Episodes

  • 410 Why the First Question Matters - The Role of “Sakura” in Japanese Business Events

    410 Why the First Question Matters - The Role of “Sakura” in Japanese Business Events
    Nov 4 2024
    In Australian politics, they call it a “Dorothy Dixer”. This is when one of your confederates from your own political party ask a ruling Minister a real soft ball question in the parliament during Question Time, to allow for a fully pre-prepared answer. Dorothy Dix was an American newspaper advice columnist who would answer reader’s questions, and some say she sometimes would create her own questions to answer. At political rallies, there has been a similar set up where a stooge or a plant in the audience asks the speaker a pre-arranged question, but tries to make it look spontaneous. At business events, the speaker may have organised a friend to pop a question they want to answer to reduce time for questions they don’t want to answer or to make themselves look awesome. In Japan, these people asking the questions are called “Sakura” and they play the same role. I know this goes on because from time to time I am asked to be a Sakura at a business presentation. I am infamous around town for asking the first question. This happened by accident and now if I don’t ask the first question, people will ask what is wrong with me? Many years ago, I did have a question I wanted answered and before I could register my enquiry, the MC said “no more questions” and I was left suspended high and dry. I realised I could never predict when the last question would make it to prominence, but I could 100% reliably predict when the first question would come up. I also realised that in Japan, at least, there is always a pause when the MC throws the floor open to questions, as many people are reluctant to ask their question immediately. This provides the opportunity to be the first with no competition and the MC is forced to take your question. Sometimes the organisers or the speaker will approach me before things kick-off and ask if I can get things going by asking the first question. They fear that flat, spine decalcifying, stone motherless silence when they call for questions. It seems a damming verdict on the speaker that they were a dull dog, so dull in fact that no one wants to hear one more word from them on this subject. I can only recall one case where I was actually asked to lodge a specific question, so normally they leave that part of the equation to me. I ask questions anyway and unless the question itself is stupid, too self-serving or cringy, and I already know the person asking, I am usually happy to help. The speaker may have a desire to address an area of the subject which they couldn’t get to in the talk and may ask for a question which allows them to talk more about that topic. That would be a reasonable request, because not everyone in the audience may be an expert and be able to fill in the blanks across a broad subject. Should you as the speaker organise a “Sakura” for your talk? I don’t think this is prohibited, but there are a few caveats. You, as the speaker, must be prepared to answer audience questions and the “Sakura” role is not there to provide cover for you from legitimate questions, by stealing the question airtime. The question shouldn’t be a soft ball job either. It should be a question that seeks more information in a serious way. Asking cunning variations on, “why are you so awesome” or “why are you the leading global expert on this subject?”, would be ridiculous choices and the jig is up immediately and everyone involved in the charade looks stupid. In Japan, it is often the case that audiences are shy to ask the first question, but feel emboldened when some other brave “first mover” grips the thistle in their teeth and launches forth. Asking questions in the West has no stigma and indicates an interest in learning more from the speaker. These are all seen as positive attributes. In Japan, asking a question has five inferences: 1. The speaker was stupid and their talk impenetrable, 2. They were a poor communicator and the audience couldn’t follow the point, 3. You the questioner are too stupid to understand what the speaker said, 4. You want hog the limelight for yourself, stand out and try to impress everyone with how smart you think you are, by asking that question, 5. You have a legitimate question and the speaker was so amazing you want to learn more because you are a serious student of this topic. Most of the weight in Japan is on the negative side about asking questions. Therefore, sometimes we may need to get the ball moving with a question to the speaker to give permission to others to ask their secretly held question. Another suitable device is that if there is that deafening silence after questions are called for, to pose and then answer your own question. “A question I am often asked is…”. It has the same effect, gets things moving inviting the next question and you become your own “Sakura”.
    Show more Show less
    11 mins
  • 409 Use Your Visuals Checklist When Presenting In Japan

    409 Use Your Visuals Checklist When Presenting In Japan
    Oct 28 2024
    There are 6 elements we should check when putting our visuals together. Review this checklist before you start building the slide deck and your presentation will be much more impactful and successful. 1. Make sure you are boss of the visuals and not the other way around Often, the speaker is overshadowed by the visuals and everyone’s attention is directed toward the screen. We must remember that the screen has limited persuasion power compared to using our facial expressions. We can express disbelief, shock, bemusement, horror, joy, doubt, concentration, scepticism, engagement, hostility, agreement, happiness, etc. No screen can do that and we should be combining our words with our facial expression to really drive home the point we want to make. We must make the visuals our servant and not allow them to become our master. You see a lot of presenters who are almost invisible, because they have yielded control to what is up on the screen. We should stand stage left to the screen because we read from left to right. We want the audience to be captured by our voice and facial expression and then they look at what is on the screen, rather than just looking at the screen and ignoring us. If you find that the audience are not looking at you, just stop speaking. That pattern interrupt will draw them all back to your face to find out what is going on. We should also be using our eyes to look directly at members of the audience for six seconds and speak to them One-On-One. That technique has a powerful magnetic grip on our listeners. However, be careful, we can only hold that pressure for six seconds per person or it becomes too intrusive. 2. Tiny fonts are not useful We have all seen it. The presenter puts up a slide and the font sizes are tiny. Just to rub insult into the wound, they sometimes say dumb things like “I know you cannot read this but….”. But what? Why on earth do we have to sit there and look at a screen that we cannot read? The Golden Rule with any slide is that if the viewer cannot get the main point within two seconds, then the slide is too complicated. This is especially the case with fonts. Make sure the fonts are big enough to read easily and if there is a fear of not being able to get them to the right size, then that slide probably needs to be broken into two or more slides. This is usually the solution for most slide shows. Get the information on to more slides and then we can easily enlarge the detail on the slide to make it easier to read. One way to check the sizes are correct during the production process is to print out the slide and place it on the floor in front of you when standing. If you cannot read the detail, then more work is needed to adjust the size so that you can read it at a distance. 3. Graphs, graphs and more graphs Seeing six graphs on a screen is not uncommon in many presentations. The obvious problem with this idea is that the fonts and numbers are so small, it is impossible to read what is on the graph. In general, the Chart Golden Rule is one graph per slide. That allows us to make the graphs large enough to be easy to parse. Bar charts are a great tool for comparisons. We can contrast results spread over one or two years. More than that and the bar charts become hard to read. If we need to see a comparison over longer periods of time then line charts are the best for that. Again, we should probably cap things at three variable because once we get over that number it looks like spaghetti and you have trouble following what is going on. Pie charts are good for comparing shares of something. Two pie charts are the limit in this regard, because after that it gets hard to see what is on the screen. 4. White space is good A lot of presentations are trying to cram all the information on to one slide. The various contents are now competing for our attention. Leaving a lot of white space on the screen is an excellent way of highlighting key information and forcing the audience to concentrate on the one thing we want to emphasise. Putting up one number in large font or one word is very powerful. There is only one thing to look at and we can talk to that number and elaborate on why that number or word is significant. 5. Use one photo and attach some mystery “A picture is worth a thousand words” is a great saying and very true. It really allows us to make our point. We could carry this to the extreme and put up lots of photos, but we are defeating our aim of getting our message across. We are splitting our audience’s attention too thinly. If we can include people in the photo, then that is even more attractive as we love to see people’s faces compared to cityscapes or landscapes. We are drawn to look at people’s faces. Knowing that, we can find a photo which has that element and which will assist us to make our key ...
    Show more Show less
    13 mins
  • 408 Tech Talkers Need Help In Japan

    408 Tech Talkers Need Help In Japan
    Oct 21 2024

    It's been a while since I attended a highly technical talk by serious experts. The audience, however, was not as expert, so the two speakers knew they were addressing a less specialized group. Complex topics require special handling.Piling a lot of data onto one slide is a big no-no, but that didn’t stop our intrepid, geeky speakers. One of them, a retired professor, you’d think would be better at this given he taught it at a university. Perhaps I’m too optimistic about academics and technical specialists having actual teaching abilities compared to their true passion—research.

    Most of the slides were terrible.There was one slide, in particular, that showed a key timeline and included important projections into the future. It looked amazing.Yet, I still wonder what it said. The font was so tiny, and there were so many colours. Audience members like me had no ability to decipher the actual content. This slide was crucial, given the future implications of the technology they were discussing.

    So folks, the simple lesson here is to carefully consider how you present information on-screen. If it’s too complex, provide handouts so attendees can at least grasp what is going on. If you are going to show difficult content on-screen, make the fonts large, and keep the slides simple and easy to understand. Also, please scale back on the wild color palettes.

    As I sat there, I thought that horizontal timeline could have been magnified on the next slide to highlight key turning points in the continuum. It could have been like a blow-up of a part of the timeline, with the rest of the sequence becoming background wallpaper. The key components would be magnified on-screen for easy digestion, or they could have just broken up the timeline into larger sections on separate slides. None of this is complex.These were seriously well-educated, intelligent people giving this presentation. So, there's no doubt this is not beyond them. But if you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

    The subject is absolutely topical and exciting, yet the talk was very dry. Like many technical people, they got lost in the tech aspects.This might be fine for a presentation to scientists or specialists, but we, the audience, were not as familiar with the finer points. In this case, a different approach should have been taken.

    The visuals need to be more simplified. Key points should be kept clear and accessible. Analogies are a wonderful tool for taking complex, difficult subjects and making them clearer. For example, strategic plans are like gelato. Initially, this seems puzzling—what’s the connection between ice cream and business planning? But just like with gelato, we have many flavors and options. We don’t know which is best until we taste them. Similarly, a strategic plan might seem comprehensive, but we won’t know if it works until we execute it.

    The speakers also missed the opportunity to use storytelling.

    We were stuck at a theoretical and technical level, with no stories to elevate the key points.This area of science is full of stories—about the scientists, breakthroughs, triumphs, and setbacks. But we didn’t hear any of that. There was no “flesh on the bones” of the science.Think about how complex technical subjects are presented in movies or TV dramas. Progress is always depicted through a rich tapestry of stories.That talk was just yesterday, but right now, I can’t recall the name of even one key person who contributed to the rise of the technology, nor do I have any stories to tie the information together. This is key: stories are like glue.They help us connect complex topics over time by creating a narrative about who was involved, what they did, where and when it happened, and the outcomes.

    Drama grabs our interest and holds our attention.Without stories, it was hard for the speakers to connect with their non-technical audience. Even harder to make the key messages memorable. Hammering the audience with facts and details doesn’t ensure the message gets through. I can’t recall any of the statistics they shared. Had they wrapped those numbers in a story, I might remember. So, technical presenters, be sure to craft stories we can all recall later.

    Make sure that what’s presented visually is simplified so we can easily absorb the key points. Analogies are a great tool for explaining complex subjects and should be in every technical speaker’s toolbox. Having an amazing brain and decades of research experience won’t help if you can’t engage your audience and convey your message effectively.
    Show more Show less
    12 mins
  • 407 Coffee Chats Do Not Train You For Presenting In Japan

    407 Coffee Chats Do Not Train You For Presenting In Japan
    Oct 14 2024
    As a vigorous networker, constantly in motion, always looking for new clients, I attend a lot of events. Usually there are speakers or panel discussions or sometimes both. In this regard, I probably see over 100 people a year presenting in Japan. One consistent theme across all of these presentations is the lack of understanding of the “ba” (場) when speaking. This “ba” in Japanese means the physical locale or place or occasion, in this context. What I notice is that the speakers are confusing the “ba” as a presenter. They address the audience in the same voice strength, body language projection and gesture application, as they would use if they were sitting together having a chat over coffee with their friend. You might wonder why they would do that when they are there facing an audience of fifty people or more? Why can’t they scale up what they are doing to suit the much larger assembly? Don’t they feel the need to engage the entire audience once they have been given the shot to address the masses? Basically, they have no clue because they have never received any training on presenting. Their only reference point is coffee chats with a friend and they just keep that template for the larger occasion. Now I am sure they have seen someone present professionally, but I feel there must be a mental disconnect between what they are witnessing and how they see themselves. Perhaps even that is too optimistic for Japan, because they may have never seen a professional presentation here because they are so rare. Regardless, if they have ever seen a professional presentation they were just observers rather than students. They didn’t see what was going on as a model. They were just passive audience members observing someone else going through the motions. Once you have been trained, you automatically become a critic and keen observer of what the speaker is doing, because you have a range of relevant reference points to compare against. The combination of panelists and speakers I saw in a recent event had a common theme – no differentiation of the “ba” for this occasion and chatting over coffee with a friend. The voices were quiet. The energy low to non-existent. The body language turned off completely. No passion, no highlights, no take-aways, no persuasion attempted. It was as flat as a pancake. Yet here were a large number of company representatives giving their ideas on a particular subject, without much in the way of real commitment or passion. A number of them were youngish, if late twenties- early thirties counts as youngish. Is that an excuse? I don’t think so. Whatever age they were, no one on that stage had given much thought to what they were doing and what they wanted to achieve. It was obvious that representing their firm well as professionals was not in their minds. And yet here they were – on stage speaking to us in the audience. Just speaking more strongly would have made a big difference. Not yelling. They had microphones so there was no need for yelling but there was a big need to more vocal power and especially hitting key words. It was all a series of monotone deliveries, one after another. There was no passion for their subject or their point of view and that is a death sentence in the persuasion business. No storytelling either. They gave up such a major opportunity to connect with their audience by telling personal stories which would have made the point they were getting at. It was just a lot of talking without much to say really and so very disappointing. Engaging the crowd was not in their minds whatsoever. This makes sense if coffee chats are your only reference point for presenting. One-on-one over coffee you don’t have to project yourself, engage the other person or lift your voice. The average person is just not trained to know what to look for. At the event, I was chatting with a female lawyer about how poor lawyers are as speakers at their own seminars where they are trying to find clients. She had no idea what I was talking about. As it turned out the hosting firm’s senior legal counsel gave a speech at the event and afterwards I referenced it to my lawyer companion, as an example of what the problem is with the way lawyers are trained. She had just seen the same speech, but she couldn’t distinguish what was missing. Like most people she had no clue what to look for. I gave her some examples from the talk and I could see a glimmer of a lightbulb going on inside her mind. A faint glimmer to be sure. The coffee chat “ba” and the stage “ba” are totally different. On stage we have to be more. Bigger, bolder, louder, more energized, more persuasive , more engaging. We have to be “on”, rather than passive and acting like a spectator, when in fact we are the main act.
    Show more Show less
    11 mins
  • 406 Should We Lie In Our Presentations In Japan?

    406 Should We Lie In Our Presentations In Japan?
    Oct 7 2024
    This seems a ridiculous construct – of course we when we are presenting in business we shouldn’t lie. However, look at what is happening in the rest of the world. Kellyanne Conway introduced “alternative facts” into the American political debate to explain lies. Donald Trump rails against the fake media and fake news. It would appear that many people, including leading Republicans, think he lies a lot, and yet half of the American electorate support him. Are we now in a free fall where anything goes? I know this is dangerous territory to wade into, because to paraphrase basketball legend and entrepreneur Michael Jordan, “Republicans also buy sneakers and corporate training”. Donald Trump wrote in the Art Of the Deal that, “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration – and a very effective form of promotion”. This idea is often linked to German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels quote, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”. So when we are presenting, is it allowed to introduce exaggeration? You could answer that question by applying a gauge on the extent of the exaggeration. Is a small exaggeration acceptable or is the line struck such that no exaggerations are allowed? In Japan, at least, I would suggest that no one in business uses any “truthful hyperbole” or “alternative facts”, or exaggeration whatsoever. This whole focus on fake news has created an audience full of cynics and doubters. We all feel it. Every single day, I receive multiple fake emails and messages trying to get me to click on their attachment, or give them information so that they can rob me. These fakes are getting better and better in sophistication. More and more often, I have to contact the firm they are claiming to be from, to check they actually sent me that email or not. Back in the day, you took your chances outside with highwaymen and pirates. Today the modern era equivalents come over the internet through your email provider. As a consequence, we are all highly tuned up on fakery and dirty dealings. As a presenter, if we start exaggerating, our audience will doubt not just that point we are making, they will doubt every subsequent word which comes out of our mouth. They will also warn all of their friends and colleagues to be careful of us, because we cannot be trusted, because we are a bold faced liar. As presenters, recognising that the world is spiralling further and further down, with political discourse peppered with lies, we have to differentiate ourselves or some of this mud will get attached to us as well. The way to do that is to offer proof, evidence, data, statistics, testimonials demonstrations, exhibits etc. If we show a slide with a reference to some data, we need to include the source of that data. Probably 99% of the audience won’t check it, but it doesn’t matter, we have to presume they will all check it and we need our information to be tight. If we make a claim we have to be able to back it up with proof that what we are saying is true. We have to see the audience in front of us as one filled with battle hardened sceptics and supreme doubters and prepare accordingly. We must also realise this is only going to get worse and that the doubt factor will be applied to more and more of what we say. We have to be very, very careful about making statements which stand on their own. An opinion is fine and we have to flag it as exactly that, an opinion. Every other statement needs to be surrounded by provable evidence. The key is in the preparation. We have an important message we want to get across. What are the main points we will make and what proof do we offer to back up our claims. That evidence has to be verifiable and cannot be “alternative facts” or “truthful hyperbole” or subtle exaggeration. Depending on the situation we might distribute some additional documents which nominate the sources for what we are saying to head off any doubt arising in the minds of the listeners. As things degrade further, we can be proactive about it, rather than trusting that people will take what we say at face value. As I mentioned earlier with slides, we definitely have to include the references to any data or claims we are making. “If in doubt leave it out” is always good advice when stitching the presentation together. If I see a slide with a reference to statistics from 2019, I wonder why is the speaker showing such outdated data and why can’t they offer something more credible. Are they cunning, lazy or stupid? Now, both their point and they themselves are firmly placed in my “highly doubtful box”. In Japan, by the way, official government statistics are usually three years out of date. What should be an official, reliable source of information is made dubious by its antiquity. We have to be very careful about claims we make and the proof we offer to back them up....
    Show more Show less
    12 mins
  • 405 All Style No Substance Presenting In Japan

    405 All Style No Substance Presenting In Japan
    Sep 29 2024
    It was a big affair. The entire Shinsei Bank retail staff were assembled for a series of updates from the Division Heads on what each Division was doing and where they were going. One of my erstwhile lifelong banker colleague Division Head gave his presentation. It was dull, monotone, low energy and not engaging in the least. Unfortunately for him, it was my turn next. By this time, thanks to my previous work as a Senior Trade Commissioner and Consul-General for Australia, I had given hundreds of public speeches, mainly in Japanese, to audiences of all different stripes in Japan. I knew how to give this talk in a way which would be interesting for the audience and in a way in which I could grab their attention. My sharp elbowed colleague instantly recognised there were light years between his miserable efforts and my professionalism. Did he commit to self-improvement, to build the biggest skyscraper in town, to become excellent in public speaking? No. He sought out ways to pull down all the other skyscrapers, so that his could be the tallest instead. He informed all in earshot, except for me of course, that “Greg is all style and no substance”. When this comment was duly reported to me, honestly, I just burst our laughing. Not in an exaggerated thespian, ironic way, but a genuine belly laugh, because the idea was so ridiculous, so preposterous, so revealing about his insecurities. I had given enough public speeches by that time to know it wasn’t just style that was engaging my audiences. What was ironic was that originally I was scouted to leave Austrade and join Shinsei’s Retail Bank, because of a speech I gave to the American Chamber of Commerce here in Tokyo. In fact, that speech changed the direction of my career, although I didn’t realise it at the time. Recently, I was reading an article by Kathryn Brownell in the Financial Times, where she referenced the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. Nixon didn’t understand the medium of television as well as Kennedy. Kennedy saw the opportunity to speak directly to voters, rather than just relying on highlighting policy differences. I recall some reports I have come across at different times, which said that those who only listened to the debate, gave it to Nixon, while those who watched, gave it to Kennedy. Nixon certainly made the complaint that the televised debate format brought in a new era where “politicians focused on style over substance”. It was a dividing line between eras and the future belonged to those who mastered the skills needed to be successful with the new medium. Kamala Harris killed Donald Trump in the recent debate and that wasn’t just style and no substance. She was extremely well prepared and brought all guns blazing to what Trump thought was going to be a knife fight. So what about businesspeople presenting here in Tokyo? I recall coaching a Japanese President who forsook the opportunity to do a professional speech, because he felt his vendor audience wouldn’t be ready for it. He knew what to do but chose to not do it. That was highly perplexing to me as his coach, but standing out in Japan is never a popular course of action. He just gave the same old boring monotone performance, because that was the norm for his company and industry. It was painful for me to watch and know what he could have done instead. I saw another local businessperson give a very good performance, as he was a skilled presenter. However, when I sat back and thought about what he was saying, as opposed to just being mesmerised by how he was saying it, I felt there wasn’t much meat in that speech. Before Covid, I saw Shigeru Ishiba, a Liberal Democratic Party hopeful, currently trying to secure the Party Presidency and thereby become Prime Minister, give a talk as part of a panel discussion. He was slumped in his chair, looking bored and his comments were lifeless, monotone and dull. However, when I closed my eyes and listened to what he was actually saying, it had more impact. If he wants to run this country, I hope he has improved as a communicator since then. It is obviously not a choice between style and substance. We need both, and I want to replace the word “style” with “professionalism”, to make the point clearer. Talking crap fluently is no help and neither is being valuable, but not being heard. The big difference between Harris and Trump, I believe, was in their understanding of the occasion and the preparation for it. This is precisely the same for us in business. If we spend all of our time crafting the slide deck and none on the rehearsal, then our talk will not be optimised. Observe any public talks today and even the good speakers face some people in the crowd who have whipped out their phones and are no longer concentrating on what is being said. Having great content, which is ignored by the audience, because we are unskilled and ...
    Show more Show less
    13 mins
  • 404 Speaking With Impact In Japan

    404 Speaking With Impact In Japan
    Sep 23 2024
    Recently I was teaching a class of technical experts to have more impact when they spoke. Like many specialists, their areas of expertise required great detailed knowledge and experience and they have to interact with other non-expert parts of the organisation. In their case, they have to report to senior management and they also had to deal with the sales team. The brief from HR was that the senior leaders didn’t take sufficient note of their reporting and advice because of the way they were delivering the information. Salespeople were also pushing back on the direction they were receiving and not accepting what they were being told either. They needed more impact when they spoke. When we started the session, we discussed with them the areas where they wanted to improve. Many people mentioned being more clear and succinct when they spoke. They felt that the complexity of what they were trying to convey sometimes made it difficult for the listeners. Also, rambling during their explanation was identified as an issue. One thing which I noticed was common across the group was their level of energy when they spoke. They were bringing the same voice strength they would employ when having a chat over coffee with their friend to their presentations. In Japan, this is a very typical area for more work needed when we are teaching presentation skills. When we are speaking up in a meeting or standing before a group, we have to switch gears and bring a lot more vocal range to the content of what we are saying. Not every word should have the same voice strength, though, but that is what a lot of people do. They give keywords the exact same voice power, as they do less important words and phrases in the sentence. This is highly democratic, but not very useful when trying to get our message across. We need to either hit those keywords with more volume or we need to strip the volume out and make it an audible whisper. Both will work. Applying the same strength throughout the sentence from go to whoa is the death knell of messaging. Voice modulation is critical to keeping an audience with us. Listeners are so easily lost today to the allure of the internet on their phones and if they feel disengaged they are gone, gone, gone. If the vocal power is set at the same dial strength from beginning to end, then listeners will just tune us out, as it becomes repetitious and morphs into a boring, sleep actuating monotone. Like classical music, we need crescendos and the opposite, decrescendos or lulls. The problem though, is often we have a lot on our mind and are supremely nervous. We are not even aware that we are speaking at the one constant volume or in a monotone throughout our talk. By the way, this doesn’t have to be a formal talk. It can happen in a normal meeting, where we are presenting some results or giving some guidance on what needs to happen next. We lapse into a monotone and we are tuned out by the assembled masses. Now, the nervousness has to be a best kept secret when we are speaking. During the training, it often happened that someone would suddenly laugh nervously during their talk as the pressure mounted within them. That laugh is a physical release from the internal mental pressure building up inside their mind. We can be nervous, but this information has to be kept from the audience, because it instantly diminishes our credibility as a speaker. We were filming the talks and for the first round we had them do the talk facing the camera and conducted at a ninety-degree angle to the audience. In this way, the speaker couldn’t easily see the faces in the audience. Instead, they had to concentrate on me as the coach. We sometimes do this to try to lessen the pressure of having to present to a crowd where there are a lot of beady eyes and faces staring back at us. Later, when they had gained more confidence and poise, we had them give their talk directly facing everyone and they were able to do it without looking nervous. Remember, only we know we are feeling nervous. If we don’t show it and if we speak with a strong voice, we come across as confident and the audience will believe us. That strong voice part can be a problem, though, for a lot of ladies who speak very softly. One of the dangers is that their soft voice is ignored by the executives, usually men, who they are presenting to. They lack what is called “executive presence” and a big part of that is confidence, portrayed though voice stength. Fair or unfair, a meek, soft, tiny voice just won’t command the attention and credibility of hard driving male bosses. When these softly spoken ladies were presenting, and I asked them to increase their voice volume, I would ask their colleagues if they thought they were yelling? The answer would always be “no”. I would then ask if they thought they could go even louder and the answer would always be “yes”. What a difference it made when ...
    Show more Show less
    13 mins
  • 403 Why Did Josh Shapiro’s Convention Speech Fall Flat?

    403 Why Did Josh Shapiro’s Convention Speech Fall Flat?
    Sep 16 2024
    Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Tennessee, was regarded by many as certain to be Kamala Harris’s pick for the role of Vice President, as part of her campaign to defeat Donald Trump. Ultimately, she chose Tim Walz. The six-minute speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention then, was a good opportunity for Shapiro to position his own future credentials for a run for the Presidency. Barack Obama used his 2004 keynote spot to catapult himself into the limelight, as a relatively unknown eight year Senator from Illinois. Therefore, I was expecting a very good speech from Shapiro, but I was disappointed. To me, it seemed to fall flat. This evaluation has nothing to do with political affiliation, because as an Aussie, I have no right to take part in the coming election. I am just using his talk by way of analysis of what works and what doesn’t and as a guide for business people who give speeches. Now we have to be careful of expert evaluations. I was watching a video from an American guy who was also evaluating the Convention speeches. He started with “I am a speech coach” and he then made a fatal error, which for me at least, indicated he was a fraud or at least a total dud, as far as being a speech coach is concerned. What did he say? He mis-quoted the famous research from Professor Albert Mehrabian on key factors when presenting. The dubious speech coach started telling everyone that what was being said was 7% of the impact, 38% was based on the voice and 55% on how they appeared. That is total crap and if you ever have that quoted to you, run far from that person, because they are clueless and dangerous. Mehrabian’s research had a critical caveat on when those numbers apply. He said that when what we say is incongruent with the way we say it, the audience gets distracted. They subsequently focus on how we sound and how we look, as opposed to what is the content of our talk. However, if we are congruent, then the audience pays attention to our message and is not distracted, so voice quality and how we dress become less important. Rant over and back to Shapiro and what went wrong. I am not just comparing him against the absolute, so let me include some other prominent speakers who were also considered for the role of Vice President by Harris. I looked at Gretchen Whitmer and Mark Kelly’s speeches. For me, I thought Kelly was wooden in his delivery and not able to really connect and engage his audience, so he is out as a model. Whitmer was the star in my evaluation. Shapiro was talking at us, whereas Whitmer was speaking with us. Shapiro used only one volume control throughout his six minutes – strident. Whitmer used modulation and had variety in how she got her message across. Sometimes soft, sometimes strong, and always engaging. In business talks, we want this facility to vary our delivery so that it isn’t all soft or all strong, but mixed together and re-formed in the right way, at the right moments. Remember Mehrabian – we need congruency between the content and the delivery. A strong emphasis on a word lifts its appeal, as does an audibly whispered version and we should use both. Whitmer employed personal stories and examples we could to relate to in order to make her point. Shapiro was mainly just using powerful motivational exhortations. I wondered whether the organisers had allocated different roles to each of the speakers, but I doubt that was the case. Each of these high-profile speakers would have worked on their speeches in isolation to best reflect what they wanted. Being told what to think by the speaker is not as effective as providing context, evidence and laying out some alternate ideas. Constant and rigorous admonitions are hard for an audience to handle because it tires them out. You could tell from the applause that the audience was struggling. During Whitmer’s speech they were energised and the difference was quite stark, I thought. So when we are giving business talks, we should definitely be including relevant stories wherever we can. If we can make these personal stories, that is the best because audiences will identify more strongly in those cases. We are looking for points of agreement and commonality with the speaker and we need more information about them to be able to do that. Just telling an audience what they need to do isn’t going to provide that personal connection. Also, audiences don’t remember statistics as well as they remember stories. In business, we have tons of stories to draw on, but often we don’t go looking hard enough to find them. We have plenty of numbers, but let’s go find the stories we can wrap them in. We can’t be lecturing the audience on how they should think about an issue. We need to lay out information and insight and guide the audience to agree with the stance we have arrived at based on the context and our experience with the issue. Whitmer used humour...
    Show more Show less
    12 mins