238: Selfish Presenters

<p>My regular Rotary meeting held every week at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo has a featured speaker.   Our speaker this time was a celebrity in his eighties and very well known to the audience.  Rotary runs like clockwork and every section of the hourly meeting is choreographed and the meetings always finish on time. Not this time though.  Our speaker gave a rambling talk, which seemed to lack any direction or point.  For no good reason he also managed to go way over his allotted speaking time, so the meeting finished late.  This Rotary audience is full of the captains of industry in Japan and so they are busy executives, for whom time is their most valuable resource.  I was sitting there thinking what have we got here with this speaker’s thinking?</p> <p> </p> <p>My conclusion was that this speech was for his pleasure.  He wanted to ramble around and across a number of unrelated subjects.  He clearly liked the sound of his own voice and was happy to have a big audience in front of him.  The fact that he managed to go over the time was amazing given there was almost no structure to his talk and he could have ended anywhere really.  Japan loves its celebrities, so they get cut a lot of slack and are indulged.  This has probably been the speaker’s experience for decades and today he is quite indulgent with himself, because clearly for him, there are no boundaries.</p> <p> </p> <p>It reminded me though of the importance of focusing on our audience.  The danger can be we become wrapped up in our subject or in this case, wrapped up in our own importance.  This happens in business too. High powered CEOs jet in to give a speech, they have people fawning all over them and are treated like rock stars.  A few years of that and their sense of proportion starts to drift.  The issue though, is as speakers, they represent the brand.  If they are too impressed with themselves and their superior expertise and ability, the audience can feel it.  It becomes obvious they are focused on themselves and not the message or the audience.