Episode #308: Why We Need Help With Presenting

I teach presentation skills to businesspeople. In the first class they do a simple self-introduction and this is where we instructors can tell the skill level of the people in the class. A recent class had quite competent people and I am sure they would have been seen as already quite good by their peers and bosses. At the end of the class on the next day, they were transformed into a completely different, highly persuasive and skilled presenter. I was thinking what was the difference? They were by all measures fairly good when they arrived into the class. The obvious answer was the coaching they received, but why did that make such a major difference and can we get better at presenting by ourselves without coaching?

There are books on presenting and I have written one called “Japan Presentation’s Mastery” and there are millions of others. There are tons of videos on presenting and I release two a week, one called “The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show” which covers leadership, sales and presenting. The other show is called the “Japan Business Mastery Show” and it covers the same content, but in a more abbreviated version for people with no time. There are no doubt a lot of podcasts on the subject and I release this one “The Presentations Japan Series” every week. What I am saying is there are no shortage of resources on how to become a better presenter and I am doing my best to create content for Japan as my niche.

If you absorb all the content available there is no doubt you will become a better presenter. But will it make you a great presenter? To become great, I believe you need two things – lots of presenting opportunities and quality coaching from experts. I forget which Tony Robbins book it was I was reading, but I remember he made the conscious decision to do as much presenting as he could, in order to master the art. I thought that made sense and I certainly grabbed every opportunity after I came back to Japan to work in 1992 to give presentations.

Things have gone quiet since Covid, as there were no events, but still I am up to presentation number 548. I tried to incorporate what I was studying into my talks and also to note what was working for me and what was not. Over three decades I have built up the experience now to be very comfortable speaking and presenting. My TED talk last year did push me though, because it is very short at 13 minutes and the video goes global. If you are doing a poor job, a lot of people know about it. I also don’t count my presentations given as a corporate trainer, because that is not a public speech style presentation and has a different goal and cadence. It is still standing up in front of people and commanding the room though, but it is different, so I don’t count the many thousands of those facilitations.

What about the coaching aspect? The coach provides options. We know what we know, but the coach can see more than what we can see. When you think about it you are facing the audience and looking at them and you cannot see yourself, unless you are videoing the talk (and I strongly recommend you do that every possible chance). The coach can see the impact we are having and can help us to ramp that up.

It might be more voice variety and modulation. It might be larger gestures. I might be to start moving around or to stand on the one spot and not move. It might be to get us working on engaging our audience members through using eye contact and holding their gaze as we speak to them.

It might be to inject pauses to slow things down. If we are nervous or even if we are on a roll, we might be speeding up. When this happens, each successive wave of ideas wipes out the previous one and the audience can get a bit lost trying to keep up. The pauses allow them to digest what we are saying and get them ready for the next pearls of wisdom. They also allow us to adjust our speaking speed and slow down.

The coach can mention to us that we have a very serious look on our face, because we are concentrating so hard and it comes across as aggressive or angry and that isn’t the image we want to project. We don’t notice we are doing that because we are consumed with the message and the delivery and are oblivious to the how we look to the audience.

The coach can also encourage us to take some risks. They can suggest things which are outside our usual gamut, but which when incorporated will enable us to lift our presentation to a higher height than we could imagine by ourselves. Sometimes we need to stretch ourselves so that we can make a bigger action in the talk and have it within the bounds of business relevancy. The coach can help us to escape from our Comfort Zone and challenge us to be more and be better.

My recommendation is to absorb as much knowledge and information as you can about presenting, get as much frequent practice as you can manage and get a quality coach. That is the winning combination. Remember we are all putting out personal and professional brands out there every time we open our mouths to speak. Do we want to be perceived as true professionals and in that way build trust and credibility? Of course we do, so that is why this trifecta is such a winner.