Presenting On Video
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Release Date: 06/30/2025
Handling The Q&A
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Q&A isn’t the awkward add-on after your talk — it’s where you cement your message, clarify what didn’t land, and build trust through real interaction. Why is the Q&A the most important part of your presentation? Because Q&A is your second chance to make your best points land — and to fix any confusion in real time. It’s also the moment the audience decides if you’re credible, calm under pressure, and worth listening to beyond the slides. In a post-pandemic world of hybrid keynotes, Zoom webinars, and town-hall style sessions (especially since 2020),...
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Presenting Complex Information
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Complex doesn’t mean “technical”. Complex means your audience can’t quickly connect what you’re saying to what they already know. In a post-pandemic, hybrid-meeting world (Zoom, Teams, half the room on mute), that gap gets bigger fast—especially when you pile on jargon, acronyms, and dense slides. This guide turns complex topics into clear, persuasive presentations without turning them into kindergarten stories. We’ll keep it logical, visual, and human—because nobody ever said, “That was a wonderfully confusing briefing, let’s do it again.” What makes a subject...
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Persuasion Power Eats Everything For Breakfast
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Most business careers don’t stall because people lack IQ or work ethic — they stall because people can’t move other humans. If you can command a room, energise a team, excite customers, and secure decisions, you compound your influence fast — especially in the post-pandemic world of hybrid meetings, Zoom pitches, and global audiences. Does persuasion power matter more than technical skill for promotion? Yes — technical skill gets you into the conversation, but persuasion power wins you the job. In most organisations, the higher you climb, the more the work becomes...
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Designing The Close
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
When you present—whether it’s a Toyota leadership offsite in Japan, a Canva all-hands in Australia, or a Series A pitch in San Francisco—you don’t just need a close. You need two. One to wrap your talk, and one to reclaim the room after Q&A, when the conversation can veer off into the weeds. Why do I need two closes in a presentation? Because Q&A can hijack your final impression, and your final impression is what people remember. You finish your talk, you open the floor, and suddenly you’ve lost control of the narrative—especially in post-pandemic...
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The Use Of Evidence In Your Presentations
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
We flagged this last episode—now let’s get practical about evidence. Modern presenters face two problems at the same time: we’re in an Age of Distraction (people will escape to the internet, even while “listening”), and an Era of Cynicism(audiences are more sensitive than ever to whether information is valid). Why is evidence more important now than ever? Because opinion won’t hold attention—and it won’t survive cynicism. If your talk is mostly “editorial” (your views), people either disengage or multitask. If you don’t provide concrete insights...
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Designing The Main Body Of Our Talk
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
In the last episodes we looked at how to open the presentation. Now it’s time for the part that does the heavy lifting: the main body. Most people design talks the wrong way around. This process is counterintuitive but far more effective: start with the close, then build the main body, and only then design the opening. The close defines the key message, the opening breaks through the competition for attention, and the body provides the proof. What’s the best way to design the main body of a presentation? Build the main body as chapters that prove your key message, using...
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How To Be That Charismatic Presenter
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Some speakers have “it”. Even from the back of the room you can sense their inner energy, confidence, and certainty — that compelling attractiveness we call charisma. This isn’t about being an extrovert or a show pony. It’s about building presence and appeal in ways that work in boardrooms, conferences, online presentations (Zoom/Teams), and hybrid rooms where attention is fragile and cynicism is high. What is “presenter charisma” in practical terms? Presenter charisma is the audience feeling your energy, certainty, and credibility — fast. You can be...
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How An Expert Prepares For A TED Talk
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
TED and TEDx look effortless on stage, but the behind-the-scenes prep is anything but casual. In this talk, I pulled back the velvet curtain on how I prepared for a TEDx talk—especially the parts most people skip: designing the ending first, engineering a punchy opening, and rehearsing like a maniac so tech issues don’t derail you. Is TED/TEDx preparation really different from a normal business presentation? Yes—TED/TEDx forces ruthless compression, because you’ve got a hard time cap and a global audience. In my case, I had up to thirteen minutes, with restrictions on topic...
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Opening Our Presentation (Part Two)
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
If your opening drifts, your audience drifts. In a post-pandemic, hybrid-work world (Zoom, Teams, in-person, and everything in between), attention is brutally expensive and “micro concentration spans” feel even shorter than they used to. So in Part Two, we’ll add two more high-impact openings you can apply straight away: storytelling and compliments—done in a way that feels human, not salesy, and definitely not like propaganda. How do you open a presentation so people actually listen (especially in 2025)? You earn attention in the first 30–60 seconds by giving...
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Opening Our Presentation (Part One)
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
In the first seconds of any presentation, your audience decides whether to lean in or tune out. This guide shows you how to design those opening moments—before you speak and through your first sentence—so you command attention, create immediate relevance, and set up the rest of your message to land. What makes a powerful presentation opening in 2025? Your opening starts before you speak—and the audience decides in seconds. In a smartphone-first era, those first seven seconds determine whether people lean in or drift off. The “silent opening” (walk, posture, eye contact) forms a...
info_outlineVideo is tricky. However, it looks so simple. You just stand in front of the camera and give your talk. I don’t know why video saps twenty percent of our energy when it is actually broadcast, but that seems to be the accepted wisdom. That means that just speaking normally into camera will now look a lot less energetic. Getting the delivery to be fluent is also a challenge. Either we do it free style or we use a teleprompter. Both have their challenges. What do we do with our hands? This is an interesting one, because the camera lens seems to have some magic power to reduce our gesture self awareness to zero, until that is, when we see it played back in all its gory glory.
I broadcast three TV shows on YouTube every week, so I am doing a lot of video work. My first weekly TV show was kicked off nearly four years, so I have gained a few insights over that time. I am not from the media world or have any background in television. I am a typical businessman who got into this by accident and so it is all pretty much self taught through exposure, practice and repetition. Yes, I have the advantage of being a High Impact Presentations instructor for Dale Carnegie, but presenting to a live audience and doing it on video is totally different. Everyone has discovered this fact since we all moved home, to spend a lot of our time in Zoom meetings or their equivalent.
I also teach people how to present to the camera and I have noticed a few things. Invariably their energy is too low. They are transferring their usual speaking volume to this medium and it doesn’t work. They appear lifeless and boring. No problem, speak louder, right? That is what I thought too, but I noticed a lot of people find that daunting. For them speaking with 50% more energy feels like they are screaming. Remember we are subtracting 20% immediately to counter the camera lens energy deficit, but on top of that they need to bring even more energy to the talk. If I ask for 50% more energy, invariably I will get about a 10% increase. This is why having an instructor or coach is handy, because you can’t easily work this out by yourself.
Gestures seem to be another area of mystery. What do I do with my hands? The most common choice is to do nothing with them. This is a big missed opportunity to bring physical power to support your verbal message. I have found there is a 15 second window to hold the same gesture. More than that and it become weaker and weaker and more and more annoying. The gestures need to be coordinated with what we are saying, so that they are congruent. If what we are saying and the way we are saying it don’t align properly, then our audience gets distracted. Once upon a time, the distracted audience would be by focusing on our voice or our apparel. Now it is on their phone. For half body video composition, we need the gestures to be held between rib height and the head height, so that they can be easily seen. For some curious reason, a lot of people hold their gestures at low waist level and apart from being difficult to see, this bit usually gets cut off in the editing process.
What we are doing with our face also is important. Having one facial expression may be very energy efficient, but it looks wooden on video. Our face should be showing what we are talking about. If results are good, then look happy. If they are bad, then look concerned. If you ask a rhetorical question, then look puzzled. I think you get the idea. One thing the camera doesn't like is when we drop our chin down, while we are talking. It looks like we are talking down to our audience, we also look very constrained. So we need to keep that chin up the whole time. Try it for yourself and you will be amazed at the difference it makes, to how we come across to our audience.
If we are just speaking off the top of our head, then we had better be pretty good or the video will be butchered in the editing process, as we have to stitch all those corrected mistakes together. It becomes very jerky in the final version, which is super distracting from our message. Zooming in and zooming out at these edits makes it appear less choppy, but you still don’t want too many of these to have to contend with.
Teleprompters can fix this and a bit of adjusting for font size and speed is needed to find the right balance. The secret here is to only look at the left side of the screen as the words roll up. Otherwise, you will find yourself reading from left to right and on screen you will look like you are reading it. This rather defeats the purpose doesn’t it. Have a look at my shows on YouTube and see if you can tell I am reading it off a teleprompter? Remember, our peripheral eyesight is good enough to focus on the left side and still read the words which are on that same line off to the right.
Video is a different game and we need to make this medium a winner for us. Try these hints for yourself and your image and impact will be much improved.