Episode #238: Selfish Presenters

My regular Rotary meeting held every week at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo has a featured speaker. Our speaker this time was a celebrity in his eighties and very well known to the audience. Rotary runs like clockwork and every section of the hourly meeting is choreographed and the meetings always finish on time. Not this time though. Our speaker gave a rambling talk, which seemed to lack any direction or point. For no good reason he also managed to go way over his allotted speaking time, so the meeting finished late. This Rotary audience is full of the captains of industry in Japan and so they are busy executives, for whom time is their most valuable resource. I was sitting there thinking what have we got here with this speaker’s thinking?

My conclusion was that this speech was for his pleasure. He wanted to ramble around and across a number of unrelated subjects. He clearly liked the sound of his own voice and was happy to have a big audience in front of him. The fact that he managed to go over the time was amazing given there was almost no structure to his talk and he could have ended anywhere really. Japan loves its celebrities, so they get cut a lot of slack and are indulged. This has probably been the speaker’s experience for decades and today he is quite indulgent with himself, because clearly for him, there are no boundaries.

It reminded me though of the importance of focusing on our audience. The danger can be we become wrapped up in our subject or in this case, wrapped up in our own importance. This happens in business too. High powered CEOs jet in to give a speech, they have people fawning all over them and are treated like rock stars. A few years of that and their sense of proportion starts to drift. The issue though, is as speakers, they represent the brand. If they are too impressed with themselves and their superior expertise and ability, the audience can feel it. It becomes obvious they are focused on themselves and not the message or the audience. This is not a plus for the brand.

It can happen with passionate speakers too. They may be legitimate experts in their field and are fully sold on the merits of what they are doing or offering. All great stuff, but this can lead to a shift in focus away from the audience on to the details of the subject and their glorious part in it all. In many ways this talk is all about them and their love for the subject. We don’t want that outcome either.

From start to finish, the focus has to be on getting the key messages into the brains of the audience and selling them on why those messages are important. We the speaker are the vehicle not the main act. As we get more confident speaking in front of audiences and as we start to enjoy holding sway over large crowds, the danger arises that this becomes an extension of our egos about how great we in fact are. Anytime we switch the focus off our audience, be it to the details of the technology or to our glorious selves. When this happens we are clearly going in the wrong direction.

The design and execution of the talk should be solely focused on the audience and giving them what they want. We know this by our prior research into who is coming - gender, age, job titles, company name - and by mingling with the early arrivals, to get a sense of what brought them here etc. We know that the Q&A section will help us address specific interest points for individuals in the audience, which may not have been fully covered in the main body of the speech. It will also flush out any disagreements with what we have said. That can happen in Japan, although usually not from the Japanese members of the audience. Throw a couple of foreigners into the mix and you can be assured they will push back on your views, if they don’t agree with them.

The starting point of why we are doing this talk should be clear. It is not about us, but about those who have taken the time and made the effort to listen to us. If we start the design phase from that perspective we will be well down the track to get the talk right for that audience. We need to navigation of the talk to help make clear the key points we are trying to make. We need to work on our delivery to achieve the same aim. Hitting key words and phrases makes a big difference in raising the status of certain ideas over others.

In sales, we say we have to “join the conversation going on in the mind of the prospect”. In presentations, the same logic applies. We have to consider what the audience is expecting to hear. What are the points they want more information on and think about how they can gain something worthwhile from our talk.

Our personal and professional brands are on show every time we speak in front of audiences. Being highly indulgent with ourselves and not considering the value transaction of listener time being traded for gain is a brand destroyer. We need to keep our eye on the prize, which is be someone of real worth for our audience, based on how they define their idea of value. If we do that every time we will be successful as a speaker and presenter.