You’ll often hear this advice about speaking: Make eye contact with people in the audience. Use gestures. Pause. And breathe. Why? Because everyone who tells you to be aware of your body language and facial expressions is right. If you are stuttering and unable to make eye contact from the stage, you are sending a message than speaks more loudly than the words you’re trying to say. So what do you do?? Speaking can be incredibly scary. You must honor your body’s fear and proactively deal with it. Use your body to calm your body and soothe your mind. Wendy Palmer and Janet Crawford’s book Leadership Embodiment: How the Way We Sit and Stand Can Change the Way We Think and Speak has some great exercises to do. Try the centering practices, which are discreet enough that you can do them without anyone else knowing this is what you’re up to. Amy Cuddy’s TED talk on using your body to change your mind is simply remarkable. Amy says that taking two minutes to stand in a power pose (she gives plenty of examples) alters your hormones, which alters how you feel, which then alters how you can behave. Go try it right now.
However, whether you do or don’t extend your arms on stage or stare meaningfully into the eyes of the person in the sixth row is not the first but the last thing to consider when giving a presentation. Lots of presentation coaches focus on assertive hand gestures, frequency of eye contact, commanding tone of voice, etc., as if learning a choreographed routine will make you a brilliant communicator.
You’ll only look more nervous and remote if you memorize a routine - gesture with one hand, and then two, then make eye contact, then take a few steps, then step back and smile. Don’t be an automaton who pushes your audience into the uncanny valley.
So what do you do instead? Throw technique out the window? No. But ‘technique’, which really means the way you convey your commitment to your content and your connection to your audience, has to spring naturally from you.
When you work directly with your body, you develop presence. Presence is the magical energy that helps you calmly and gracefully bring your true self to whatever you’re communicating. When you have graceful, grounded presence, you’re a pleasure to hear. I hate to break it to you, but a great presentation takes significant work. All of that naturalness on stage is the result of disciplined, consistent effort. When you are grounded and comfortable in your body, when you love your message, when you are giving a gift to an audience you understand, then you become a compelling stage presence.
Put another way, work your technique from the inside out, not the outside in. Yes, it’s harder this way. but the results are immeasurably better.
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