just blatantly carry on, as if nothing happened. So the downside is not that great.

You can still keep your order by writing out your speech, as a full speech or as points. This is your navigation to keep the speech on track. The key is not to read it out to the audience. Talk to the points instead. We want our eyes fixed on the audience members throughout. That means eliminating any and all distractions. Ideally, we don't want our eyes dropping to glance at a page and then having to look up again. It is not the end of the world if that happens, as long as you keep the glancing bit quick. Better to think in silence with your chin up and looking at your audience, than with your head down scanning a piece of paper on the rostrum.

So save yourself a lot of time worrying about the finer points of slide deck creation and instead concentrate on the key messages you want to get across. Also when delivering with no bright screen in play, the audience has nowhere to go, but to look at you. Make sure you return the compliment by looking at them throughout the talk. Eye contact, eye contact, eye contact is the rule. Giving an audience a change from the usual makes you memorable. By contrast, you seem quite at ease up there on the high wire. The audience members know they can't do that, so the respect factor for you goes right up. Your talent and skill as a speaker stands out more powerfully and the contrast with the punters out there, chained to their slide deck, becomes more pungent.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

How To Select Data For Presentations In Business In Japan

How much is enough data in a presentation? How much is too much? Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information. Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness. And you just can't bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena. You have spent hours on the gathering of the detail and making the slides, so you are very heavily invested in the process. You want to show the power of your thought leadership, your intellect, your insights, your experience.

Here is the danger though. We kill our audience with kindness. The kindness of throwing the entire assembly at them. They are now being buffeted by the strong winds of new data, new information, new insights, one after another. The last one is killed by the succeeding one, and it in turn is killed by the next one. We go into massive overload of the visual senses and the memory banks are being broken through, like a raging river spilling its banks. Are we self aware about what we are doing? No, we are caught up in data mania, where more is better. We can't thow that graph out because it took a lot to create it. We need to have that extra bullet point, even though it is not adding any extra dimension to the presentation.

We have forgotten our purpose of doing the presentation and are now firmly fixated on the mechanics, the logistics, the content and not the outcomes we want. There are different key purposes with a presentation: to entertain, to inform, to persuade. The majority of business presentations should be to persuade but are often underperforming and are only hitting the inform button. This is because the presenter hasn't realised that with the same effort and drawing on the same data resource, they can move up the scale and be highly persuasive. Data, data, data just doesn't work though

At the end of the session the audience is shredded. They cannot remember any of the information because there was way too much. They cannot remember the key message, because there were too many key messages. They walk out of there shaking their heads saying "what hit me?". Was this a success? Did we convert anyone to our way of thinking? Did they leave with any valuable takeaways so that they feel some value from attending? Or did they leave dazed and diminished?

So as presenters, we have to be like Mari Kondo with her housekeeping advice - keep only the bits we love and throw the rest out. We have to make some hard choices about what goes up on that screen and what remains relegated to the depths of the slide deck reserve bench. We have to winnow out the key messages and whittle them down to one central message. We need to take that key message and assemble a flotilla of support with evidence, proof, data, comment, etc., to support it.

We need a good structure to carry the presentation. A blockbuster opening to grab attention. A limited number of key points we can make in the time allotted. Strong supporting data and evidence to back up the key points. We need to design powerful close number one as we finish the presentation and also a powerful close number two, for after the Q&A.

We have to keep the presentation itself short and snappy, rather than long and laborious. We want to leave them tonguing for more rather than leaving them feeling sated or saturated.

We want them to get our key message and have it firmly planted in their brain, so they get it, remember it and believe it. That is different to stuffing the fire hose down their throats and hitting the faucet to turn it on full bore. But this is often what we do, when we lead with data. Always remember when it comes to presenting, less is more baby! You can always flesh out the points more in the Q&A and after the talk, for those most interested in the topic. We want to impress the audience not bury them under detail. Getting the balance is the presenters skill and art and that is why there are so few presenters who are any good. Plenty of room at the top folks, so come and join!

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Presenting In Business in Japan

Japan has some particular ways of doing things. We say "when in Rome, do as the Romans do". That would be extremely bad advice when it comes to presenting your solution to buyers here. Japan is the country of Zen, which holds simplicity at it's centre. You would never know that though, when you look at typical business presentations. The slide deck is a mess. There are slides with five different colours on offer. You will see four to five different fonts on the same screen. The text will be dense, small font sizes and impenetrable. If there are four graphs, then they are all shown on the same slide.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, when one of my team showed me the slide deck from a recent presentation he attended. This event hosted by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, had about 150 hopefuls in the audience, keen and eager to learn how to do presentations properly. The instructor was a Japanese business consultant and his slides were terrible. There were too many details on each slide, too much text, too many diagrams cobbled together on screen. He was using four different fonts on each slide. It was ugly and hard to follow. He was someone, supposedly an expert on presentations, showing the faithful how to do it. Sadly the lack of knowledge here on how to present is legendary.

I had been asked to give a series of presentations for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on how to start a business in Japan. They showed me what the previous speaker, a Japanese business women had been using. I just laughed to myself when I saw it. It was florid, drenched in too many colours, too small sized fonts, too much text, a total disaster as far as a professional business presentation goes. The officials at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government obviously thought that this mess passed muster. How could that be?

I don't know why because this is the country of high aesthetics of zen simplicity? If you ever take a careful look at a Japanese kimono, however you will find an amazing array of colours juxtaposed together. Often these colours don't seem to go together, as far as Western concepts of colour spectrum matching goes. Maybe there is more of a kimono mind at play here, than any zen sensibilities?

Even smart people do the craziest things. One of my ex-staff now works for a Robotics company founded by a mad professor type. The founder is very, very smart. I attended his presentation and boy oh boy where did the smarts go? The slide show was the same thing. Too many colours, too much information crammed onto one slide, totally dense and hard to follow. It was just overloaded with diagrams, detail and graphs. So don't follow the Japanese model, instead do professional presentations, be concise, precise, clear, sparse.

Also in Japan, it is quite common for people to sit down when they present. You will find they have prepared a desk, chair and low microphone stand for you. Don't follow this pattern. Stand up so that you can position yourself on the audience left of the screen. We want them looking at our face first, then reading left to right across the screen. We know that our face is the most powerful tool there is, when it comes to presentations and we want to be in the best position to use it. Also when we stand up ,we get to use the full capacity of our body language to drive home the key points we want to make.

In Japan however, if you stand above the audience, it is implying your eminent superiority over all of those sitting. Well you simply can't imply that with buyers, because they are God and there is nothing higher than them. So you need to make an apology that you are going to stand up, but explain that this will make it easier for you to give the presentation. Now this applies to foreigners and to Japanese alike.

The key is stand up, but apologise first, so you can get permission to not sit when presenting. For foreigners, we are freed up from a lot of restrictive conventions to do with the culture, because they just think we are ignorant and don't know any better. This apology idea though, travels very well across audiences and across nationalities. Even if you have Japanese team members doing the presentation in Japanese, get them to apologise and stand up and present.

If you are presenting to a buying group do not just imagine you can engage with the main person and do the deal. The way decisions are taken here, there will be all of the stakeholders in the room. Few people will want to say "yes" to anything new because that is risky, so they are there to make sure this is safe or to make sure it doesn't happen. You need to engage everyone.

Don't make the beginners mistake of talking to the person with the best English. They are rarely the decision maker. They are just a minion who is there, because they have good English. Engage with everyone, just as you should be doing in any presentation.

If you are using consecutive interpreting you need to learn how to speak in brackets. Speak part of your thought, stop, wait until the interpreting has finished, pick up the thought and continue. This may sound easy, but trust me it is not easy at all. Your thought process can get hijacked during the consecutive interpreting break and you lose your train of thought or you go off on some unintended tangent.

One of the best people I ever saw using consecutive interpreting was Murray Rose. He was a swimming icon in Australia, multiple Olympic medalist and a boyhood hero of mine. I had the pleasure to meet him when I was Consul General for Australia in Osaka. He was here to promote the Sydney Olympics.

He gave the most impressive and moving speech on the meaning of the Olympics. I can tell you it brought a tear to my eye it was so sincere and Aussie boys don't cry. I wish we had been smart enough to record it. The other thing that struck me was how skilled he was to start a thought, hold it and continue perfectly. That takes work. You also have to remember not to talk for too long. You need to give the interpreter a chance to remember what you said so they can repeat it. You often see people who are not used to interpreters waxing long and lyrically, completely forgetting the talk now has to be switched into Japanese. The interpreter just cannot retain that much detail, so whatever you said will only be partially transferred to the listeners. Go for short brackets so that nothing is lost.

How To Read Faces When Presenting In Business In Japan

People staring at you intently when you are presenting can be unnerving. This is especially the case when we are already feeling nervous to begin with. If some of those faces in the audience look particularly hostile, then the level of inner tension can be reaching danger point. We are stressing ourselves in reaction to how we perceive the audience and what we imagine they are thinking about us and what we are saying.

"Don't judge a book by it's cover" is ancient wisdom and the same is the case when presenting. I was in Osaka a number of years ago, giving a presentation in Japanese to 100 salespeople in the travel industry on why Australia was such a great education destination for Japanese students. The idea was that I would inspire these salespeople to recommend education destinations in Australia, in preference to other competing countries, after I had fired them up with my passion for the idea.

I can still remember the scene. It was a long hall and everyone wearing dark suits, mainly men and a big venue. On my left side, about half way down, was sitting one guy who had a really angry face. Even from that distance I could tell he looked angry. He didn't seem to buying anything that I was saying at all.

At the end of the presentation, he leapt out of his seat and came straight down to the front where I was standing. I had just come down off the podium to exchange business cards with members of the audience. I honestly thought he was going to punch me! Instead he started thanking me profusely in Japanese for my presentation, said it was really great, he really learn a lot, etc., etc.

I felt like saying, "if you liked it so much why didn't you tell your face!" I also realised that what I took for an angry face, was in fact a face deeply concentrating on what I had been saying. Now Japan throws up a few challenges in this regard, because Japan is quite a serious place, with a lot of serious people, whose faces we may misread.

Whenever I write or speak about presenting, I am always making the point to keep eye contact with each person for around six seconds and to look at people in all six pockets of a room. Those in the front, left, middle, right and those at the back again left, middle, right. We do this in a random, unpredictable way to keep audience interest in our presentation. Having said that though, not everyone is equal. If you are nervous about speaking to groups, inside those pockets pick out the people who are nodding in agreement with what you are saying or who at least have a neutral face. To maintain your confidence do not look at anyone who looks angry, doubtful, quizzical or hostile.

Ignore them completely to concentrate on those who are with you. This will help build your confidence when speaking and over time you won't need to do this but in the early stages it works quite well. Actually thinking about it, I am totally confident presenting, but I still continue to ignore people who look hostile, because I have no particular interest in engaging with them.

The part of the talk where the hostiles get to be a problem is usually during question time. If you have been trained in how to handle Q&A, you never worry about hostiles in your audience, because you know you can handle anything they throw at you. If the whole audience looks hostile, well tough it out and keep going, bracing yourself for the Q&A where you can expect a lot of pushback. By the way we teach how to deal with hostile Q&A, so let us know if you would like to learn the secret.

One key point – always specify how much time there is for questions, so that you can make a graceful departure and leave the venue with your head held up high. If you don't, it looks like you are a scoundrel and a coward trying to flee the premises, because you can't take the heat. We don't want that as our final impression do we. They can disagree with you as much as they like, but you have to end the proceedings looking like the cool, calm professional you are.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Being Persuasive In Business In Japan

Business schools are teaching put up your conclusion first in the Executive Summary and then the evidence and argument follows in the main body. If we are writing something for others to read, then this is absolutely terrific. If it is a report on a market's potential or how the product launch fared, this makes a lot of logical sense. Busy people want the punch line delivered quickly, so they can allow themselves the opportunity to move on to more pressing needs. If we are talking to people, trying to win them over to our way of thinking, then this is rubbish. Don't ever do this, because you are setting yourself up for trouble.

We do it though, don't we. We offer up our conclusion at the start and wonder why that didn't go according to plan. We don't get immediate acceptance, as we had expected. Here is the problem in the real world. When we tell people our conclusion, we are now up against a wall of critics, one-uppers, debaters and dilettantes. We have exposed our argument to the world, but we have left it to hang out there with nothing to defend it. You might be thinking, "no, the defence comes straight after, as we get into the evidence". You are so optimistic!

In fact, as soon as the opening conclusion is stated, the audience has stopped listening to you completely. They are thinking they are smarter than you and don't need to hear anymore. They are fully concentrated on the clever thing they are going to say, to demolish your recommendations. Their minds are buzzing with their counter arguments, their views, how to make themselves look good and alternative proposals. They can hear white noise in the background, which is actually you speaking, but they are not focused on your content, because they believe what they have to say is much more important.

To avoid this scenario dump the business school model and reverse gears. When you want to persuade someone of some recommendation you are making, start with the evidence first. Do it in the form of a short story. It shouldn't be too long and you are forbidden to start rambling. Keep it tight, taut and on point.

The story needs to be rich in word pictures. We need to be able to see the scene you are describing in our mind's eye. We need to bring in people they will know, describe locations they are familiar with and create a time sequence through reference to seasons or business milestones during the year. They cannot intervene or tune you out, because they have no idea where this story is taking us and they are forced listen to you.

We need to promote the context behind the recommendation we are making. By creating the scene, the audience will be coming to their own conclusions about what needs to happen. The context is telling them that logically XYZ should happen. This is the same conclusion you came to, based on the same evidence you are giving them and you tell them XYZ should occur. Immediately we have done that, we go into the outcome or benefit that your proposal will generate. So the order runs this way: context, recommendation then benefit.

Because it is short, we won't lose the audience and that is why we have to practice this delivery. In any short presentation each word becomes very important, so we have to trim the talk of all fluff and surplus words. If you try to make it too involved and go down a number of rabbit holes, you will lose the audience, who will become impatient and tune you out. So we have to give enough powerful evidence, without getting bogged down in the gritty details. Those gritty details can come later, but the key driver initially, is to get people to agree with your general direction.

The context first approach is great because while people can disagree with your conclusions they can't disagree with your context. Usually they won't have as much command of the context as you have, so it is hard to debate with you over the background details. They also have to wait until they get all the relevant information before they know what you are proposing. They can't cut you off because they don't know if this is going to positive, negative, or about the past, present or future. They have to hear you out before they can say anything. Genius! Actually it is magical and this is why this construct of context-recommendation-benefit is called The Magic Formula.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.