A Smile, Energy, Eyeline Make Such A Difference
THE Presentations Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Release Date: 07/07/2025
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_outlineOnce upon a time, we taught public speaking and presentation skills in a class room, with tons of people all seated together, right next to each other. We moved to teaching everything LIVE On Line since February 2020, so what has been the difference? Surprisingly, not as much as we expected. The one big difference is the lack of opportunity to employ full body emphasis when presenting, because everyone is mainly sitting in front of a screen. You can use a standing desk, but even so, the camera will cut you off at the thigh level, so we are not getting the full body power. There are a few tricky things about gestures when using fake backgrounds, which by the way seems to be standard now. What are the things that stand out most in the online presenting environment?
Smiling is definitely one which has disappeared, when people are on screen. I don’t know why that is the case. Perhaps we are more self conscious in front of a camera? Or is this now such a serious business world that smiling is out of fashion? Think of any online meeting you have attended recently and ask yourself was anyone smiling when they made their comments or gave their reports? I was teaching a class on presenting skills online recently and what a difference it made when people would smile during their talks. Not every subject lends itself to smiling of course but there are bound to be good news in there somewhere and that is the time to trot out that big smile of yours. It is congruent with the content of the talk, so it works. It is also such a connector with the audience, it really drives up the engagement factor with an audience.
We have all been doing these online meetings for 18 months now, yet most people still haven’t mastered the medium. I know it is difficult, because the camera lens is 10 centimetres above the faces on the screen. However, take a look at the eye line of the participants in the next meeting. How many are framed in the screen so that there is a half body showing and their head is at about two thirds height on camera? Many will still have their heads cut off and they are arranged at the very bottom of the screen, like they have been decapitated. Or they will have the camera lens angle shooting straight up their nostrils – not an attractive look that one.
When we get the camera lens at eye line and we speak while looking at the camera, we are now using the medium as it was designed. The camera can bring us into the world of the viewer and we can be speaking directly to them through the lens. When we are looking down at the faces on screen we have broken off eye contact and we seem like we are looking down on everyone. It is the equivalent of giving a face to face speech without ever looking at your audience, in fact you are speaking to the floor, the whole time. Now I have seen speakers actually do that, but it is totally ineffective. The same with the online world – talk to the people through the lens and you will get your message across much more impressively.
We mainly use our voices when presenting online. Yet what about gestures? Gestures can support what we are saying by bringing more physical energy to the point. If you have framed yourself properly then you can use your hands on screen. There are a few best practices though. Firstly, don’t wave your hands around, because the fake backgrounds will disappear them at certain points. So, hold your hands at between shoulder and head height, so that they can be easily seen and hold the gesture rather than trying to move it too much. Also, if you want to show some item on screen, use your own body as the shield and show it in front of you. The fake background won’t be able to disappear it on you when you do it this way.
Most people I see online, are using the same speaking voice range they use all the time in the in-person world. When we are presenting we are no longer a part of the audience – we are on stage, be it in a venue or online. That means we need to bring a lot more energy to what we are saying, in order to attract the audience to our message. When we are online, we also need to compensate for the fact that the camera will sap 20% of our power and we will come across as having less energy that usual. You may have noticed that most people speaking online sound like they are on “downers”. We need to get that voice energy up and start directing at it a key words we want to emphasise in our sentences. Not every word in a sentence has the same value, so we need to pick out key words and phrases and make them hot, by hitting them harder.
Most online presenters have a long way to go with this medium. The experience gained over the last year or so, hasn’t improved them, actually. They are still making fundamental mistakes. These can be easily corrected and it just takes greater awareness and some practice to get it right. So let’s think again about what we are doing here and how we are doing it. Apply these ideas and you will immediately be in the top 1% of online presenters, simply because everyone else is clueless, hopeless and way underpowered.