Three Steps to Powerful Presence

Here are three strategies you can use to increase your ease, confidence and presence in any speaking occasion:

Focus your attention.

Where you place your attention when you are with other people is at the core of powerful presence. There are three possible places for your attention to be when you are speaking, no matter how big or small your audience. Two of these places will connect you to your audience in a resourceful way; the other is only useful to you when you are alone.

1. Your attention is on yourself—instead of those to whom you are speaking. As a result, you have lost your connection with them and given them no reason to pay attention to you.
2. Your attention is on your audience. As a result, you have a connection with them. This is the most powerful way to keep anyone engaged with you, since it’s hard to resist someone who is paying attention to you.
3. Your attention is on everything that is happening in the room. As a result, you can respond, in the moment, to anything that occurs and you can use it as part of your presentation. I call the ability to respond like that “dancing with the room.”

Strategy:

• Having your attention on yourself is great for pre-presentation planning, or for giving yourself feedback after your presentation. It will never serve you well in front of an audience.
• Recognizing that your attention is on yourself gives you an indicator for distinguishing that you are “in your head” instead of being connected to your audience.
• When you notice that your attention is on you, pause for just a moment, breathe out slowly and reconnect with your audience. They will reconnect with you—and then you can expand your attention to dance with the room.

Be sure to breathe.

Breathing seems like the most natural thing in the world to do. So why does it seem to fail you when you are presenting something in front of other people in a professional setting?

Exceptional speakers understand that breathing easily, with their attention on the audience and the room, creates natural pauses in their presentations that invite their audiences to “lean in.”

It’s that invitation to lean in that puts people “on the edge of their seats,” as they feel the connection with a great speaker. When that happens, the speaker has the audience “in the palm of her hand.”

Strategy:

• When you find yourself rushing through your presentation, it’s a sure sign that your attention is on yourself and you have disconnected from your audience, whether you are aware of that or not.
• Slow down—pause—breathe out naturally and connect to your audience by making eye contact. Once you’ve gotten that connection back, begin speaking again.
• If your attention should come back to you, simply pause, breathe out, and put your attention back on the people in the room.

Have a conversation.

Many people think that a public presentation requires you to memorize everything you are going to say and remember it, word for word. This one impression is enough to keep them from speaking—and from enjoying themselves when they can’t avoid the occasion to speak.

The ironic thing is that these same people can be engaging and enthusiastic conversationalists with their friends and family.

Great presenters know that having a conversation with the audience is a lot like dancing. Like any dance, there is a structure to a presentation; typically a beginning, middle and end. If you know these three points, you can get them across in a conversation.

Like a dance, a conversation is more of a dialogue than a monologue. Like a dance, both partners adapt their moves to each other.

When you think of the audience as your partner, you can connect with them in conversation and dance with whatever you find.

Strategy:

Your ability to create conversation will increase exponentially when you connect with the people in the room on a personal level. Here’s how:

• Get to your presentation early and meet as many of the people in your audience as you can.
• Make some connections before you speak and then notice how welcoming the room becomes when you reach the podium, or begin your presentation, using what you’ve heard.
• Many people find it exciting to meet “The Speaker.” Give them what they want and you’ll be amazed at the warmth you will experience in every presentation you give.