Episode #188: When Is High Energy Over The Top

Recently, I was watching a presenter online, teaching others how to do online presentations. Man, he was really jumping around. The body language was rocking hard, the voice was powerful, the gestures almost pungent, the facial expressions were on fire and his eyes were blazing. The thought floated across my mind about how his audience was receiving this advice? Most of the people I see online in these various webinars provided by the good burghers of Tokyo’s business community are necrotic. They are almost like one of those death stars, where all the energy collapses inward and the whole thing just disappears into oblivion.

Many of us rant about getting more professional with online presenting, yet the same house captives who attend these castings of pearls of wisdom on the subject, do nothing to alter their approaches. They still zoom the laptop camera up their own noses from its position on the desk or over their ample beer bellies. They still sit there talking in a monotone, with a lifeless delivery style guaranteed to cure the most severe cases of insomnia. They are not getting it.

There seems to be an absence of interest in being a professional in business. They will argue against that view of course and say that in their area of expertise they are the goods. I would answer that by venturing that their vector is too narrowly defined. Being a business professional relies on deep knowledge but also the facility to broadcast that knowledge to others. We know that the modern audience has been brought up on computer games, reality television, DJs severely trimming songs, hand held devices with immediate access to the temptations of the internet and social media as their source of news. In sum, they are easily distracted. If the presenter is not engaging this audience then baby, they are long gone.

You can see this phenomenon live in your own home, as the participant names or numbers on the online call, begin to drop alarmingly, as the massively oblivious presenter just drones on and on and on. People weren’t particularly patient before, but Covid-19 has made them even less so, it would seem.

The presenters may feel speaking in a voice with passion and energy is too fake for them. They are usually boring, warm beer types and so think this is how they need to rise to the occasion, to be a professional in business who delivers content in the online world. They forget they are competing with such a plethora of escape options, that their precious message will not even get close to a look in, by those on the call.

If you come across like you are not sold on what you are speaking about, let me assure you, the rest of us won’t be either. We can tell you are passionate about your subject because you demonstrate that passion. Your voice, body language, gestures, eyes are all screaming at us – believe me, believe me, believe me!

Now do you have to be throttling along at 150 miles an hour? No. You just need to raise your energy at certain points in the talk where you are making a key point. You need to start your comments at a higher energy level, than would be your normal speaking voice. Interestingly when we are training people in public speaking and we ask them to double the energy when they are talking, they raise it ten percent. We just keep asking them to double it, until we get to a pitch level that sounds like they are sold on their own presentation. It is not a shrill trumpet call, but louder than normal. To them, it seems like they are wild banshees wailing at the top of their lungs. To the audience, it sounds like they believe what they are communicating.

Getting the presenters to realise that their over the top level is still well within the professional range is a struggle. This is where video is so useful. When we play back their rehearsal presentation and they see the enhanced body language, purposeful gestures and good eye contact with the camera, they are amazed it looks so different to what they imagined. They expected unhinged, demonic, batty, lunatic ravings on screen. All they got was a much better professional presenter, dominating the medium and engaging the audience. And as the audience, that is exactly what we want from presentations – that they be truly professional.