Episode #191: Presenting Simplicity

Zen study is a way to strip out all of the non-essentials in life. As presenters, this is a good metaphor for when we are in front of people speaking. You would think with all those thousands of years of Zen in Japan, the Japanese people would be legends of simplicity and clarity when presenting. Not true! Presenting as an idea only came to Japan around 160 years ago. Fukuzawa Yukichi who founded Keio University launched public speaking in Japan in the Meiji period.

Western society plumbs the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome, parliaments allowing debate and Hollywood for models on speech giving. Japan has no home grown role model. If the authorities needed you to know anything in old Japan, a notice board would have it written there for you. No shogun oratory from the castle walls to the assembled masses.

No slide deck in those days, but Japan certainly was an early adopter of the technology for giving presentations. Any venue you go to in Japan will be bristling with gear. Interestingly, the content on screen will also be bristling. There will be 10 graphs on the one page, lurid diagrams employing 6 or more vivid colours, text so small you could use it for an optometrist’s eyesight test chart. Where has the zen gone?

Many speakers are competing for attention with what is being displayed on the screen. I saw Ken Done, a well-known Australian artist, give a talk in Japan many years ago. He has a very unique visual art style and yet he moved around from behind the lectern, stood next to it and just spoke about his art to the audience. It was very engaging because it was so intimate. The Japanese audience loved it. There was only one source of stimulation for the audience and that was Ken Done.

Don’t use a slide deck unless there is something in that content and presentation on screen which really helps bring home your argument. If you are there to persuade, then you will be so much more powerful if all the attention is concentrated on one point and that point needs to be you.

In this case we have stripped away all the noise, so we have to fill the void with word pictures. We need to be having the audience see what we are talking about in their mind’s eye. We have to transport the audience to a place, time and situation that we are describing in words, in such a way that visually they can imagine it.

We don’t always have to have slides or visuals. We are the message, so let’s manufacture the situation so that we are the center piece of the proceedings and all eyes and ears are on us and every word we say. We can Zen our way to speaking success!