Episode #346: Should I Be A Bit Dramatic In My Presentation Or Play It Safe?

I gave a speech recently to a room full of managers, some foreigners and some Japanese. It was an internal talk and the purpose was to get the leaders motivated and get their mojo going, after having been hammered by three years of Covid. They recently passed across the feedback and it was quite confusing. Some said, “love the passion, dynamism” etc., and some said, “too loud, too strong”, etc. What do you make of this? What I made of it was, judging by the faces when I was presenting, the vast majority of people were accepting of the energised style. For a small minority, it was too powerful. Okay, so what are we supposed to do with this feedback?

There are four purposes for our presentations. In business, the Inform style is the most common one, where we provide extensive information about project updates, results, introducing new policies, and explaining overall strategic direction. There are the Impress presentations. where we are selling our organisations’ capabilities and credibility. We are trying to boost the brand of the firm and to encourage buyers to select us a trusted partner. Entertain speeches are often given before the festivities or as a classic after-dinner speech to put everyone in a positive and happy mood. Then there are the Motivate talks, where we want the audience to take some action. We have a powerful belief in what we are suggesting. Say we had the cure for cancer, through a particular regime, we would broadcast this far and wide and with a missionary zeal to convert people to the path we say is the right one.

The speech I was giving was in the Motivate category. They had suffered a downturn in motivation and zeal and my job was to restore that commitment to the cause. Naturally, this type of talk is going to feature a lot of energy, passion, commitment, belief. My audience was a mixed group from all different divisions within the organisation, so there was a big spread of personality types. The Amiable personality type is rather muted, reserved, self-contained. I would guess the “too strong” comments came from people in this group.

Should I have toned it down to suit this group? I don’t think so. My mission was to motivate and to inspire, so energy and passion were needed for that purpose. Clearly, some people didn’t respond to that. As speakers we have to try and seek the acceptance of the majority, rather than the minority. You quickly realize that it's impossible to please everyone and be everything to everyone. Do I want to spend my valuable time giving talks to Milquetoast audiences or do I want to talk to people who want to fired up? Clearly, with my personality, the latter is the correct answer.

So how dramatic can we be as a speaker? I certainly added dramatic flourishes to my talk with varied voice modulation and big and powerful gestures. I used my facial expression to drive home points, used movement, where needed, to underline a key point. Was it too much? Clearly for some it was, but did I get my message across? Did I break through the clutter occupying the minds of my audience? Did I stir passion in those who wanted to be fired up again? Yes, I did and if I was to give that talk again, I wouldn’t change anything about how I delivered it.

When we speak, why would we give equal emphasis to every word in a sentence? Each word has a different value and the way we deliver the talk should correspond to that unique value. If there are keywords in that last sentence of mine, I should hit them harder or much softer than the other words, to highlight them, making them standout, elevating them above the others. For example, I could highlight key words and phrases like this: Each word has a different value and the - way - we - deliver the talk should correspond to that different value. When I use these phrases “Each word”, “the way we deliver” and “different value”, I need to highlight them by using speed and strength - either slowing down or speeding up, going hard or going soft.

When delivering the sentence, I can add more dynamism to the phrases with gestures and body language. The combination of the word delivery, the appropriate gesture and the overall body language come together for a very dramatic combination of emphasis supporting the message, which will break through and grab the attention of the listeners.

What we want to avoid is sameness – all strong or all soft. Either is guaranteed to have audiences leaping to grab their phones to elude us and succumb to the magnetic force field of the internet. We want them to get our message, so we need to mix it up and keep them with us. I often use the example of classical music – it has tremendous variance and that is why we keep listening. Our talks should have ebbs and flows, crescendos and lulls.

There are plenty of people delivering “Johnny One Note” boring, grey, uninspiring talks, so we don’t need more of those. Try to seek micro areas where you can bring a bit of pizzazz and flair to the talk. Not constant across the whole talk so it becomes tiring, but add flashes of drama and sprinkle these into the speech, to keep your audience with you. Trust me - it is a lot more fun when you do it this way.