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  • The Incredible Lightness Of Speaking

    The Incredible Lightness Of Speaking
    2024/12/24

    Bonseki is a Japanese art creating miniature landscapes, on a black tray using white sand, pebbles and small rocks. They are exquisite but temporary. The bonseki can’t be preserved and are an original, throw away art form. Speaking to audiences is like that, temporary. Once we down tools and go home, that is the end of it. Our reach can be transient like the bonseki art piece, that gets tossed away upon completed admiration, the lightest of touches that doesn’t linger long. Of course we hope that our sparkling witticisms, deeply pondered points and clear messages stay with the audience forever. We want to move them to action, making changes, altering lifetime habits and generally changing their world. In the case of a business audience, we are usually talking to a small group of individuals, so our scope of influence is rather minute. How can we extend the reach of our message?

    Video is an obvious technology that allows us to capture our speech live and ourselves in full flight. How often though, do you see speakers videoing their talks? It is not like people are constantly giving public speeches in business. Apart from myself, I don’t recall seeing anyone else doing it. You need to tell the audience this is for your own purposes and they will not be in the shot, otherwise you have to get everyone to give you their written permission to be filmed. You may get criticism about being a narcistic lunatic for wanting to capture yourself on video, but the only people who make that type of comment are idiots, so ignore them.

    With video, instead of a standard business audience of under fifty people, you can broadcast your message to thousands. The video is also an evergreen capture which allows you to keep using the content for many years. Video has the added benefit that you can cut it up and create snippets to take the content even further. You can have ten videos sprung from the original. This again extends the ways in which you can use the medium. People have different appetites for information, so some may want to feast on the whole speech, whereas others want the digest or just the part on a particular topic of most interest.

    Video has two tracks – the video and audio components and these can be separated out. Very easily you can produce the audio record of the talk. Everyone is a firm multi-tasker these days. I sometimes hear people pontificating that you cannot multi-task, blah, blah, blah. What nonsense. Walking, exercising, shopping and listening to audio content are typical multitasking activities. Busy people love audio because it saves them time and allows two things to be done at once. Now your audio content can be accessed by even more people.

    Did you know that in August 2019 Google announced that in addition to text search they were employing AI to enable voice search too. This will take a while to roll out but this is the future and audio books have recently overtaken e-book sales. The audio track can become a podcast episode and be on any of the major podcast platforms. Also we can produce a transcript of the talk. There are transcribing technologies that are very good today which can reduce the cost and time of this exercise. Now we have a text version, we can project the value of the content further. It may go out as an email, a social media post or be reworked into a magazine article, or it may become a blog on your website.

    Repurposing of content is the name of the game. The video and or the snippets can be sent out to your email list, put up on social media and always sit there on YouTube. The same can be done with the audio track. Now what was a simple, ephemeral interlude in a room of fifty punters, has developed a life of its own and is being pushed out far and wide. The same message and messenger, but a vastly different impact and duration. If our object is to influence, then we need to make sure we are supporting the effort to give the speech with the tools available to maximise the results.

    This requires some planning and some expense. But as I mentioned, we are not leaping to our feet every month giving a public speech to a business audience. This is something we would be lucky to do two or three times a year. When you take that into account and consider how much we can leverage what we are doing, we get a lot more bang for our buck. We are going to give the talk anyway, so all the preparation is the same, yet the influence factor can be so much grander.
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    12 分
  • 416 Unlocking The Vortex. How to Engage and Inspire Any Audience In Japan

    416 Unlocking The Vortex. How to Engage and Inspire Any Audience In Japan
    2024/12/16
    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 ...
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    13 分
  • 415 Engaging Audiences: Why Eye Contact Challenges Presenters In Japan

    415 Engaging Audiences: Why Eye Contact Challenges Presenters In Japan
    2024/12/09
    At different times, I have done both formal and informal one-on-one coaching for people who want to improve their presentations skills in Japan. Most people can understand the concepts of voice modulation, gesture usage, posture, movement on stage, energy projection, design elements, slide deck build rules, rehearsal importance, etc. The one area where everyone seems to struggle is with the use of eye contact to engage their audience. I was coaching the Japanese President of a huge company with branches all over the world. I only had an hour because of his hectic schedule, but we got through the basics for the presentation he was going to be giving. We worked on the six pockets and six seconds rules together. The six pockets is an exercise where we grid the audience. Imagine a baseball diamond configuration. They have a left, centre, right, inner, outer field breakdown, which gives us the six pockets. The simple idea is to engage those audience members sitting in these six pockets during the talk. I am sure you have seen it, I certainly have, where the speaker only looks at one half of their audience and just blanks everyone else. This is not the way to engage people. The reason for this is their incorrect foot placement. Our feet should be pointed straight at 90 degrees to the audience and we use our neck to turn in the direction we want, without moving our legs, hips or shoulders. When we break the audience up into six pockets, we are conscious that we need to be including the entire crowd in our talk. There is no advantage to organise the six pockets, but then select one and spread the eye contact across the whole pocket, at the same time. I am sure you have seen this too, where the speaker scans the crowd and gives eye contact to everyone simultaneously and therefore to no one in particular. This will not improve audience engagement. Instead, we need to select one person sitting in one of those six pockets, look them straight in the eye and hold their gaze for six seconds. Less than that is fake eye contact and longer becomes psycho axe killer intrusive. After giving that person the full six seconds, we now switch gears and pick up someone sitting in one of the other pockets, and do it at random. This is important, because we must stay unpredictable. We don’t want the audience to relax and just switch us off. Keep them on their toes, so that they are concentrating on what we are saying and not secretly glancing at their phone. In one minute, we can make a direct one-on-one connection with ten people scattered around the room. For those seated at the back, at that distance, the ten people seated around the person we have selected, all think we are making direct eye contact with them. In this way, we can really amplify the sense of personal connection. Now I went through all of this with the President. He really nailed the posture, energy projection, gestures, voice modulation, but the eye contact was always fleeting and lasting only around two or three seconds. This is not enough to grab the person you are looking at. He also did a so-so job working the six pockets. Actually, I would say he got to the people sitting in the centre and pretty much ignored those at the extremes or in the cheap seats down the back. Later, I was thinking, “why is this eye contact thing so hard for people?” Intellectually, he got it, but he didn’t have the patience or discipline to apply it properly. My conclusion is the lacking ingredient is correct rehearsal. In our High Impact Presentations classes, if we find someone isn’t getting the eye contact completed long enough, we ask everyone in the class to stand up and stay standing until they receive six seconds of sustained eye contact. Making eye contact and then looking away and resuming eye contact once again doesn’t come under the term “sustained”, so it doesn’t count. We actually worked on this sustained eye contact with the President in rehearsal, but the time we had together wasn’t enough. My recommendation is to find a partner and then in Round One, practice holding eye contact with them for one minute, until it feels more comfortable. To take it to the next level in Round Two, stare at them intently with a strong gaze for thirty seconds and no looking away or breaking off the eye contact. In Round Three, maintain that powerful eye lock and keep it for six seconds, then relax. Previously, you had done a minute and then completed thirty seconds, so you will find that a measly six seconds feels like nothing. Like everything, creating new habits takes time and effort. Make the time to practice because, as I have outlined, this ability is not within the grasp of most people. In this regard, it is relatively easy to stand out amongst other speakers and presenters. In most areas of business, this is extremely difficult. When we get to the world of presenting, because most people are so ...
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    12 分
  • 414 How to Promote Your Company When Presenting Without Sounding Like a Sales Pitch In Japan

    414 How to Promote Your Company When Presenting Without Sounding Like a Sales Pitch In Japan
    2024/12/02
    Recently, I was asked to coach the President of a 100,000 person company with a long history for his presentation. What I noticed was how difficult it was to do a good job of promoting the firm, without it sounding like a blatant commercial for the business. Many of us in business are asked to give public presentations and these are excellent opportunities to promote our personal brands, professional brands and company brands. The only problem is that as soon as it sounds like propaganda, the audience just us switches off. Here are some ideas on how to bridge this tricky divide. 1. Tell Stories Get straight into a story about the firm and keep sprinkling stories throughout the talk. In the case of the President, he mentioned that the firm was a venture business when it started decades ago with just three people. They came up with a breakthrough technology for the audio business which made this firm a household name and we all owned their products. He could have done a lot more with this. Why were there three people at the start? Who were they? What did they do to build the business? In particular, we needed to hear about their struggles, which set up the basis for their ultimate triumph. There is bound to be a tremendous amount of drama hidden away in there. We are all trained to absorb drama, which is why we have favourite movies and TV series. The drama remained well hidden by the President, so the opportunity went begging. Their breakthrough technology was overtaken by new technologies and they had to exit that business. Here is a treasure trove of stories about how they made that pivot, all the problems they faced, and the struggles they went through. Nothing from the President about these details, but this is the type of drama we thirst to hear more about. 2. Provide Insights As the audience, we are seeking insights and guidance on what to do and not to do. We are seeking hints, lessons and direction on what we can do with our own firms for when we face the same struggles. Yes, the details about what happened in the stories are great, but we have to move things up to a higher level and get into the take aways for the audience. Tell us what we can learn from what they did wrong. Inform us of the pitfalls to be careful about. Warn us about the hidden dangers lurking in the shadows which could bring us down. 3. Provide Valuable Data Not all data can be shared publicly, but wherever possible, expose the numbers, tell us about the key data and results from the actions which were taken. Even if we can only talk in terms of percentages, rather than raw numbers, these are great indicators for the audience to latch on to in order to add colour to the story. “Data needs stories and stories need data” is a good mantra to work off. Usually at business talks, all we get is the data and no stories or insights. This tells us that there is a tremendous opportunity to build our brand, because it is so easy to differentiate ourselves from all the other boring, mediocre, unprofessional business speakers. 4. Engage Through Questions Rhetorical questions are a gold mine for speakers. They allow us to really engage the audience and get them on our wavelength. If their concentration is flagging or they are distracted by their phone, tossing out a question to the assembled masses is a great way to get them back and focused on us. The power comes from the fact that nobody, except the speaker, knows this is a rhetorical question which the audience won’t have to answer and only the speaker will provide the response. That tension acts like an attention magnet for us to grab our listeners and hold them tight 5. Third Party Endorsements Saying we are great doesn’t fly, but quoting a reputable third party who says we are great is well accepted. We think our Dale Carnegie Course is terrific and if we say that, for the audience, this is a “so what” moment. Instead, we can say, and this is true, that Warren Buffett thinks the course is terrific and it changed his life. This is gold. Warren is the most impressive investor of all time and he is well respected. His endorsement carries a lot of credibility. Who can you find as a third party authority figure to add lustre to your firm’s story? We should promote our companies when we have the chance to speak in public, but in a ninja way, which doesn’t provoke scepticism or disdain. The line is clear about this and we have to navigate that divide with great caution and be adept at making the most of the opportunity without blowing the chance. Remember, people don’t recall what you said in detail, but they do recall you. Always start your talk design with how you want to be remembered by the audience and go forward from there. The upside is unbounded because the competition is so lacking and unremarkable. Our time to stand tall and shine.
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    12 分
  • 413 Seamless Slides and Stellar Delivery. Unlocking AI’s Potential in Presentations In Japan

    413 Seamless Slides and Stellar Delivery. Unlocking AI’s Potential in Presentations In Japan
    2024/11/25
    Seamless Slides and Stellar Delivery. Unlocking AI’s Potential in Presentations In Japan Something I had never heard of before called “Steampunk” popped up in my TikTok feed. Now I write a daily blog published on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and X, called “Fare Bella Figura: Make a Good Impression, Be A Sharp Dressed Man” on the subject of classic men’s wear for business. Obviously, I am interested in how we men choose to master and control our first impressions in public. Everyone is judging us based on how we appoint ourselves and that is before we have any chance to utter even one word. If that is the case, and it is, why not make an effort to control that first vital impression? Anyway, that is another podcast subject, so back to today’s theme. These Steampunk videos were AI created and featured seriously “killer handsome” men wearing very, very cool Victorian era clothing. The imagery was amazing, fantastical, and addictive. Sadly, probably no one looked anything near that good in foggy Victorian London and few guys today could even come close to these AI images. It is all fake, and this is an important point to keep in mind when we are dealing with AI. This got me thinking about AI and fakery in the field of business presentations. Where is the line to discriminate between fakery and authenticity? Let’s look at some of the AI tools and see where they are leading us. Canva, Beautiful.ai, Visme etc., use AI to arrange our basic slides into very sophisticated output. If we are not sure what style of visual presentation will best suit the content, then we can access help from Microsoft Designer and Google Slides AI. If we have numbers to represent on screen, then Infogram and Datawrapper can help. The AI will suggest the best chart type based on the data. I don’t know that we need that much help though: for data over time use line graphs, for short-term comparisons use bar charts, and use pie charts for gauging proportional differences. If we are thinking about how to put the talk together, then ChatGPT, Claude and Jasper AI can craft a script as a base for us to work with. If we want a formal tone, we can command it or go for a conversational tone, and the AI will respond accordingly. If like me, you are not that red hot on grammar and punctuation, then Grammerly or ProWritingAid can make suggestions. They don’t always get it right, so we have to maintain a certain amount of knowledge to intervene when needed. It is handy though to be reminded that you have started the last three sentences with the same word, so that we can introduce more variety into our prose. I haven’t tried them myself yet, but I am told that Orai and Speeko will analyse my delivery in real time. I can get feedback on pacing, tone, filler words, modulation and pronunciation. I had to give a major keynote recently to an elite audience and if I had been more organised, I could have tried them out. I will use them the next time during my rehearsals. I wonder if they give us Good/Better feedback, rather than confidence sapping critique? By the way, a word to the wise, if you ever ask anyone to listen to your practice sessions, instruct them to give you only Good/Better feedback. Otherwise, their first inclination will usually be to criticise what you are doing and demotivate you. I have seen some speakers using Mentimeter and Slido, which are AI driven to facilitate real time audience interaction. We can run instant polls, pose questions, and get feedback during our presentation. We can do the same things analog too, but it looks cool to use these tools. I have seen simple bats with “Yes” on one side and “No” on the other used to gauge audience agreement with whatever the speaker is proposing and it works well. We can simply ask people to raise their hands in response to their agreement with the question or not and no tech involved. Personally I go for simplicity when presenting. I do recommend keeping a hawk-eyed accounting of the faces of the people in the audience. If you think that is too old school, you can try Beyond Verbal and Emotional AI. These tools will interpret audience facial reactions and voice tones to help you understand the engagement levels of the audience. All great stuff but I find watching their faces carefully does the same thing, and it is real time. There is no doubt AI is here to stay and capacity will only broaden and improve. We have to keep in mind, though, that these are just tools and not a substitute for our role as the speaker. I actually don’t want my AI enhanced slide deck to be so spectacular that the audience stops watching me and becomes totally engrossed with what is on screen. We, the speaker, have to be the center of attention and the tools are at our command, rather than commanding us. That is why I don’t like using videos. If they are to be used keep let’s them super short. Like those handsome dudes in ...
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    13 分
  • 412 Expert Tips To Standout As A Panellist In Japan-Engage, Project, Impress

    412 Expert Tips To Standout As A Panellist In Japan-Engage, Project, Impress
    2024/11/18
    We see a lot written about public speaking and presenting. Usually it is on the assumption we are the sole speaker or one of a line-up of speakers who wow the audience one after another. Interestingly, a lot of speakers I see these days are often members of expert panels, herded together by the MC and taken through the key points of the topic. I also notice that none of them are much good in this role and almost no wowing is going on ever. The irony is we are on the panel because we are an expert in our field, but no one bothers to inform us how to perform our expert role when being a panellist. Whether we are the solo speaker commanding the audience from behind a podium or prowling around the stage or sitting down in a row of other speakers, the fundamental things which work best don’t change all that much. The key thing I have noticed which is missing most from panellists is projection. When we are standing, we have more access to our body language and to voice projection. We are also elevated in stature too, so we are readily visible to the audience from top to toe. We feel more powerful when standing, and this comes across in how we deliver our talk. When we are seated, we are literally cut off at the knees. We are hunkered down in our chair, sitting low and are physically constrained. It has a deleterious psychological impact as well. This seated position is the format we use all the time for casual chats over coffee. This positioning sets up a mentality that is relaxed and conversational. Nothing wrong with a conversational speaking style, however the associated soft volume we use is the issue. Of course we have been handed mics, but most people are not used to using them and often don’t know how to get the most out of the tech. They usually don’t get a chance to work with the mics, which is something you would get as a single speaker when you are there setting up your laptop, etc., before the event starts. Also, holding a mic means we have tied up one arm, so our gestures are handicapped, compared to when we are standing using a stand mic or a pin mic. In short, we become small on stage and we stay that way throughout. I teach speakers to use their ki (気) or intrinsic energy when speaking to reach all four corners of the venue. Projecting your energy is magnetic with audiences and we can deeply connect with the crowd. Sitting low in a chair makes this energy projection much harder. You really have to be aware of the disadvantage you are at and you need to compensate for it. If you don’t know, then you don’t know and you just become insignificant on stage very quickly. I recommend having a strategy for your panellist presentation. I would strongly recommend you make it your goal to connect with everyone in the audience. We do this one person at a time. What we see speakers doing, though, is looking out at everyone at the same time, at each other and at the MC in particular. They are not thinking of connecting with the audience at all, at the individual level. Use six seconds of contact with each person. Don’t look at the other panellists or the MC – ignore them completely and only spend your time looking at the people in the room. Pick up one person in the audience at random and stare straight into that person’s eyes as you speak to them. At a distance, down the back, the ten people seated around that person all think you are looking at them, so the impact is magnified. When you look out at the audience, break the room up into zones – left, middle, right and then front half and back half. This gives us six zones to work on and we make use of this zone breakdown to engage as many people as we can during our remarks. In a minute we can engage with six people. In three minutes we can engage with eighteen people, and if we pick up the ten people around, then we have one hundred and eighty people engaged. Sit super tall and on the front edge of the chair, so that you are physically thrusting your body language toward the audience. Direct your ki energy to the very back wall of the room when you speak. Make the most of the mic and use a strong voice, without yelling or creating static with the mic, to project your energy to the audience. Hold the mic a little out in front of you and then speak across the top of the mesh. I have seen panellists actually encompass their entire palm completely over the mesh, which totally defeats the efforts of the sound engineers, who have slaved over perfecting the tech. Use the other hand for large gestures. Remember, you are tiny up on the stage and the chair has made you short, so you have to overcompensate for the lack of physicality. Don’t be afraid to go big with your gestures. Way down the back, it still looks small. We want our three arrows coalescing together: (1) one-on-one eye contact for six seconds with specific individuals in the audience, (2) strong energy projection through...
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    12 分
  • 411 Storytelling in Public Speaking In Japan: Harsh Lessons From The Chamber of Commerce Showdown

    411 Storytelling in Public Speaking In Japan: Harsh Lessons From The Chamber of Commerce Showdown
    2024/11/11

    I had two interesting experiences last week. One was watching the aspirants for a top position in a Chamber of Commerce go head-to-head for the votes of the members by giving talks about why they should be elected. I love attending these types of events because as an instructor of public speaking; I know there are always a lot of life and business lessons about to be revealed. They had five minutes each, which is quite long actually.

    With that amount of leeway, there is a tremendous opportunity to use storytelling to reinforce key points and make numbers memorable. Sadly, our ambitious leaders didn’t use these tools at their ready disposal. Telling us about your resume is boring. Telling us what you are going to do is doubtful. Quoting numbers to back up any claims doesn’t really resonate.

    How about a different tack? Why not tell a series of stories which underline your past contributions in human terms and bring ideas to flesh and blood reality? They could have talked about the impact they had through the prism of individuals they touched through their efforts and decisions. Putting flesh on the bones of the activities makes them all the more compelling and relatable. Any initiative has consequences and some outcomes. Tell us what happened to the people affected. How did it improve their lives or business? Were there any concrete gains which flowed from an initiative you took?

    Even in the case of a future decision, there will be impacts and we should take those possibilities and weave in a hypothetical outcome and how it would play out for those benefiting from it. Actually, it hasn’t happened yet, but we take decisions for change on the basis that what we are going to do will bring in something better and different. We can use a fictitious story to describe that future, even if it isn’t reality as yet. We outline a future which hasn’t been delivered yet, but if elected, we will make this story a reality and make it happen.

    Wrapping up numbers in stories is a great way to make sure the achievements we are publicising register in the brains and memories of the audience. We hear the numbers, but we recall stories. If the numbers are woven into the story, we will be able to recall them and therefore they will have greater impact. Every time you are going to nominate numbers, think how can I wrap these in a story which involves people and make the number more real?

    The other missing piece was emphasis on what was being said. Both speakers kept the same volume and power throughout their five minutes. However, not every word or phrase has the same value or impact. Some elements can be highlighted by turning a vocal lamp up to high beam on the keywords. When we hit a word or phrase with power or by employing a secretive audible whisper, we project the power of that content above everything else. This is what makes it stand out.

    I was reminded of this when listening to a classical music piano solo performance. The Japanese pianist was excellent and the pieces of music he chose had their crescendos and lulls as he worked his magic on the keys. Between some of the pieces, he would take the mic and make a few comments about what he was playing and why. What I found interesting was that he was Johnny One Note when he took the mic. He had just been employing crescendos and lulls in his performance with his instrument, but not when he spoke. Every word was given the same treatment and therefore no particular points were highlighted. He didn’t carry forth his magic on the piano to his speaking and didn’t use the same amazing tool for his talk as he employed in his music. For him, they were unrelated.

    The problem is a lack of training in how to do public speaking and a lack of self-awareness. Our pianist didn’t bridge from what he did on the keys of the piano to what he could do with his vocal cords. I would extend the same observation to other musicians who use their vocal cords as their primary instrument–singers–and observe the same phenomenon. During their comments between songs, the singers will employ a flat range in their voice. This is just after just having hit high and low notes in their performance. Like the pianist, they don’t seem to connect the two ideas together.

    As speakers, we should always be looking to tell stories to make our points more accessible. We should also tell those stories employing highs and lows in our vocal range to make them more interesting. Nobody else is doing this, so we have an uncontended open field of possibilities right in front of us, ripe for the taking.
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    11 分
  • 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
    2024/11/04
    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”.
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