I was reading an interesting LinkedIn post about how at the start of your presentation in Japan you need to have slides on your background and credentials to get the trust of the audience.
Let me quote from the post, so that you can get the flavour: “Most of the presentations I’ve seen by Japanese professionals tend to start with a detailed profile of the presenter’s career and professional accomplishments. Yes, a lot of these slides are information heavy and (no offence but) not aesthetically pleasing, but the average Japanese user is thinking “this person has many qualifications. I trust this person.” It’s not their fault, but Japanese people culturally tend to be wary of foreign brands and companies. The best you can do is try to break that barrier by listing all your accolades and making it clear that you are a trustworthy professional”
This post has attracted a lot of discussion so far and I added my two bobs worth as well. The point being made was that Japanese doubt what they are being told unless they trust the person making the presentation. Fair enough. The suggested way to gain that trust is to provide a lot of data on who you are, what you have done, where you have worked etc., at the start of proceedings. The author noted that, “a lot of these slides are information heavy”. I disagree with this approach if you want to engage your audience.
First impressions are critical and the first one minute of our talk is the decider for a large portion of the audience. My biggest concern isn’t that they won’t trust what I am saying. Today, we all have to worry that they will vote with their hands and grab their phones to escape from us to the internet. They stop listening to our message. It would be extremely rare that a Japanese audience would have people actually get up and walk out while the speaker is presenting. I have never witnessed that. No one is that bold or rude. Rather, they will just grab their phone and disappear in plain sight, right in front of you.
My suggestion in the LinkedIn thread was to try to get that biographical detail into the blurb advertising the talk. We could also have it as a handout, which the audience can reference. The idea of telling people who you are and why they should listen to you is a good idea. This is especially so in this Era of Cynicism and fake news and I don’t see this as solely a Japanese issue. My suggestion, though, is to not waste the start of the talk with this type of heavy background detail.
We are vying with so many distractions in the minds of the audience sitting in front of us. We have to grab their attention right from the start. That means not tinkering around with the slide deck if we are switching it across from the previous speaker or from the host’s introduction. We should get someone else to load up our slide deck, so that we are free from the start, to engage our audience.
There are two favourite strategies I apply. One is to find some really shocking statistic or piece of information which will scare the pants off the audience. We all react to fear and loss, more so than gain and greatness. I saw one the other day in the Financial Times. There was a statistic that from 2010 to 2020, Japanese companies on average were paying over the odds to acquire foreign companies to the tune of a 34% premium. Also, between 1990 and 2014, twenty-five percent of Japanese M&A acquisitions were failures and had to be written off. This compared with only 5% of US deals ending in failure.
If I was using this information, I would start, “Japan should immediately halt doing foreign M&As. Demographics are driving Japanese businesses to go offshore and buy businesses, but this strategy is super high risk. Japanese buyers of foreign companies are overpaying an average 34% premium to acquire businesses, but one in four fail and they are losing their investment. Are you ready to lose money too? Let’s find out what they should do”.
With a start like “Japan should immediately halt doing foreign M&As”, and a finish with “are you ready to lose money too? Let’s find out what they should do”, no one in a Japanese audience will be focused on my credentials. They will be worried about losing the investment and attracting potential blame if things go wrong. My aim was to seize their attention and that opening will do it.
As far as gaining credibility goes, I need to back up my statements with provable facts and data. Statements are just opinion and the audience needs to know where I am getting this information. In this case, the Financial Times is owned by the Nikkei and is considered a reputable journalistic source. Our main body of our talk needs references to proof of the points we make to sustain our argument. This is where we prove our credentials as a speaker, because we show we are an expert who have assembled the needed information to back up what we are saying.
The other technique I like is to tell a story. By the way, a personal story is the best. It needs to take the audience with me back to the point when I discovered this truth I am telling them. By taking them back to the context, they will probably draw the same conclusion I have reached based on the same data. If I have it, I might relate the gory story of a foreign M&A deal that nearly bankrupted the Japanese company and weave in the FT statistics.
If you still feel you need a biography slide, then please, please, please make it able to be understood in two seconds. Don’t force people to wade through the slide deck swamp you have created on screen. Just include the strongest points to gain the credibility you feel needed. Absolutely don’t make this your first slide or the start of the talk. Get the attention grabber opening working first to grab the audience and then you can unveil your most powerful credentials. Pour on the proof in the main body to get acceptance of you and your message and deliver the talk competently. This protects your personal and professional brands.
