The Presentations Japan Series

By: Dr. Greg Story
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  • Summary

  • Persuasion power is one of the kingpins of business success. We recognise immediately those who have the facility and those who don't. We certainly trust, gravitate toward and follow those with persuasion power. Those who don't have it lack presence and fundamentally disappear from view and become invisible. We have to face the reality, persuasion power is critical for building our careers and businesses. The good thing is we can all master this ability. We can learn how to become persuasive and all we need is the right information, insight and access to the rich experiences of others. If you want to lead or sell then you must have this capability. This is a fact from which there is no escape and there are no excuses.
    Copyright 2022
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Management Economics
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Episodes
  • 405 All Style No Substance Presenting In Japan

    405 All Style No Substance Presenting In Japan
    Sep 29 2024
    It was a big affair. The entire Shinsei Bank retail staff were assembled for a series of updates from the Division Heads on what each Division was doing and where they were going. One of my erstwhile lifelong banker colleague Division Head gave his presentation. It was dull, monotone, low energy and not engaging in the least. Unfortunately for him, it was my turn next. By this time, thanks to my previous work as a Senior Trade Commissioner and Consul-General for Australia, I had given hundreds of public speeches, mainly in Japanese, to audiences of all different stripes in Japan. I knew how to give this talk in a way which would be interesting for the audience and in a way in which I could grab their attention. My sharp elbowed colleague instantly recognised there were light years between his miserable efforts and my professionalism. Did he commit to self-improvement, to build the biggest skyscraper in town, to become excellent in public speaking? No. He sought out ways to pull down all the other skyscrapers, so that his could be the tallest instead. He informed all in earshot, except for me of course, that “Greg is all style and no substance”. When this comment was duly reported to me, honestly, I just burst our laughing. Not in an exaggerated thespian, ironic way, but a genuine belly laugh, because the idea was so ridiculous, so preposterous, so revealing about his insecurities. I had given enough public speeches by that time to know it wasn’t just style that was engaging my audiences. What was ironic was that originally I was scouted to leave Austrade and join Shinsei’s Retail Bank, because of a speech I gave to the American Chamber of Commerce here in Tokyo. In fact, that speech changed the direction of my career, although I didn’t realise it at the time. Recently, I was reading an article by Kathryn Brownell in the Financial Times, where she referenced the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. Nixon didn’t understand the medium of television as well as Kennedy. Kennedy saw the opportunity to speak directly to voters, rather than just relying on highlighting policy differences. I recall some reports I have come across at different times, which said that those who only listened to the debate, gave it to Nixon, while those who watched, gave it to Kennedy. Nixon certainly made the complaint that the televised debate format brought in a new era where “politicians focused on style over substance”. It was a dividing line between eras and the future belonged to those who mastered the skills needed to be successful with the new medium. Kamala Harris killed Donald Trump in the recent debate and that wasn’t just style and no substance. She was extremely well prepared and brought all guns blazing to what Trump thought was going to be a knife fight. So what about businesspeople presenting here in Tokyo? I recall coaching a Japanese President who forsook the opportunity to do a professional speech, because he felt his vendor audience wouldn’t be ready for it. He knew what to do but chose to not do it. That was highly perplexing to me as his coach, but standing out in Japan is never a popular course of action. He just gave the same old boring monotone performance, because that was the norm for his company and industry. It was painful for me to watch and know what he could have done instead. I saw another local businessperson give a very good performance, as he was a skilled presenter. However, when I sat back and thought about what he was saying, as opposed to just being mesmerised by how he was saying it, I felt there wasn’t much meat in that speech. Before Covid, I saw Shigeru Ishiba, a Liberal Democratic Party hopeful, currently trying to secure the Party Presidency and thereby become Prime Minister, give a talk as part of a panel discussion. He was slumped in his chair, looking bored and his comments were lifeless, monotone and dull. However, when I closed my eyes and listened to what he was actually saying, it had more impact. If he wants to run this country, I hope he has improved as a communicator since then. It is obviously not a choice between style and substance. We need both, and I want to replace the word “style” with “professionalism”, to make the point clearer. Talking crap fluently is no help and neither is being valuable, but not being heard. The big difference between Harris and Trump, I believe, was in their understanding of the occasion and the preparation for it. This is precisely the same for us in business. If we spend all of our time crafting the slide deck and none on the rehearsal, then our talk will not be optimised. Observe any public talks today and even the good speakers face some people in the crowd who have whipped out their phones and are no longer concentrating on what is being said. Having great content, which is ignored by the audience, because we are unskilled and ...
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    13 mins
  • 404 Speaking With Impact In Japan

    404 Speaking With Impact In Japan
    Sep 23 2024
    Recently I was teaching a class of technical experts to have more impact when they spoke. Like many specialists, their areas of expertise required great detailed knowledge and experience and they have to interact with other non-expert parts of the organisation. In their case, they have to report to senior management and they also had to deal with the sales team. The brief from HR was that the senior leaders didn’t take sufficient note of their reporting and advice because of the way they were delivering the information. Salespeople were also pushing back on the direction they were receiving and not accepting what they were being told either. They needed more impact when they spoke. When we started the session, we discussed with them the areas where they wanted to improve. Many people mentioned being more clear and succinct when they spoke. They felt that the complexity of what they were trying to convey sometimes made it difficult for the listeners. Also, rambling during their explanation was identified as an issue. One thing which I noticed was common across the group was their level of energy when they spoke. They were bringing the same voice strength they would employ when having a chat over coffee with their friend to their presentations. In Japan, this is a very typical area for more work needed when we are teaching presentation skills. When we are speaking up in a meeting or standing before a group, we have to switch gears and bring a lot more vocal range to the content of what we are saying. Not every word should have the same voice strength, though, but that is what a lot of people do. They give keywords the exact same voice power, as they do less important words and phrases in the sentence. This is highly democratic, but not very useful when trying to get our message across. We need to either hit those keywords with more volume or we need to strip the volume out and make it an audible whisper. Both will work. Applying the same strength throughout the sentence from go to whoa is the death knell of messaging. Voice modulation is critical to keeping an audience with us. Listeners are so easily lost today to the allure of the internet on their phones and if they feel disengaged they are gone, gone, gone. If the vocal power is set at the same dial strength from beginning to end, then listeners will just tune us out, as it becomes repetitious and morphs into a boring, sleep actuating monotone. Like classical music, we need crescendos and the opposite, decrescendos or lulls. The problem though, is often we have a lot on our mind and are supremely nervous. We are not even aware that we are speaking at the one constant volume or in a monotone throughout our talk. By the way, this doesn’t have to be a formal talk. It can happen in a normal meeting, where we are presenting some results or giving some guidance on what needs to happen next. We lapse into a monotone and we are tuned out by the assembled masses. Now, the nervousness has to be a best kept secret when we are speaking. During the training, it often happened that someone would suddenly laugh nervously during their talk as the pressure mounted within them. That laugh is a physical release from the internal mental pressure building up inside their mind. We can be nervous, but this information has to be kept from the audience, because it instantly diminishes our credibility as a speaker. We were filming the talks and for the first round we had them do the talk facing the camera and conducted at a ninety-degree angle to the audience. In this way, the speaker couldn’t easily see the faces in the audience. Instead, they had to concentrate on me as the coach. We sometimes do this to try to lessen the pressure of having to present to a crowd where there are a lot of beady eyes and faces staring back at us. Later, when they had gained more confidence and poise, we had them give their talk directly facing everyone and they were able to do it without looking nervous. Remember, only we know we are feeling nervous. If we don’t show it and if we speak with a strong voice, we come across as confident and the audience will believe us. That strong voice part can be a problem, though, for a lot of ladies who speak very softly. One of the dangers is that their soft voice is ignored by the executives, usually men, who they are presenting to. They lack what is called “executive presence” and a big part of that is confidence, portrayed though voice stength. Fair or unfair, a meek, soft, tiny voice just won’t command the attention and credibility of hard driving male bosses. When these softly spoken ladies were presenting, and I asked them to increase their voice volume, I would ask their colleagues if they thought they were yelling? The answer would always be “no”. I would then ask if they thought they could go even louder and the answer would always be “yes”. What a difference it made when ...
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    13 mins
  • 403 Why Did Josh Shapiro’s Convention Speech Fall Flat?

    403 Why Did Josh Shapiro’s Convention Speech Fall Flat?
    Sep 16 2024
    Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Tennessee, was regarded by many as certain to be Kamala Harris’s pick for the role of Vice President, as part of her campaign to defeat Donald Trump. Ultimately, she chose Tim Walz. The six-minute speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention then, was a good opportunity for Shapiro to position his own future credentials for a run for the Presidency. Barack Obama used his 2004 keynote spot to catapult himself into the limelight, as a relatively unknown eight year Senator from Illinois. Therefore, I was expecting a very good speech from Shapiro, but I was disappointed. To me, it seemed to fall flat. This evaluation has nothing to do with political affiliation, because as an Aussie, I have no right to take part in the coming election. I am just using his talk by way of analysis of what works and what doesn’t and as a guide for business people who give speeches. Now we have to be careful of expert evaluations. I was watching a video from an American guy who was also evaluating the Convention speeches. He started with “I am a speech coach” and he then made a fatal error, which for me at least, indicated he was a fraud or at least a total dud, as far as being a speech coach is concerned. What did he say? He mis-quoted the famous research from Professor Albert Mehrabian on key factors when presenting. The dubious speech coach started telling everyone that what was being said was 7% of the impact, 38% was based on the voice and 55% on how they appeared. That is total crap and if you ever have that quoted to you, run far from that person, because they are clueless and dangerous. Mehrabian’s research had a critical caveat on when those numbers apply. He said that when what we say is incongruent with the way we say it, the audience gets distracted. They subsequently focus on how we sound and how we look, as opposed to what is the content of our talk. However, if we are congruent, then the audience pays attention to our message and is not distracted, so voice quality and how we dress become less important. Rant over and back to Shapiro and what went wrong. I am not just comparing him against the absolute, so let me include some other prominent speakers who were also considered for the role of Vice President by Harris. I looked at Gretchen Whitmer and Mark Kelly’s speeches. For me, I thought Kelly was wooden in his delivery and not able to really connect and engage his audience, so he is out as a model. Whitmer was the star in my evaluation. Shapiro was talking at us, whereas Whitmer was speaking with us. Shapiro used only one volume control throughout his six minutes – strident. Whitmer used modulation and had variety in how she got her message across. Sometimes soft, sometimes strong, and always engaging. In business talks, we want this facility to vary our delivery so that it isn’t all soft or all strong, but mixed together and re-formed in the right way, at the right moments. Remember Mehrabian – we need congruency between the content and the delivery. A strong emphasis on a word lifts its appeal, as does an audibly whispered version and we should use both. Whitmer employed personal stories and examples we could to relate to in order to make her point. Shapiro was mainly just using powerful motivational exhortations. I wondered whether the organisers had allocated different roles to each of the speakers, but I doubt that was the case. Each of these high-profile speakers would have worked on their speeches in isolation to best reflect what they wanted. Being told what to think by the speaker is not as effective as providing context, evidence and laying out some alternate ideas. Constant and rigorous admonitions are hard for an audience to handle because it tires them out. You could tell from the applause that the audience was struggling. During Whitmer’s speech they were energised and the difference was quite stark, I thought. So when we are giving business talks, we should definitely be including relevant stories wherever we can. If we can make these personal stories, that is the best because audiences will identify more strongly in those cases. We are looking for points of agreement and commonality with the speaker and we need more information about them to be able to do that. Just telling an audience what they need to do isn’t going to provide that personal connection. Also, audiences don’t remember statistics as well as they remember stories. In business, we have tons of stories to draw on, but often we don’t go looking hard enough to find them. We have plenty of numbers, but let’s go find the stories we can wrap them in. We can’t be lecturing the audience on how they should think about an issue. We need to lay out information and insight and guide the audience to agree with the stance we have arrived at based on the context and our experience with the issue. Whitmer used humour...
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    12 mins

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