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 stream, takes a lot of mental energy. If successful, the new direction grabs us more powerfully than continuing with the same existing thought pattern. Recency is focused on the last thing we have heard. One of the narky criticisms of some people is that the thoughts we share with you are the result of our most recent conversation. We tend to remember the last thing we heard. That makes a lot of sense doesn’t it, but what does this mean for speakers?

Are we only able to have our audience remember our openings and closings of our speechs? Yes, the audience will certainly most easily recall the first and last pieces of information. They will also strike an impression of us, on the basis of our first and last visual and vocal touches. Obviously, we need to plan for and control the delivery of all of this opening and closing business, but we can go beyond that. There will also be numerous other opens and closings going on during the audiences’ busy day. How do we shove all of those completely aside and dominate the minds of our audience. We want them to absorb our message and to exclude all other competing thoughts?

Why do we have only one opening and one closing? Could we break the talk up into chapters? Each chapter is given a gangbuster opening and closing for that particular thought or point we want to convey. Could we bring some physical action to the fore to differentiate the chapters and lift the audiences’ engagement with us? This is only possible if we switch up our thinking about what is achievable with a talk. The speaker’s normal fare is the same as everyone else’s normal fare. We are immediately at a disadvantage to stand out from the crowd. Sadly, we are at one with the speaker push, fitting in with standard operating procedures and methodologies. We become another grey automaton lined up with all the other robot speakers. Let’s stop doing that.

In a forty minute talk, there will be room for around seven to eight chapters, an opening and the first close before the Q&A, then the final close. Let’s change up the opening at both the mental and physical levels. We want an opening statement, question, quote, testimonial or story that rocks the audience back into the folds of their seat and makes them take note that they are strapping in for a major ride here today. This shatters everything that came before for them up until that point. We must extinguish their previous thoughts and proclivities. This is especially so, if you are one of a number of speakers tumbling along one after another, launching forth on some worthy topic.

Let’s organise some crew, instead of always going solo. If there is a switch between you and the MC or the previous speaker, there is always some dithering around with the tech to get the laptops exchanged and your slides up. This drains the lifeblood of your first impression and the energy in the room simply tanks. The MC roars, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the incomparable, the amazing, the stupendous Dr. Greg Story. Please welcome him to the stage, because he is going to totally rock our world today”. You scramble up on stage and are immediately bent over like an old, old man, head down, trying to get the laptop hooked up to the projector. This unwanted intrusion into the opening segment continues while you are zipping around with your mouse, looking to boot that slide show up. This lull in proceedings has cratered the impact of that powerhouse MC introduction. It has now effectively been driven down to a pathetic whimper. People have whipped into scrolling through their Facebook, LinkedIn or email, ignoring you while you get your act together. The opening’s marvellous, magical momentum has melted away.

Why not get someone else to handle the logistics, so that you can get straight into your talk? They set it all up while you are already speaking to the audience. At the right moment they leave the slide advancer for you on top of the laptop, gracefully glide off stage and leave you to continue solo. This way we float directly onto the power stream of the MC and then take the audience even higher with our own energy. Yes, we need to have a lot of energy at the start, because remember there are two bodies on stage. We want to monopolise the audience’s attention for ourselves. We purposely stand on the far side of the stage, to draw everyone’s looking line away from the tech God and have the audience focus on us instead.

In Part Two, we will go deeper with our entry and exit points of the chapters and then how to choreograph the big crescendo for our polemic’s sparkling conclusion.

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 sitting there at a chamber function when the speaker began to talk at length about his start in sales and his experiences. It was fascinating for him no doubt, but it made him sound dated. He seemed to have become covered in dusty cobwebs too all of a sudden. Talking about ourselves is great and dangerous at the same time.

Usually when we speak, there will be our introduction done by the hosts. If we are on the ball, we don’t place ourselves in their hands, so we write what we want them to say. That doesn’t mean they are on the ball and can carry out a simple task. If we make it too long, the hosts usually manages to murder it by dropping bits or getting things wrong. I am always astonished that they cannot successfully read a piece of paper with words on it.

The audience is also on danger alert because they know the propaganda offensive is about to hit them. It is hard to write about yourself though, because there are so many things you want to include. Why is that? We are desperate to establish our credentials with the audience, so that they will become more accepting of what we are saying. We believe that volume is important so we should cram as much in there as we can. In fact, we are defeating our own efforts because either the host mangles the text or the audience switches off.

Avoiding the chronology approach is always a good start. Sometimes these details are included in the programme flyer and you don’t need to mention them at all or you can organise your own flyer for the attendees. This is a good tactic and not hard to do. When we are speaking about ourselves, we should focus on the key points only. These are the things which relate to our expertise on this specific topic. I am a 6th Dan in Shitoryu karate, which is wonderful, but probably doesn’t have anything to with a topic like presenting. I could instead say this is my speech number #342 and that would be congruent with establishing I am a real world expert of the dark art of public speaking and have the experience required to tell others how to do it.

Often we are using powerpoint, so we can bring up some slides about our company. This should also be brief. Simple clear slides are what we want and the selection of information should be limited to the most powerful USPs or unique selling points of our firm. Slide after slide makes an audience restless. They are sitting there thinking, “enough already, get on with it”. When I worked for a long established Australian Bank which was rather unknown in Japan, I would show a photograph of the establishment of the first branch back in the 19th century. It was a black and white photograph with people dressed in the fashion of the Victorian era and it oozed with longevity. I also attached the date in the Japanese Imperial reign format, rather than the Gregorian calendar, to make it seem even more ancient and venerable. That one photo showed my Japanese audience we had stood the test of time and could be trusted with their money.

The CEO cowardly public speaking escape route of reliance on the souped-up corporate video at the start of the talk should be avoided at all cost. These videos are rarely a good match with the specific topic for that day, because there is usually only one video. It has to be the Swiss Army Knife of propaganda videos, to travel around the world boring people of every persuasion. If there is a particular section in the video which is really powerful, then just cue that part and don’t bother with the left over detritus.

Giving our own examples is a good idea in the talk, but again, we have to steer away from too much recalling of our glorious triumphs. The audience is only interested in how what you are telling them will result in their own glorious triumphs, now and into the future. We have to get a balance struck between talking about ourselves for effect and not for the stroking of our own massive speaker ego. Where possible, use client examples of what you did for them, rather than droning on about what you did.

It is a tricky equation of how much is too much, which bits are more important than other bits and how much time should I allow for it. Err on the side of caution and go minimalist, recalling Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “less is more”.

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 without talent, enthusiasm or particular motivation. A duty, an unavoidable pain, like going back to the dentist for that root canal. As we rise in our careers, the necessity to speak in public goes right up in frequency and length. Unfortunately, no one tells you this is what is on the cards for future you, so you are perpetually unprepared. If we knew this was part of our unescapable future, then we would all get the training and end the misery right there.

Even for those who are sufferers, do they seek relief through getting training? No. They just continue blundering forward, reeking havoc wherever they go, destroying their personal and professional brands. This includes those who are devastated by nerves, quivering, pulse racing, hot flushes sweeping over their body, faces going bright red, knees knocking, stomach queasy and throat parched. Do they get training? No. They just lurch from fearfulness to fearfulness, whenever they are required to speak in front of others.

What do we need to fix this. Obviously training is one part and so is repetition. Most speeches though are one offs, a one and done affair. The speech has been used up for that audience, on that day and then it is shelved forever. So how do we get repetition? We may not get the chance to repeat the content, but we can give more talks. To do that though we have stop hiding from the chance. As a child in Brisbane, I watched the Three Stooges on black and white television and one of the jokes would be two of them would step back when asked to volunteer, making it appear that the other one had stepped forward, wanting to do the task. Reluctant speakers are mentally doing the same thing. Whenever the chance to get some repetition going comes up, they step back and let others do it.

Even if the chance to present to an audience is a one time thing, that doesn’t mean the talk is a one time thing. If we are smart, we are giving this speech numerous times. We do these without an audience, in private, as a rehearsal for the big event. I competed in senior level Karate competition for many years and would never dream of going on to the mat and doing the kata or prearranged patterns, once only just for the judges. I would be practicising for months in the Dojo, rehearsing that kata, over and over again until I dropped. Why would putting your reputation out there in business require anything less?

By the time you hit that stage you are well practiced and confident. Consequently your brain doesn’t release masses of chemicals preparing you for battle with a sabre toothed tiger, where you either run away or stand your ground and fight. Consequently, come showtime you are not so nervous. Some nerves yes, but not debilitating.

The other mental shift is to decide who this speech is about. Not what it is about, but who it is about. For people who hate speaking in public or become crippled with nerves, the speech is all about them. It is about their mental trauma, induced by how they feel they will be judged by the audience and their deep fears of imminent, unmitigated disaster, about to humiliate them for the rest of time.

We must switch the focus to the audience. We are giving each person six seconds of eye contact, inducing that feeling in them, that they are only person in the room. Hawk like, we are scrutinising their reaction to what we are saying. We are judging if they are with us or do we have to push harder to bring them on board. We are pumping out our ki (気) or intrinsic energy into the audience, to maximise our body language. We are using congruent gestures to add lustre and power to our words. Tonal variety, variations in speed and power engage the audience, such that they are eschewing their mobile phone’s siren call to escape to the internet.

In response, some will smile, nod, laugh at your amusing asides, follow you through the navigation of the talk. After a while, some will start to lean into you. It will only be a few millimetres, but what a rush that feeling is. When twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred people start doing that at the same time, there is a powerful energy in the room. It hits you like a drug racing through your veins and leaves you looking for your next hit. This is when public speaking surpasses duty and becomes a real pleasure.

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 is in the room. What industries, companies, gender, age configurations are arrayed in those venue seats. What we can’t tell are the information assimilation biases of our audience members. This means we have to plan for a spread of reactions to what we are going to say. By plan, factor that into the content and the delivery of our talk. How do we do that?

There will be four basic personality styles in that random selection of individuals gathered to hear our talk. Obviously we can’t easily satisfy four different demands at the same time. During the course of the presentation we have to input elements which will appeal to all four, at different times. Usually speakers don’t do this at all. They plan and deliver based on their own preferred styles and to hell with the rest of the room. Actually, it isn’t that nuanced. It is not a conscious decision and more of one by neglect.

Content needs to have evidence. The degree of granularity we can go into however will be linked to our knowledge base and also to the time available to cover the topic. If we just bludgeon our audience with numbers for forty minutes, the Analtyicals in the room will be euphoric and everyone else totally nonplussed. They love the detail, the proof, the evidence through numbers and 0.0001 is a fully acceptable number for them. They don’t care about us speaking in a monotone or being fully boring, as long as we keep coming with more valuable data. They will ask us incredibly detailed questions about what we presented and will be carefully checking to spot any contradictions or errors in the numbers or the assertions.

Amiables are very conservative and low key. They don’t like bombastic outbursts. Radical ranting and venting don’t go down very well with them. Calm delivery, in not too a loud a speaking voice is appreciated. They like plenty of reference to people. Who was involved, what did they do, how did they feel about it, are all curiosity factors for them. They generally won’t raise their hand to ask a question, because they prefer to keep a low profile. If we are low key throughout the talk, then the Analyticals and the Amiables will be fine with that, but not so other key types in the audience. We need to have periods of calm interaction with our audience, to keep these first two groups happy. Focusing on data and people tends to go down well.

Expressives are bored with all of that data and hate that low energy stuff speakers get up to. They want some action, flamboyance, excitement, passion, enthusiasm, pizzazz and entertainment. They don’t care too much for the nitty gritty detailed evidence. They want to see some powerful belief and emotional commitment to what we are saying. They like the towering rhetoric of the motivational speaker. If really moved, leaping out of their chairs and being supportive would be no problem for them. We need to provide some big picture speech elements for this group. At specific moments we can unleash our passion for our recommendations, get very powerful in that advocacy and really push out the volume and the energy.

Drivers are very outcome focused, so what value can you bring to me? What can I learn that will make me better so that I can use it to improve what I am doing now. The “five key things”, the “ten steps” are all super attractive frameworks. They want to know the why, the what and the how. They don’t need the cheerleader, because they want the takeaways. They are their own cheerleader, so they search for new knowledge they can apply. Your passion is appreciated but the viability of the information in concrete usage terms is more appealing. Having lots of energy is fine but having very little is not. Be powerful at times but come laden with gifts of guides to doing better.

In our talk we need to have phases that provide value to all four groups. We cannot favour our own style or one other style exclusively, because we have effectively excommunicated the rest of the group. This is a delicate act to pull off, which is why it needs careful thought and planning beforehand. You can't make this stuff up or get the balance right on the fly. We have to start with the premise that we have a range of people in the room. We need to give them all a taste of wonder, defined by how they see that playing out.

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. Especially in Japan, audience members are probably better at reading than hearing the content. So having the slides at hand to refer to during the talk makes a lot of sense. Never do this! Ignore the supposed sage advice of event organisers, who themselves rarely if ever give public presentations. There are very few occasions when you need to be handing out bits of paper to support your talk.

The only exception to this rule of mine would be if there are numbers involved and they are locked into tiny cells in a spreadsheet. I am sure you have suffered the ignominy of sitting in an audience and struggling to make sense of the numbers being shown on the screen. The speaker gracefully moves through the spreadsheet, pointing out various gripping correlations and conclusions. Of course, they have added an important caveat before their pontifications about what we are all looking at, by saying “you probably can’t see this but….”. Naturally we can’t see it. The tiny number squiggles are unable to be claimed from the cells on screen, because the presenter has not considered the needs of the audience.

I could arrange for just those spreadsheet numbers to be distributed before the talk, so that people can read along with my explanation. This is giving verity to what we are claiming because the audience can check the numbers themselves. I am still reluctant to do that though. As soon as I refer people to the sheets of paper in their hand, I have lost my connection with them. They are now looking at bits of paper and not at me. I can’t see how they are reacting, because their faces are looking down.

I would prefer to treat the spreadsheet numbers like wall paper on screen. They form a backdrop, but I don’t expect anyone to plumb the depths of numbers they cannot see, let alone read. Instead I would use some animation and blast out key numbers in huge font in a call out emerging from the background. Now everyone is looking at one huge number and I would explain the importance of that statistic or number. The wall paper in the background is a type of proof that we have the numbers, we are not hiding them. We don’t need to show every number in the collection though, because there will be some numbers more important than others.

We just keep repeating this animation process for every key number. We can make the sheets of paper available at the end, for anyone who would like to go more granular. In this way, all eyes are kept on me as the presenter. I can also read the faces of the audience as I present these key data points. I am scanning their faces for resistance. Am I going to get any pushback during the Q&A? Are they buying my argument?

If we distribute the entire slide deck before the talk, then what is the point of the talk in the first place? We may as well all stay at home and just send everyone an email with the attachment and they can read through it all at their leisure. Once the audience has that document, they are reading page eighteen while you are explaining page one. You have lost control of the narrative. They are now processing what they are seeing in the document and somewhere in the background, they can hear some white noise. That white noise is you, by the way, droning on about your presentation. They are not fully listening any more and as the speaker you have effectively lost your audience.

As the presenter, we must never become second fiddle to the slide deck or the spreadsheet. We must control the flow of the argument. The story is meant to unfold in a certain logical order, a build that pushes ever onward, toward a powerful conclusion. We are here to sell our argument and that means we have to get right behind it all the way. Don’t delegate the point of the talk to the slide deck. Get out in front where you can dominate proceedings and where you can read ever nuance of your audience’s reaction to what you are saying. We must be the star of the show, not the cells in a spreadsheet or masses of text on screen.

So, when the organisers, those never presenters, insist we need to distribute the talk beforehand, cast them a steely glance. In an icy voice of shivering indignation refuse their idiotic offer. Others are allowed to be unprofessional, but we must be the island of insight, knowledge, intelligence and experience. That is the path of the real presenter.