There I was, over in Geneva at a top international organisation watching officials there make short presentations to improve their public speaking skills. It was notable that some of them (not least those with a French accent) began in a deadening way by breaking down the question posed and defining its terms.

This approach had intellectual merit. It reminded me of a now largely forgotten popular philosopher C E M Joad who answered most tricky questions on the BBC Brains Trust programmes by declaring, ““It all depends on what you mean by…” .

Yes, it does. But starting a presentation like that tends to be a recipe for stupor in the audience. It’s over-mechanical, pedantic and comes with a whiff of condescension.

However, it turns out that this way of looking at issues reflects a deep intellectual tradition. This is well explained by Erin Meyer:

The stonewall I had run into was “principles-first reasoning” (sometimes referred to as deductive reasoning), which derives conclusions or facts from general principles or concepts. People from principles-first cultures, such as France, Spain, Germany, and Russia (to name just a few) most often seek to understand the “why” behind proposals or requests before they move to action.

But as an American, I had been immersed throughout my life in “applications-first reasoning” (sometimes referred to as inductive reasoning), in which general conclusions are reached based on a pattern of factual observations from the real world. Application-first cultures tend to focus less on the “why” and more on the “how.” Later, as I began to understand the differences between one culture and another in how to influence other people, I heard many examples of the way the typical American presentation style is viewed from a European perspective.

Jens Hupert, a German living in the United States for many years, explained his opposite experience during an interview. “In the U.S., when giving a talk to my American colleagues, I would start my presentation by laying the foundation for my conclusions, just like I had learned in Germany; setting the parameters; outlining my data and my methodology; and explaining my argument.”

Jens was taken aback when his American boss told him, “In your next presentation, get right to the point. You lost their attention before you got to the important part.” In Hupert’s mind, “You cannot come to a conclusion without first defining the parameters.”

Most people are capable of practicing both principles-first and applications-first reasoning, but your habitual pattern of reasoning is heavily influenced by the kind of thinking emphasized in your culture’s education structure…

In other words, presentations by people from the Anglosphere intellectual tradition are seen by the ‘Continental’ deductivists as shallow and slight. Presentations by people from the deductivist end of the spectrum are seen by us inductivists as pedantic and boring. Erin Meyer is trying to strike a balance:

These days, I give a lot of presentations to groups across Europe and the Americas. I do my best to adapt to my audience, instead of thinking that the whole world thinks like me.

If I’m presenting to a group of New Yorkers, I’ll only spend a moment talking about what research is behind the tool. But if I’m in Moscow, I’ll carefully set the stage, laying out the parameters for my arguments, and engaging in debate before arriving at conclusions. If I fail to do this, they are likely to think “What does this woman think. . . . that we are stupid ? That we will just swallow anything?”

When you hope to engage, when you hope to inform and persuade and convince, what you say is important, but how you say it, how you structure your message, can make all the difference —  to the Americans, to the French, to everyone.

Easier said than done, when intelligent audience members just don’t think like you. When I was in Kazakhstan recently giving a Speechwriting masterclass to senior officials, I went out of my way to explain that a good speech or presentation needs Structure:

Good/Bad, or Bad/Good

What I did – what I learned

What’s happened – what it means

Knowledge – Wisdom

I showed them how the most successful short speeches they themselves had delivered had been good because of this subtle structure idea.

After a couple of days I was startled when someone asked me to explain Structure: “It’s not the right word. Structure is having an opening, logical arguments, then an end!“

He was right in his own terms. Check out a Kazakh speech on the Internet. It’s like that, an introduction followed by often a long list of points in no obvious order and then a bland wrapping-up.

These things are subtle indeed. It boils down to profound differences in what ‘learning’ is thought to be. Is it a sort of democratic process, with teachers and students debating and exploring through discussion? Or is it a top-down didactic process, where a wise teacher emits information and insight and the students just soak it up?

And, thanks to the Internet and globalisation, are these differences eroding? Are audiences round the planet more likely to respond well to a presenter who helps them have a good time? Someone who talks to their hearts, not their brains?