214: Be Chatty When Presenting

<p>We often see presenters elevated up on stage or positioned at the front of the room, flanked by or under a screen, and protected from the audience by a rostrum.  In Japan standing above your seated audience requires an apology for doing so at the start of the speech.  This is a very hierarchy conscious society, so implying your superiority to your audience, through your physical positioning has to be wound back immediately. We add to this feeling by driving the slide deck, playing around with the lighting, using a microphone and speaking in a knowledgeable, commanding voice. All of these devices place a barrier between the speaker and the attendees of the talk. </p> <p> </p> <p>Is that what we want though – a barrier to our audience?  If we want the audience to buy what we are selling, we want to have total access to the participants.  Believe my statistics, follow my suggestions, take action on my ideas are typical outcomes we want to achieve.  Getting people to come with us necessitates persuasion and having appeal.  The less barriers between us and them, the better.</p> <p> </p> <p>A useful approach is to speak conversationally with our audience, as if we were all intimates of long standing, where the trust had been built up over the years and where the simpatico is flowing.  It also lends itself to sharing information like confidences, that only the specially initiated and conspiratorial are made privy to.  We are letting you into special data and insights, that only those in the room can know.</p> <p> </p> <p>This requires a switch from speaking at an audience to speaking with an audience. We call out the names of audience members we know or have just met, to build that feeling of connection between speaker and participants. “Suzuki san and I were chatting a moment ago and she made an interesting observation on the subject”, “I am glad my old friend Tanaka san is with us today, because I consider him a great model for what I am proposing”, “Obayashi san and I were speaking during the networking before lun