Episode #106: Show Me How Great You Are, Don't Tell Me

Japan is an interesting place where there is a lot of respect for people’s family pedigrees, University alma maters, job titles and position in the company. Sometimes though, you are left wondering is this person really one of the actual elite or is this the best the Japanese elite can produce? American friends tell me Missouri is famous for it’s “show me, don’t tell me” mantra. My home country of Australia is similarly a nation of Olympic Gold Medalists in cynicism. When you can’t back up who you say you are with the goods, credibility declines rapidly and in fact dissipates.

This seemed like just such a case. Seriously sad really. Our speaker had some excellent points to convey, but due to silly basic errors, killed his organisation’s messages and brand. Maybe I am too tough, but I really believe there is no excuse for this anymore. Today there is so much information available, so many role models, so much video instruction, so much access to insight, so much training, you really have to wonder how some organisations can do such a poor job selecting who they send forth to represent them.

The impressive thing was our speaker was delivering the talk in English, when that was not his native language. Actually, the level of English fluency was singularly impressive. The cadence speed was good, the pronunciation was fine, the speaking voice was clear. He came with a grand resume, part of the elite of the land, a well educated, international, urbane, sophisticated, senior guy. This was game, set and match to be a triumph of positive messaging and salesmanship. It was a fizzer.

I approached him after it was all over. Being the eternal Aussie optimist from the land of vast sweeping horizons, brilliant blue skies and wonderful sunshine, I thought our speaker would benefit from a bit of friendly, helpful, positive feedback on how he could help his organisation to do better. He wasn’t buying any of that and asked me for one example. Clearly he believed his talk went down a treat with the crowd, a group by the way, full of long term Japanophiles and enthusiastic boosters for things Japanese. He was in fact preaching to the choir, in audience terms, but even then his messaging went astray.

I asked for the first slide to be brought back up. A confusing coat of many, many colours, seriously impenetrable, dense with data, totally impervious to easy understanding – a roiling florid mess in other words. They were all like this. Data was simply killing the key messages. When I suggested the slides were perhaps attempting to put too much on the screen at the one time, he said I was looking at the pruned and cleaned up version. He had taken the organisation’s standard slide deck and pared it back. “Pared it back, really?” I was incredulous. Well it was still risible and ridiculous.

The other issue was the delivery. Mysteriously, our speaker chose to stand right in front of the monitor and read to us what was on the screen, while having his back to the audience for most of the presentation. Fortunately, he was handsome, urbane, charming, international and articulate. He had all the natural flair and advantages to carry the room to his way of thinking. Unfortunately, he failed completely. Why was that?

What could our erstwhile hero have done? He made a fundamental miscalculation. He allowed the slide deck to become the centerpiece of the presentation, instead of making his messages the key. Here lies a mighty lesson for all of us. We should all carefully cull our ideas and distill the talk down to only the most powerful and important elements. We should present only one idea per slide, restrict the colour palette to two colours for contrast and try to keep it zen-like simple. Here is Dr. Story’s iron rule for slides - if our audience cannot grasp the key point of any slide within two seconds, then it needs more paring back.

Graphs are great visual prompts and the temptation is to use them as unassailable evidence. This usually means trying to pack the graph slide with as much information as possible, showing long periods of comparison and multiple data points for edification, usually anointed with microscopic fonts. Instead think of them like screen wallpaper. They form a visual background. We can then go to another slide showing a turning point in splendid isolation for clarity or we can have an overlay pop up, with a key number, emphasised in very large font. In this way, we can cut through all the clutter and draw out the critical proof we want our audience to buy. Trying to pack it all on one screen is a formula for persuasion suicide and personal brand demolition.

We also need to learn some very basic logistics about presenting. Despite how the organisers have set up the space, move things around if possible to give yourself the best shot to present as a professional. Try to stand on the audience left of the screen. We read from left to right, so we want them to look at our face first and then read the screen. We want to face our audience and if anyone drops the lights so that your screen is easier to see, stop everything right there and ask for the lights to be brought back up. We need the lights on in order that we can see our audience’s faces. We can then gauge if they are with us or resisting our messages. They can see us too and we can use our gestures, facial expressions and body language to back up the words we are saying.

Changing the slides and the delivery would have made the speaker’s messages clearer and more attractive. None of the things I have suggested to him are complex or difficult. Why then are we still assailed with unprofessional presentations from smart people? He remained resistant, stubborn, unaware. He is part of the Japanese elite, after all, but he regardless of that dispensation, he still didn’t get it. So I saw him riding off into the sunset on his quixotic quest to convert others to his organisation’s point of view. I pondered, “good luck with that one buddy!”.

People will judge us on what they see. In the event notice they will note our grand resume, they will hear the MC’s complimentary introduction, but they will make up their minds based on what we present and the way we present it. Missouri’s rule of “show me, don’t tell me” is a good one to keep in mind when preparing to stand up in front of others and pontificate.