Episode #76: Don't Be Boring When Presenting

Every week I get to listen to speeches from some of the top people in their field. I belong to an elite Rotary Club here in Tokyo. That description in itself is a bit of a problem, given the philosophy of Rotary as a service organisation helping society and connecting business people together. When my fellow Rotarians from different parts of the world hear this term “elite”, they will be puzzled, but hey, this is Japan and we do things differently here. My particular Rotary is brimming with the captains of industry, the commercial crème de la crème, the top shelf of corporate leadership. One of these titans was giving a presentation recently.

He runs a huge print media company with an eye popping daily circulation in the millions that is the envy of his Western compatriots. This is a man whose whole career has been devoted to communication, capturing stories and gaining influence. So my expectations were raised on a couple of fronts. I thought here is a speaker who will have a lot of interesting anecdotes, given his organization has a global footprint and the fact that they have been doing this the 1870s. I thought given all the changes going on in the media business, he will be able to provide insights into where the industry is going. What a disappointment.

The first red flag that the quality of this presentation was going to be less than expected, was when he started reading his speech. For someone in his position, with the many decades of experience he has, why on earth would he need to read his speech. Everyone in that audience reads his media product on a daily basis without fail. He is a fellow Rotarian so he is amongst friends. There is no question time in this format so there can be no concerns about being ambushed by a tough question. This would have to be one of the safest speaking environments on the planet. He could talk to his notes without having to read the whole thing word by word.

We all have some area of expertise otherwise we wouldn’t be given the chance to speak. When we have experience with our area of knowledge we don’t need to read the script. We can talk to the points and this allows us to engage with the audience in a more natural way. Unlike our speaker, we won’t have our gaze transfixed on the sheet of paper sitting on the rostrum in front of us. This forces our eye line to be looking down on the page and not up at our audience. This creates a barrier with our audience and precludes the opportunity to engage with them. Our eyes are such powerful communication tools and we should be using them to look at individuals in the audience as we speak. We should be switching our gaze around the room, holding that person’s attention for around 6 seconds before moving on to the next person.

The next red flag on the quality was his speaking speed. When we are reading we can tend to speed up. This gets worse when we get nervous. I don’t know if he was nervous or not, but I do know he was whipping through his speech at a rate of knots. Another reason for the speed can be trying to squash as much content into the delivery as possible in the accorded time.

Slow down for clarity. I am a rapid speaker in both English and Japanese. I have to really work on myself to slow down so that the audience can follow what I am saying. This is especially the case when speaking in a foreign language. Slightly different accents and cadence can be hard for the listener to catch and when you speed things up the degree of difficulty rapidly accelerates. When we are flying along at speed we tend to lose the pauses.

Instead it becomes a machine gun delivery that just runs one set of thoughts right over the top of the preceding ideas, making it very hard for the audience to keep up. We need to give our listeners some little time to catch their breath mentally and digest what we have just said. As he was speaking in Japanese, I would have appreciated a few pauses so I could process what he was saying more easily.

Were there interesting stories and anecdotes from his star studded career covering the major events of the last 40 years? Nope. Were there interesting trends being revealed about the future of media in Japan. No. It was boring and uninteresting and it didn’t need to be like that. Tell stories from your own experiences – we have a strong interest in that type of content. Lots of things happen in business and in life and we all have terrific episodes and examples we can weave into our talk to support the point we are making.

Think about your audience and what would be of interest to them about trends in your industry that will impact their business, the market or create future societal trends. Something that the broadest base of listeners can relate to.

We didn’t have any of that on this particular day but we should have. It was boring.

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About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.