Episode #393: Senior Executives Common Presentation Errors

It is not often that we get a front row seat to watch a group of very senior businesspeople compete with each other when presenting. If you like blood sports, then this is right up your alley. This is a zero-sum game for seizing the brass ring and even better, it is conducted in the full glare of the assembled masses. This is an annual event, which, as a Master Trainer of presentations and public speaking, I always look forward to.

Being the eternal optimist, I always imagine that this year I will be delighted with the high levels of professionalism on display. This could be a leading indicator that the senior ranks of companies are understanding the importance of presentations, persuasion and storytelling skills.
We all know the pressures in business and the levels of competition are getting more and more intense. Throw in the rapid advances of technology and we have a boiling red ocean of difficulty, which we all must deal with. These executives are always a good gauge of the ability of business to keep up with the demands. Sadly, another year of no change and no improvement.

These executives have two minutes to convince the voting members that they should be selected over their rivals. On this occasion, there were no women in the mix, which in itself is a worry, but that is another podcast. Every year I take detailed notes on what I am seeing and not seeing.
Typically, no one seems to have a clue about what to do with their hands. More importantly, they have no idea how to make their hands work for them. Gestures add strength to our words and are a powerful amplifier of our message. Holding our hands around stomach or groin level or even worse, behind our backs, eliminates the opportunity to use this powerful message driving medium.

Gestures need to be held up high, so that they are easy to see. The maximum holding time is up to fifteen seconds, after which the gestures lose all their power and just become annoying. Pointing fingers or fists at the audience are very aggressive gestures and are best replaced with using the open palm instead. The desired effect is the same without the aggro.

Eye contact is another major lost opportunity. In a one-minute period, we can engage directly with ten people and we should be doing that all the time we have available to us. The alternative is what these executives were doing, which was not looking at the audience and just vaguely scanning the room, not focusing on anyone in particular. A type of fake eye contact effort.

It was a large venue with hundreds of people and so optically, when we select one person down the back to focus on, the ten people sitting around them all feel we are looking directly at them too. We can get ripple effect going with our eye contact and in one minute engage with eleven people.

This wasn’t happening. The result was the speakers seemed detached and not engaged with their voters. This makes the message more difficult to drive in because the power of the eye contact is completely diffused and rendered useless.

Voice strength is important too. One of the aspirants asked me for a few hints about five minutes before he was due to start speaking. I know him well. He has a very demure manner and is rather softly spoken. I told him to simply increase his vocal power. He may have feared that he would be screaming, but I assured him that would not be the case at all. I knew that this would help him to come across as more credible and confident. He did that and turned out to be the highest vote getter. A few of the speakers let their voice trail off at the very end of their talk, when doing the wrap up. This is extremely bad and leaves a weak final impression. Don’t let it fade out. Instead make it a crescendo at the end and finish with strength.

Another surprising thing was how little the speakers understood about how to use a microphone. There was a microphone stand for them to use and almost all of them stood too far back away from the microphone. They were losing vocal power as a result and this diminished their dynamism in the eyes of the audience.

One of them added to his woes by getting his feet positioning wrong. If you point your feet at ninety degrees to the audience, you are balanced and will be able to focus on the entire audience. If, like him, you get the angle wrong and are off fifteen degrees, without knowing it, your body positioning is now turned such that you are ignoring about a third of your audience on one side. Don’t ignore your audience.
To my horror and astonishment, one company President of a very large and well-known firm, chose to read his entire speech from hand held notes. This is a two-minute speech and he can’t manage that at his level? I was thinking that is a pretty sad state of affairs at his age and stage. There is absolutely no need for that.

If you do, it ensures you look down at the page and do not engage your audience. It screams out you are out of your depth entirely. Unsurprisingly, he got the lowest number of votes.

I shouldn’t be too harsh though, because up until my early thirties, I was terrified of public speaking and fled every chance to participate. At least he was up there on stage giving it a go. I wondered whether I should reach out to him and suggest he can do better than reading his talk out to us. It is a tricky thing, so I will dwell on that a bit more. It may have the opposite effect and he may take offense at my implied suggestion that he is crap presenter, which he is.

One major and disappointing absence in this melee was storytelling. It was a very dry boring affair for the most part. These are not boring, wallflower type people who have done nothing with their lives and careers. They are international businessmen with years of adventures and experiences under their belts. No one seized the opportunity to weave a fascinating story into their talk, to really grab hold of their audience and monopolise their attention for those two minutes.

I would give none of these senior executives a passing grade and worry about how effective they are in their role as leader. They are the guide, explaining the future direction of the business and they have to convince everyone to follow them. I cannot be confident they are doing a good job of it.

For all of us, we need persuasion power and that means being able to get up and speak in a convincing and professional manner. If that is beyond you, then get the training, preferably with us, but at least get it from somewhere reputable. The need is not going to diminish or go away. It is only going to become more intense.