The Presentations Japan Series

I listen to some podcasts on writing, trying to better educate myself on the craft.  I was hopeless at English at school, so the rest of my life has been a remedial fix in that department. Fundamenta…

Presentations have become tediously monochrome.  The speaker speaks, the audience sit there passively taking it all in.  After the speaker’s peroration, they get to offer up a few questions for about…

Many people break the rules of presenting, usually unknowingly.  They have Johari Window style blind spots, where others know they are making mistakes, but they themselves are oblivious and just don’…

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 origi…

In Part One, we looked at the ideas of primacy (the first thing we remember) and recency (the last thing we remember) and what this means for speakers. Now in Part Two we will go deeper with our entr…

Primacy refers to the beginning of something, as it enters our brain. This new entity has a powerful impact on our memory and our concentration.  To muscle itself into our existing brain thought stre…

Bruce Springsteen’s song Glory Days lyric, “Boring stories of Glory days yeah, they’ll pass you by” pops into my head sometimes, when I hear a speaker reminiscing about their glorious past.  I was si…

For many people it may seem we are getting into oxymoron territory here.  “Public speaking…enjoyable?  You must be kidding mate”.  Many are called upon to speak and reluctantly they give their talk w…

Experts, pseudo experts, amateurs, believers, sceptics, supporters, enemies make up that sea of faces in front of us when we get up to speak.  We can get some basic data from the organisers about who…

In our High Impact Presentations (HIP) course, we do a number of presentations over two days of training.  What I love about teaching this programme is that you see the results immediately.  If we ar…

Sometimes the organisers of the presentation event ask us if they can distribute our slides before the speech.  They are thinking that this will help the audience to follow what we are saying.  Espec…

Donald Trump has made this technique of “many people say….” famous for dealing with opposing views.  This is not an exercise for or against Trump. Rather, it is just looking at different ways we can …

Whether we asking to give a talk or asked to present, we need an audience.  The onus is on the meeting hosts to take care of the logistics of the venue and the associated tech needed to carry out the…

A request came to me recently asking me to speak to an audience.  So my first question was, “what would you like me to speak about?”.   The answer was fairly broad.  Actually, that is good and bad.  …

You see it.  The presenter publicly self-immolates. They might butcher the start, get lost in the weeds of their content or be put to the sword at the end in the Q&A.  They can’t engage with their au…

I have the opportunity to give a number of presentations each year.  I video them as well, so I can study where I can improve them further.  What I find very interesting though, is that I am a poor m…

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 origi…

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…

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 modu…

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, with…