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The Presentations Japan Series

The Presentations Japan Series

Auteur(s): Dr. Greg Story
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Persuasion power is one of the kingpins of business success. We recognise immediately those who have the facility and those who don't. We certainly trust, gravitate toward and follow those with persuasion power. Those who don't have it lack presence and fundamentally disappear from view and become invisible. We have to face the reality, persuasion power is critical for building our careers and businesses. The good thing is we can all master this ability. We can learn how to become persuasive and all we need is the right information, insight and access to the rich experiences of others. If you want to lead or sell then you must have this capability. This is a fact from which there is no escape and there are no excuses.Copyright 2022 Développement commercial et entrepreneuriat Entrepreneurship Gestion et leadership Économie
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  • A Smile, Energy, Eyeline Make Such A Difference
    Jul 7 2025
    Once upon a time, we taught public speaking and presentation skills in a class room, with tons of people all seated together, right next to each other. We moved to teaching everything LIVE On Line since February 2020, so what has been the difference? Surprisingly, not as much as we expected. The one big difference is the lack of opportunity to employ full body emphasis when presenting, because everyone is mainly sitting in front of a screen. You can use a standing desk, but even so, the camera will cut you off at the thigh level, so we are not getting the full body power. There are a few tricky things about gestures when using fake backgrounds, which by the way seems to be standard now. What are the things that stand out most in the online presenting environment? Smiling is definitely one which has disappeared, when people are on screen. I don’t know why that is the case. Perhaps we are more self conscious in front of a camera? Or is this now such a serious business world that smiling is out of fashion? Think of any online meeting you have attended recently and ask yourself was anyone smiling when they made their comments or gave their reports? I was teaching a class on presenting skills online recently and what a difference it made when people would smile during their talks. Not every subject lends itself to smiling of course but there are bound to be good news in there somewhere and that is the time to trot out that big smile of yours. It is congruent with the content of the talk, so it works. It is also such a connector with the audience, it really drives up the engagement factor with an audience. We have all been doing these online meetings for 18 months now, yet most people still haven’t mastered the medium. I know it is difficult, because the camera lens is 10 centimetres above the faces on the screen. However, take a look at the eye line of the participants in the next meeting. How many are framed in the screen so that there is a half body showing and their head is at about two thirds height on camera? Many will still have their heads cut off and they are arranged at the very bottom of the screen, like they have been decapitated. Or they will have the camera lens angle shooting straight up their nostrils – not an attractive look that one. When we get the camera lens at eye line and we speak while looking at the camera, we are now using the medium as it was designed. The camera can bring us into the world of the viewer and we can be speaking directly to them through the lens. When we are looking down at the faces on screen we have broken off eye contact and we seem like we are looking down on everyone. It is the equivalent of giving a face to face speech without ever looking at your audience, in fact you are speaking to the floor, the whole time. Now I have seen speakers actually do that, but it is totally ineffective. The same with the online world – talk to the people through the lens and you will get your message across much more impressively. We mainly use our voices when presenting online. Yet what about gestures? Gestures can support what we are saying by bringing more physical energy to the point. If you have framed yourself properly then you can use your hands on screen. There are a few best practices though. Firstly, don’t wave your hands around, because the fake backgrounds will disappear them at certain points. So, hold your hands at between shoulder and head height, so that they can be easily seen and hold the gesture rather than trying to move it too much. Also, if you want to show some item on screen, use your own body as the shield and show it in front of you. The fake background won’t be able to disappear it on you when you do it this way. Most people I see online, are using the same speaking voice range they use all the time in the in-person world. When we are presenting we are no longer a part of the audience – we are on stage, be it in a venue or online. That means we need to bring a lot more energy to what we are saying, in order to attract the audience to our message. When we are online, we also need to compensate for the fact that the camera will sap 20% of our power and we will come across as having less energy that usual. You may have noticed that most people speaking online sound like they are on “downers”. We need to get that voice energy up and start directing at it a key words we want to emphasise in our sentences. Not every word in a sentence has the same value, so we need to pick out key words and phrases and make them hot, by hitting them harder. Most online presenters have a long way to go with this medium. The experience gained over the last year or so, hasn’t improved them, actually. They are still making fundamental mistakes. These can be easily corrected and it just takes greater awareness and some practice to get it right. So let’s think again about what we ...
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    13 min
  • Is Appearing Too Slick A Negative When Presenting?
    Jun 23 2025

    Too smooth politicians, silky salespeople, urbane company thrusters all set off alarm bells. We can meet impressive people and we can meet impressive looking people. Over time we have learnt how to plumb the difference. The world of presenting is made up of the top 1% who know what they are doing and the 99% who have no real clue. The 99% group are often card carrying sceptics, who have finely tuned radar for anything that looks different to what they know. Also, by definition this clueless 99% are our audience when we present. Are we in danger of turning them off if we come across as too professional?

    This is certainly the case in Japan. Standing out and being outstanding are not welcomed here. The most insightful cultural norm in Japan is captured in the traditional wisdom of “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”. Owning the auditorium, dominating the podium, being a powerful stage presence are all “nail sticking out” issues. Looking supremely confident, being Mr. or Ms. Smooth, operating at a high level, are all viewed with suspicion. We have a similar idea in the West. When we meet a “smooth talking salesperson” we get worried about them taking our money.

    Japanese culture appreciates humility, harmony, group consensus, not putting yourself forward and modesty. Hello to all of our American fans out there. This Japanese viewpoint is absolutely the formula for not getting ahead in aggressive, competitive societies. Interestingly enough, as an Aussie, I think this Japanese approach is close to our cultural norms too. In Australian parlance, someone who “big notes” themselves is a self aggrandising, big talker and they won’t get very far Down Under. A Donald Trump telling everyone how rich he is, how smart he is, would be impossible for an Australian politician to replicate. As presenters, we operate within the bounds of our cultural rules and limits.

    So how do we do a professional job of presenting in Japan, when the whole ethos is against the display of high levels of professionalism? There is a difference between being very professionally prepared and being a boring oaf on stage. Talking about yourself, except in terms of self-degradation, is out. That means we frame what we say about ourselves from a more humble lens. We do design a blockbuster opening though, to capture audience attention. We do set up the flow of the talk, so that the navigation is simple and easy to follow. We do provide evidence to back up any assertions we make. We do prepare two closes, one for before and one for after Q&A. We do rehearse numerous times to perfect the content, polish the cadence and make sure we are on time. In other words, we are a total professional in the way we prepare the presentation.

    The friction points arise by the way we carry ourselves. I have lived here for 36 years and I have never seen a Japanese presenter stride confidently to the podium or the microphone. They walk slowly and hesitantly to the stage centre, stooping, wearing the greyest of the grey clothing, so they can be as boring as possible. They open up immediately with a series of apologies, to establish that they are not superior to anyone in the audience, even if they are.

    I can’t see me doing any of that when I am presenting. I will be a little more conservative in my dress, only because I don’t want a pocket chief or tie or shirt ,to compete with my message. I won’t be bounding up on to the stage like a panther ready to devour my audience. I will walk tall, with subdued confidence and go straight into my opening, without any time wasted on getting the tech right. There will be no microphone thumping because I will have tested it all before the event started. I won’t be fiddling around to get my slide deck up, because I will have someone else doing that for me, while I use those first few vital seconds to engage my audience.

    I won’t be making any faux apologies for my poor preparation or poor public speaking ability, because I will be moving straight into explaining the value the talk will bring to the listeners. I won’t be making flamboyant gestures or utilising any thespian artifices. I will be business like and focused on helping people through the messages I am delivering. The way I deliver the talk will be congruent with the content. It won’t feel slick, but it will feel competent and that is what I want, in order to have my messages accepted. I won’t attempt to be sardonic, cynical, use any idioms or try to be an amateur stand up comic. By Western standards, I will come across, as an understated expert in my topic. By Japanese standards, I will come across as a confident, but business like person, dedicated to their message for the audience. I will have threaded the needle between the two extremes and that will be a good result.

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    13 min

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