Episode #374: The Sad Wasted Life Of An Aging Presenter In Japan

It was a big affair. Many supporting organisations had promoted this expert dual speaker event and the large audience filed into the prestigious venue. I was sold on the advertising too. I was intrigued by the pairing of topics and according to the blurb, the speakers’ backgrounds looked the money. The MC kicked things off and handed the baton off to the first speaker. Things went off the rails immediately. The initial thought was the microphone wasn’t on, but sadly it was. The speaker just wasn’t on.
This was a rookie tech mistake. I didn’t expect to see that from a very senior guy in his sixties. Here is a side note for the rest of us - always get to the venue early and test the microphone set up. Often the venue sound system is also a problem and there need to be changes made to the volume controls to get more out of the system. It was a good reminder to me to not trust the given equipment as it is.

Also, often in business venues, the people organising the talk are great at moving tables and chairs around, but less expert when it comes to the getting the sound system to work properly. This was an evening event, so the tech people have long departed and we amateurs are the only ones remaining. That is why we need to get there early and check everything before we are ever handed a microphone in public and expected to perform.

This gentleman’s frail, wispy, low energy voice was speaking to us, but I really struggled with hearing what was being said. I was sitting in the front row, but even at that distance, the voice volume being generated was insufficient to follow the thesis being presented. For the next twenty minutes, I had no idea what he was saying.

Actually, it was worse than that, which was already bad enough. Our speaker was an expert from the finance sector and had held many leading positions here in Japan, including Country Head and President of a number of big name brands. You would think with a resume like that, he would know better, but he spoke in a monotone.

This meant that each word was delivered with exactly the same strength as every other word in his sentences. Now we all know that words are not democratic. Some have more importance and prestige than others, and so need to be lofted above the hoi polloi. We need to hit those words harder or alternatively much softer to create variation. This variation is a simple pattern interrupt, which is what keeps the listeners with us.

The problem with a monotone delivery is it has no pattern interrupt and so makes the audience sleepy. That is precisely what happened to me. I couldn’t for the life of me follow what on earth he was saying, so I became drowsy. The speaker was not an English native speaker and so there was a slight accent. However, he has spent almost the entirety of his career in international finance, so his English was very good and not an issue for him to deliver this talk. This foreign language aspect is definitely not an excuse. I am convinced he would have delivered the same talk in his own language, in exactly the same way. This is how he speaks in public, period.

He also spoke his monotone sentences in long bursts, sans pauses. I have this trouble too when I speak in Japanese, because I tend to speed up. This means that the words become jumbled and are hard to dissect. There are no “brain breaks” to allow us to digest what we have just heard. When you combine an accent with a fast clip, it makes it more difficult for the audience to follow you. When I speak in Japanese to a public audience, I have to keep telling myself to slow down and inject pauses, to help the crowd stick with my message.

Combining all this with a complete lack of energy made his speech a serious pain. Speaker energy is infectious. We create an electricity in the room which envelops our audience and transports them to the place we have decided to take them in our talk. When a speaker doesn’t project energy, the audience has to mount their own energy sources to get involved in the speech. If the talk is gripping, even if the speaker isn’t generating a lot of ‘ki” (気) or intrinsic energy, we can meet them in the middle and stick with the talk. But a wispy voice, devoid of energy, speaking in a monotone, with an accent, is the coup de grâce for a public speaker’s reputation, no matter how senior they may be or how grand their resume is.

The other two weapons in the public speaker’s arsenal were also sheathed. He was using a podium to hold his notes. This meant that the height of the podium came up to his waist level, hiding his body from the audience. You often see speakers resting their laptop on the podium when they are using slides. In both cases, you don’t need to stand behind the obstacle. With slides you can have a slide clicker and stand anywhere you like. Just using his notes, he could have stood to the side to use more of his body language to bolster his words. It makes such a difference and you will notice how much the next time you see a speaker come out from behind the podium.

Eye contact wasn’t being employed either to engage the crowd. He wasn’t trying to connect one-on-one with the audience, as he could easily have done. When you stare straight into one eye of an audience member for around six seconds, they really feel the close connection with you. For them, it seems as if time and space have been suspended and it is just the two of you in the room, having a private conversation. It is so powerful and as speakers, we definitely want to employ our eye power.

Gestures were also absent. Part of the problem was he was holding the microphone in one hand and resting his other elbow on the podium, thus ensuring the free hand wasn’t being used, either. What a wasted opportunity. The vortex of voice, body language, eye contact and gestures all zeroing in on the audience members, one by one, is what makes a speaker have real impact. That much concentrated energy coming at you is irresistible.

Now here is the rub. He has been working away for over forty years and he has always been like this. That means he has been destroying audiences with a toxic regularity stretching over decades. It was obvious he was totally oblivious to how much damage he was doing to his personal and professional brands. His time past cannot be reclaimed, and that is sad. What is even sadder is he will keep going like this for the rest of his career. Don’t squander your working years like he has – get the training and make presenting a powerhouse support for your career and brands.