Think about the business presentations you have attended over the years. How many speakers were really engaging you during their talk. How many speakers can you even recall? One of the problems is that most business presentations are the “inform” type and are downloads of a whole bunch of data about the topic they are covering.
Numbers don’t have to be dry and boring. The mantra is “Stories need data and data needs stories”. Do we get any stories though? No, and that is why we cannot remember the person or what they said.
There is another problem with why we can’t remember the person, which when you think about it, is a disaster from the presenter’s point of view. What a waste of time to be a speaker and no one remembers what you said or you yourself. That means that their personal and professional brands are not being built through this activity.
To get engagement we need to use the Persuasion Power Vortex. We combine eyes, face, voice, gestures and “ki” or our intrinsic energy and we focus all of this power on one point of concentration - on the single, left eye of the audience member. Here is what we are aiming for:
1. Eyes
Normally in Japan, we don’t make eye contact, but our role as a presenter gives us permission to do so. By staring straight into the left eye of the listeners we create a powerful bond with that person, such that they feel there are only the two of us in this venue and the speaker, the authority power figure in the room, is talking directly to me. We choose the left eye as a single point of concentration, because looking at two things at once is difficult and because most people are right-handed. The right side of the body tends to be the most powerful, so we choose their softer side to concentrate our power, to have the most impact.
The intensity of the eye power is such that we can only turn it on for around six seconds at a time or it is too intrusive. Longer and we make the person we are looking at feel very uncomfortable.
2. Face
Our face can be a million watt power source because we can project our emotions. Sad, surprised, shocked, happy, inquisitive, puzzled, excited, dubious, opposed, in agreement – the list is long and we should be using these expressions during our talk. The secret is to match the facial expression with the content of what we are saying, so that we are congruent. When we combine one of these expression with a direct look into the eye of the audience member the impact is strong. That facial expression doesn't have to look mean and scary - we can lock on with a warm smile – it just depends on the congruency with the content of what we are saying.
3. Voice
We don’t have to have that silky smooth, deep baritone DJ voice to be an effective communicator. We go with what we have regardless of how unhappy we may be with it. My husky voice is the product of thousands of karate kiai over five decades of training in the dojo. I can’t change that, so I ignore how I feel about it and just get on with it. You should do the same thing too.
The tool has power when we know how to use it. Most people have one setting – the monotone and so the tool is ineffective. Like classical music we want to employ crescendos and lulls to create variety. Too soft or too strong all of the time defeats our aim of capturing the attention of our audience.
When he hit the audience member with a power stare straight into their left eye, combine it with a strong facial expression and then use our voice to emphasise key words, the effect is instant and tremendous.
4. Gestures are silent, powerful amplifiers of what we are saying. We know that any gesture held longer than 15 seconds loses all power, so like a faucet, we turn the gesture on and off to have the most effect. When I gesture directly to you in the crowd, lock on to your left eye with my power stare, coordinate my facial expression with what I am saying and then hit a key word at the same time, you will really feel the power of what I am saying. The hitting of the key word doesn't have to be loud – it could be a conspiratorial whisper and still be highly effective.
5. Ki – intrinsic energy
When we are presenting, our aim to is to project our body language energy right to the back wall, rather than letting it get trapped within our body. We create an electric current with our ki energy and we zap our audience members, one at a time, as we move our gaze around the room, covering ten people a minute.
Hitting someone in the audience with this amount of ki energy, and combining our six second power stare, strong facial expression, voice coordination with the key words in our message and indicating directly to them with our gesture, brings everything to the single vortex of their left eye. They get zapped and feel total engagement, almost hypnotic, with us and what we are saying. We will never be forgotten by the people in that venue, as a powerful and professional speaker. This is what we want, isn’t it?
