Episode 51: THE Leadership Japan Series-Successful Public Speaking Part 2
Intro: Greg: Konnichiwa and welcome to Episode 51 of THE Leadership Japan Series. I am your host in Tokyo, Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, and much more importantly, you are a student of leadership, highly motivated to be the best in your business field. If you enjoy the program then you might consider subscribing on iTunes. Also, if you would like to own your own access to 102 years of the accumulated wisdom of Dale Carnegie training through free white-papers, guidebooks, reports, training videos, blogs, course information plus much much more then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.
Greg: In fact the judges are definitely going to asks you questions, trust me. That’s their job. But in business you will have people from a rival division, rival part of the group. Your personal rival is going to ask a nasty question that is going to make you look bad. That’s the objective. We’re going to talk about that, when we go to Q&A and how to deal with that, too. So, needs versus wants. This is really critical. What an audience may want, what they may need may not be the same thing, because you may have discovered additional things. For the client particularly, they are looking for something. The client says, we want you to do this piece of work. Then you’re going to give a presentation from you to them on this. This is what we want. But what you may have found is something that they need to know that they haven’t thought about. That’s really the value of JMEC, that you can actually be someone who’s going to present something that they haven’t really even considered. Really something fresh and new and innovative. So look to that. And then, what are the goals? The judges’ goals are to have stimulating, sparkling, fantastic presentations that are going to keep them on the edge of their seat right through a couple of days of marking. That’s their goal. So don’t bore them, right? And most audiences, only 3% of the presentations they see are stimulating. So I want to make sure that you are all in that 3% that the judges are going to see.
So we talk about define the structure and how do we open. What’s the key points? What’s the proof? What examples will we use? What proof will we draw on? Then your PowerPoint should show that. And if you are using PowerPoint, keep it very very brief. You could even have just photographs and no words, actually. Visual images might be all you need. A photograph of one word may be all you need. I attended professional development training at Harvard Business School and one of the professors, they had a type of pit style auditorium, at the back wall he had written 10 words. For 3 hours he lectured. No notes. But he had his 10 words on the back wall which was his 3 hour lecture. Because each of those words represented a piece of his talk. And that kept him in order. No PowerPoint. So the same thing, PowerPoint can be like that. PowerPoint could be one word that stimulates in your mind, this is what I need to talk about now. And here’s the next image, picture of one word, or no word. Well that picture represents that or I’ll talk about that. It doesn’t have to be masses of data or masses of text. It can be something that is a hint for you, something that is interesting to look at. Or it could be graphic, show graphs or whatever. But think about how you want to organize that. The flow of ideas should have a logical progression. That would be ideal, so it is easy to follow.
What is the purpose of the presentation? The one we are going to do is to convince and persuade, the first one. Convince the judges that your team has the best plan amongst all the business plans, which is going to have the most impact for the client, which is going to drive my brand to the absolute maximum possible. That is your objective. In this case it is convince and persuade. Now it might be different. You might be giving presentations in the company which is just to inform. Just give out information, lots of data. What is it? It might be to motivate people; we want to get people to take some action. We want to get people to do something not just give them data. We want some follow up. We want some commitment. We want some sign on. We want some flesh in the game, money on the table. Now in order for that to happen, that’s an entirely different presentation. Or it might be something that’s entertaining. Something that not only do people get information, but something that they feel good about. So you need to be getting, at the beginning I should say, before you all talk, look at,“what am I trying to achieve here”. Which of these is it? And therefore I am going to derive of my presentation around those key points. So the basic structure is changing but when I first went in to business, I was told of presentations “tell them what you are going to tell them! Tell them! Tell them what you just told them!” That’s what you were taught. That’s how you put a presentation together. We can’t learn too much from that. But we start now with an opening that really breaks through. Grabs attention; gets people’s attention. We go into our points and we back them up with evidence. Point, evidence. Point, evidence. And then we come out with a close at the end and this is a gamble. So we talk about, what are the key points. Again get those out, grab their attention. Have the evidence to back up the key points and closing is the last impression. So first impression, last impression. And with this particular case, when you are with the judges, when you walk in that door you are going to start your presentation; your presentation has begun. From the moment you hit that door, your presentation, how you conduct yourself, how you move around, how you sit up, whatever it is you’re going to do,that has already started the presentation. It’s already begun. So think about how you are going to do that so you look very professional. Set up very quickly, everything done very nicely. Everyone standing up looking very professional. And then last impression. The last thing you say, how you look at the end makes a big difference, so plan that. Don’t leave first impression and last impression to chance because they are so critical, particularly first impression, plan it. In business we make snap judgments about each other. We form impressions of others very quickly. And we are very slow and very reluctant to change that first impression. We might, but we’ll make a snap judgment about someone just by the way they are dressed. I don’t know, if those are yellow laces on his shoes and he’s got a purple bag - he’s got no color sense at all. He’s got horrendous…You know, we are making a snap judgment about someone based on what we see. It could be totally wrong, but we’ve already made that judgment. Then as we talk to the person, we start to unwind that first impression perhaps, or usually, no. So if that’s the case then don’t allow a first impression to be a chance thing. Plan it. Make sure it is a very positive first impression. And the last impression, last thing you say, ringing in the judges ears is very critical. Determine what that will be.
So here’s a little start with the opening. In your manuals, this is in the opening section on page 3.2. I am going to ask you to give a presentation today. The presentation topic is, why you should do JMEC, to prospective JMEC participants. You’ve done it. Why should that person, why should you do JMEC? That’s your topic. I’ll give you the topic so it’s all consistent. And you know the subject because you’ve been through JMEC, you are experts. The only why there is a startling beginning. Something that’s a bit surprising. As you’ve said before, start with something surprising because that grabs our attention. Now it might be a particular fact. It might be some incident. It might be some information that we don’t know that really grabs our attention. Think about what that might be. Then a puzzle. A puzzle is what gets people thinking. It might be through a question you ask that they start to mentally take that on board. Here's a good question. What month is your birthday?
(Participant) May.
Greg: May? Congratulations. Now, the moment I asked him that question, no matter where he was mentally, whether he was still with me in this presentation or he has the eyes open but he’s actually escaped to some other place, he’s thinking about lunch, thinking about a hot date this afternoon, thinking about getting to the gym. Wherever he went, when I asked him that question I pulled him back to me. So questions as a speaker are very powerful. When you are losing your audience, hit them with a rhetorical question or even a specific question. Rhetorical are good because they are never quite sure whether they should answer or not. Do I have to answer this question, or is this a rhetorical question? It’s a bit vague so I’m not sure. Even with a rhetorical question which may or may not require an answer, bang, you’ve got them back in the room. So that’s where a puzzle could be a question and it could be describing something that happened, that gets straight into an event. “It was the last hundred meters and he fell down dead. Just before the finish line. Ladies and gentlemen, that is what happens to many people in their careers. As they get into a position of authority and at the final moment when they need to get to that next step, their presentation skills are not good enough to get them the top job. It’s like they have died in their careers at that point. We aren’t going to let that happen to you because JMEC has got presentation skills on the agenda today to make sure that go all the way to the top.” So you can bring something in. No nonsense. Just straight into it – “Thank you very much for coming today to discuss presentation skills. I am going to take you through three critical steps that are going to get you in front of people and comfortable in a way so that you are regarded as a very professional, very competent speaker.” Boom. Just like that.
Please take a moment individually. Plan out how you are going to open your speech today on why you, this person, should do JMEC. Please take your couple of moments and plan that. Away you go. I’m going to give you a couple more moments, but your opening will not be very long. It’s not going to be 5 minutes. It’s going to be a couple of sentences and then you are into the main body basically of where you are introducing the talk. So it’s trying to smash through the clutter, the competition of people’s attention that exists when they are in the room. Ok as soon as they come into the room we are already there, you turn up. So they are already saturated. Totally saturated. You have got to get into their heads. How are you going to open in a way that’s going to allow you to do that? And get their full attention. I’ll give you about 1 more minute and then we’ll try them with each other and see how they work. Ok. Just practice with each other and get a bit of feedback.
The feedback will be two things: what was good and how to make it better. That’s the only feedback we are going to give. We are going to practice with each other just a little bit, just to see how they sound. Don’t make them too long. Let’ wrap it up there and please just remain seated at your table. Each person will give their opening and the person who is listening to the opening will give some feedback. What was good and how can we make it better and then each person take a turn and share. Please, as teams, help each other. Give some feedback, practice your openings. Go please.
Finish up there. We’ve still got some things to do today. So if you are opening, we’ve managed to get through that so that’s great. Now we are going to go into the main body. If you have a look at your manuals, you’ll see on pages 3.4, 3.5, it talks about the acronym D.E.F.E.A.T.S. D-E-F-E-A-T-S. Which is really to help you with that evidence. I said before, your content, your critical points need to be backed up with evidence. Just because you say something does not make it true. Any statement at any time, people will doubt it. Particular in sales. If you are in the business of getting people to take action or try to persuade them, not just in inform or entertaining mode, you are in that sales mode of trying to persuade you of something or I am trying to get you to take some action and you just make a blanket statement, people will be doubtful of that. They will doubt what you say, the words that you say. Because you want me to do something, you need to have evidence. Now this idea, the evidence might be a demonstration. Now particularly in JMEC, where depending on your product you might have a physical product. I had a very exciting client once - they had a product. It was a pump. Pretty groovy product, you know. A pump. We brought some micro-pumps and we brought some very large pumps used in big machines in the food industry. We had them on the desk so that people could see this is what the pump looked like. Or in another case we had bags, knapsacks. So bringing examples are good, or if you can, demonstrate something that proves the point that you are making, or there could be facts, proven little facts. There might be some exhibits that you could show or statistics that you can use. It could be an analogy.
An analogy is a great methodology of taking something that is rather complex and presenting it in a way that is very simple for the person hearing it. So you are comparing two things which are totally unlike but you are drawing them together in a way that makes something difficult more readily understandable. I’ll give you an analogy, a simple one. I’ll put two things together. I’ll put flying a Boeing or let’s say flying an airline, a Boeing or an airbus. We won’t get into brand promotion here. Flying an airliner and public speaking. Now flying an airliner and public speaking do not seem to have any connection. However I am going to connect them through an analogy. And the analogy is this: giving a public presentation is like flying an airliner. The takeoff point when you are flying an airliner and the landing point are the critical points in that flight. When you are presenting, your opening-grabbing that initial attention. Your closing, final impression. Critical make or break points for your presentation. So there’s an example of an analogy. I’ve compared flying an airliner with giving a presentation. There is no necessary connection, but it makes a great - oh yeah, people crash on takeoff. Oh yes, people crash on landing. I know that. I can see why that is very critical. First impression, last impression. Yeah, I get that. So this is where we are using analogies.
And finally, testimonials and statistics. If you have an authority, somebody who is recognized in the industry or in the field, this is what they said, it backs up what you’re saying. We use Warren Buffet all the time. If you go to our website you’ll see lots of stuff from Warren Buffet about how great Dale Carnegie training is. Because he did it when he was in his 20’s. Changed his career. He said “it changed my life! It changed my life!” That’s his testimonial. How would you like to have your company have the richest investor, most successful investor of all time say your service or product changed his life? That’s what we’ve got. So we’ve been using that, all the time, to show how great we are and the proof of what we do, how it works. So be looking for that. Or it might be a statistic it might be something like a fact or a statistic that’s very provable.
Next stage. Now in your manuals you have on page 3.5 it goes into a little bit more detail. But if you just go back one, on page 3.3, there’s some points there. It asks you to list off some points. So I’d like you now is to list out some points that you are going to make in your speech. Your speech, by the way, is only going to be 2 minutes. It’s not a long speech. So 2 minutes on why you prospective participant should do JMEC. Ok, so that’s your topic. So you’ve got your opening. Now what are the key points you are going make and the proof? Point, proof. Point, evidence. And you can use this idea of analogies, of examples or facts or whatever you’ve got to make that more credible with your audience. Kick out some points. You are probably not going to get through too many. In 2 minutes you probably get 2 or 3. Is probably going to be enough for a 2 minute talk and then you are giving your closing. Please get down your points and some evidence. Go. You will get a chance to practice. And when you’re doing your final you can flesh out those words and work out how we’re going to close it out. And we use the acronym C-L-O-S-E. You might say something at the end that changes your audience. Put some call to action to them maybe. Or something that asks them to do something that’s really going to get them thinking. It might be a repeat of what you said at the beginning. You come back and highlight a particular point. So you sort of tie the front and the end together very tightly. “As I said in the beginning, blah blah blah blah.” Offer some benefit. What is the benefit of them taking your advice, taking some action? What’s in it for them? So it’s not just about you, it’s about them. And benefit, not just a feature. Or it might be a very tight summary of the key points again to make sure people remember what the key points were. Or it can be something very exaggerated and dramatic. Again, last impression. Something that really sticks with people. So think about how you are going to close out this talk, this 2 minute talk on why you should do JMEC. How do you close it out so you have a very strong, positive final impression of you representing your organization, representing yourself on this topic. Please go ahead and design that and then we are going to get up and practice. Beginning, content and close. All good. You‘ll get your chance to run through the whole thing in a minute. Opening, key points, evidence, close. We’ll get some feedback on that as well.
Before that, I want to talk a little about Q&A. Now you will have Q&A of course with the judges. That’s going to be questions coming from the judges. So well have Q&A with the judges. As a group, when you are presenting, forget about democracy. Forget about, it’s half an hour, there’s five of us, so we’ll each have 6 minutes each. Forget about that. If you want to win, forward your best presenters. Probably maximum 3. It splits the judges attention too much to have more than 3. You get at least 10minutes each which is a substantial amount of time to actually get some rapport built with the judges. I recommend if you’ve got someone who is very good, one person or possibly two people. Two is nice and a bit of change. Democracy serves everyone, that’s fine; if you don’t want to win. That’s up to you. So I recommend you try that, look for your best presenters. Go for the people who are going to have the best impact on the judges and possibly 2 max 3, I think. Now, when you get questions, have a gatekeeper, have a navigator. Question comes in from the judge like a missile, don’t take it directly. Someone will receive the question from the judge. “Thank you very much. I think that Jane is the best person to answer that question.” And in the moment, because you have pre-arranged this, so Jane knows if it is on this topic, Jane’s going to get the question. So as soon as the question comes out, Jane knows, this is mine, but you are giving Jane valuable seconds to compose her mind, compose her thoughts before she gives the answer. “I think Jane will be the best. Jane, would you mind answering that question?” It’s only brief. Don’t make like, “Now Jane I want you to answer that question but I think, yes, definitely you are better…” Don’t pad it out. Don’t drive the judges nuts. Just a couple of seconds is enough and then someone navigates, who is going to do what. So you don’t lookat each other, and if it sort of comes out of left field, no one is going to cover that you might be the person to answer it or you just throw it at someone. But if you are going to do that, “Actually that’s a very interesting topic but I think that probably, Bill…” No one knows who is going to get it but you know what’s coming so you are all ready to answer it if it’s not in your designated topic. That’s what I meant in terms of handling Q&A.
Closing: Greg: Thank you for joining THE Leadership Japan Series. Remember, consider subscribing on iTunes, and to access your Dale Carnegie Training free white-papers, guidebooks, training videos, blogs course information plus much much more then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.
