One of the most public ways to share your message with the world is by speaking to a large group of people. In a professional setting, people will often hesitate to admit weaknesses, with one glaring exception. Most people are actually assertive in stating that they are afraid of “public speaking.” I think they offer this admission as a pre-emptive strike to keep others from asking them to give a presentation. Here’s the reality. Except for singing in the shower, all speaking is “public” speaking. We’re always talking to someone. And most people are okay speaking to one person at a time. Therefore, the secret is to apply the same techniques you use when talking to one person to situations in which you are talking to a few, a dozen, or a hundred people at once.
We receive calls every day from clients and potential clients saying they need help with “presentation skills.” My first response is always: “Help me understand what you mean by presenting.” Pharmaceutical salespeople “present” while walking behind a doctor who is between appointments. Analysts at investment banks “present” to a dozen or so salespeople in a room, while hundreds listen in on the phone. Litigators “present” in some no-man’s-land between the judge and the jury. Senior leaders “present” while seated around a boardroom table. And we all have instances when we present one-on-one, discussing a need with a client, giving a performance review, or interviewing someone for a job. Regardless of the setting, some basic principles apply.
Remember, people hear what we want them to know through the words we say. They understand how we want them to feel about it through the way we say it.
The overriding key to presenting well is to simply be present to your audience. When we’re speaking, we tend to think, “How do I keep my audience’s attention?” Now think about it from your audience’s perspective. Listeners want to know that they have your attention. Too often, while speaking to an audience, the speaker seems distracted, preoccupied, or self-absorbed. He is all wrapped up inside himself, or appears rushed or disengaged. He isn’t present to his audience. That creates a disconnect. The audience feels less valued. When the audience senses that lack of commitment on the part of the speaker, that lack of desire to connect, the audience is less likely to want to follow the speaker’s ideas. The speaker has less impact.
There are three key elements to conveying a sense of commitment and presence to your audience: your eye contact, your voice, and your body language. Remember, people hear what we want them to know through the words we say. They understand how we want them to feel about it through the way we say it.
We all have a natural human instinct to make eye contact with those around us. It’s how we establish a connection. A baby can’t see clearly at birth. The first distance from which a newborn’s eyes learn to focus is at about 10 inches, roughly the distance from the baby’s eyes to the mother’s eyes when the baby is nursing. Eyes are literally the first things we focus on in life, and in most cultures, they remain the first things we try to focus on when we meet someone.
We all know it’s important to look at your audience when you speak to a group. Unfortunately, too often that concept is interpreted as “Scan your audience. Make eye contact with as many people as possible.” That doesn’t work well. When you scan the audience, your brain takes in too much information. You notice that one person is doodling, someone else is yawning, someone’s checking his email on his phone, and someone else is coming in late. Your brain tries to process all of that information.
Your brain is like a computer. When a computer takes in too much data, it freezes. The same is true for your brain. When your brain freezes, your body kicks into a defense mechanism called “fight or flight.” Your brain senses danger and tells your body “it’s not time to think; it’s time to react.” Your body reacts to defend itself. In fight or flight, your breathing rate increases to pump oxygen to your blood. Your heart rate increases to pump the blood to your hands so you can fight and to your feet so you can flee.
Now picture yourself standing in front of the room. You’ve scanned the audience and thrown yourself into panic mode. You feel yourself gasping for air. You swear the person in the front row can see your shirt moving because you can feel your heart pounding so hard. The blood is rushing to your hands—which start to sweat and twitch—and to your feet, so you start shifting back and forth. Overall, not a strong presence. And all because you scanned the room.
So if you shouldn’t scan, what should you do with your eyes?
Look at one person at a time for a complete sentence. If you stay with someone for a full thought, five to seven seconds, you’ll experience a number of benefits.
First, you’ll relax. Most of us aren’t afraid of speaking to one person. If you only talk to one person, regardless of how many are in the room, you’ll automatically calm yourself. On a regular basis I speak at the New York City Bar Association. About 200 people usually attend, but I never talk to 200 people. I talk to one person at a time, each for a full sentence. The other 199 people are sitting in the room, but I’m only talking to that one person. I’ll get to the rest shortly. Right now, as I’m talking to the fourth person in the sixth row, she’s getting all of my attention. So will the others when I get to them.
Second, if you stay with someone for a full thought, you’ll avoid distraction. If I’m talking to the man with the beard in the back row, he’s the only person I’m looking at and the only one I care about at the moment. When someone comes in the side door late, I’m not thrown. I’m still talking to goatee guy.
The third, and most important, benefit of staying with someone for a full thought is that you build rapport with your audience. If you’re scanning and talking to everyone, you’re not really talking to anyone. If you stay with someone for a full thought, you look more composed, you sound more confident and comfortable with yourself, and you establish a connection. You not only convey your content, but you convey your sense of commitment to your audience. When you stay with someone for a full thought, you’re really saying, “It’s important to me that you get this message.” You convey your sense of commitment to that individual and, by repeating that technique throughout your talk, your commitment to the entire room. That’s being present to others.
Managing your eye contact isn’t just important when delivering a presentation to a large audience. It’s crucial in more intimate settings as well. If you’re sharing information around a boardroom table, the same rule applies: one full thought per person. If you know there is one key decision-maker, give that person more attention than the others, maybe 50 to 60 percent of the overall attention, but don’t ignore others at the table. If you spend your entire time talking to the CEO, you’ve alienated everyone else. After the meeting, when the CEO turns to the CFO and says, “What did you think about the presenter?” the CFO, feeling slighted, won’t be inclined to give you high marks. In general, it takes less energy to be nice to everyone than to figure out whom you have to be nice to. The same applies to eye contact at a meeting.
Even if you’re meeting one-on-one with someone, you want to maximize your eye contact. I’m not suggesting you stare at someone. That’s not helpful. But even in private meetings, we break eye contact dozens of times. You look at your notes; the other person looks away to gather her thoughts; you drop your eyes to take a few notes. There are so many natural breaks in eye contact that, if you’re not conscious of keeping eye contact when you can, you won’t have any at all. If you sense a person is uncomfortable with too much eye contact, drop your eyes and take a note or two. Don’t talk when you do so. Talking when you aren’t looking at someone can make you seem evasive or insecure. I have been coaching people on their communication skills for 18 years. In all that time, I have met only two people who had too much eye contact. Their overly intense eye contact made people uncomfortable, thus ruining a crucial communication strategy. Most people need more eye contact, not less.
Your voice is a powerful delivery tool. Most professionals interact far more on the phone than face-to-face, so leveraging the power of your voice is crucial to connecting effectively. By varying your speed, volume, tone, and inflection, your voice helps bolster your impact. The key element is variety.
Most people, when they get nervous, speak too quickly. If you speak too quickly in front of an audience, you will sound as if you are apologizing for taking up their time. You’ll diminish your presence and your appearance of confidence. The speed of your voice is tied to how you use your eye contact. If you move your eyes too quickly between people, you will automatically start speaking faster. If you stay with one person for a full thought, you will automatically slow down your rate of speech.
There are times when increasing the speed of your voice can help suggest urgency. In that case, the speed is helpful, as long as you’re not going so fast people can’t stay with you. Again, it’s about variety. Occasionally speeding up or slowing down can draw people in and make them pay attention.
Two factors can cause an audience to become overwhelmed by a speaker’s pace: (1) the speed of the speaker’s voice and (2) the absence of pauses between sentences. Sometimes a speaker’s pace is perfectly fine, but he doesn’t pause long enough between sentences, so the audience is subjected to a barrage of information. Pausing between sentences is essential for an effective delivery. When you pause at the end of a sentence, you give your audience a chance to process what you have just shared. Your audience needs a break from receiving content in order to sort the content and file it away. If you keep talking without pausing, your audience quickly becomes overwhelmed and can’t take in any further information. At that point, people either stop listening entirely, out of exhaustion, or they stop listening momentarily, so they can reflect on what you just said. In either case, they’ve stopped listening to you. We may think that by speaking faster or cramming in more words, we are sharing more content. In fact, we’re sharing less, because our audience has limits on how much it can take in.
Volume is the most basic component of your vocal quality. If you can’t be heard, you won’t have any impact. This is rarely an issue when you are delivering a presentation before a large crowd. In those settings, whoever is controlling the microphone and sound system can increase the volume so you can be heard. It’s more of an issue when you are presenting at a meeting or on a conference call. Most conference rooms are designed to absorb sound. The carpeting, the ceiling tiles, and the cloth panels on the walls are all designed to muffle the sound so that you aren’t heard out in the hall, in the room next door, or on the other side of the movable wall. If you don’t project, your voice is lost.
In addition, you’re competing with all sorts of distractions. The air conditioner is blowing, the projector is humming, someone’s laptop or phone is beeping. Those distractions are compounded when you’re on a conference call. One guy is blowing his nose; someone else is rustling through papers; one person is on a cell phone while walking on the street. The distractions are multiplied ten-fold. Your goal in both settings, at a minimum, is to be loud enough to be heard. For many people that means projecting louder than they think is necessary.
If you have ever received feedback that you aren’t speaking loudly enough, envision yourself having to bounce your voice off the back wall of the conference room. At the very least, always speak at the volume needed to reach the person farthest from you, even when you are looking at the person closest to you. In addition, you may need to simply open your mouth wider. In order to be louder, you need more air to pass over your vocal cords. Taking a deeper breath and opening your mouth wider will help.
Again, as with your pace, it’s the variety in your volume that helps you remain interesting. Being loud enough to be heard is the absolute minimum. Beyond that, raising your voice louder will add urgency to a key point. Lowering your volume will draw people in and convey “This is important.”
Much of our work is done on the phone. At Exec|Comm, we have worked with many professionals who staff an “inside sales” team or a customer service center. Uniformly, teams of people who spend their days on the phone with customers have in front of them one of two things: a mirror or a sign that reads “Smile.” Your facial expression impacts your tone of voice. When you smile genuinely, your voice automatically sounds more positive and has more energy. Your tone will sound more optimistic. Obviously, the sign reminds people to smile. The mirror sends a subtler image. It makes people think, “Look at the look on your face. Right now, would you want to talk to you?”
The goal with inflection is variety. It’s easy, especially on the phone or when reading from notes or a prepared text, to allow our voices to go flat. Very few people are truly monotone. But many people speak within such a narrow band of inflection that it’s hard to tell whether they have relayed a key message versus simply shared a data point. Your voice should punctuate the important ideas you want to convey. On a conference call, our voices are somewhat muted. That means that whatever range of inflection we have when speaking face-to-face with someone is diminished on the phone. Therefore, we have to be that much more conscious of our inflection and sound that much more emphatic on the phone in order to sound engaged.
In the last decade, a substantial portion of the population, at least in the United States, has adopted a speech pattern that began with what was known in the 1980s as “valley girl” speak. A key component is what we at Exec|Comm refer to as up-speak, where the speaker’s voice inflects “up” at the end of a sentence as if the person were asking a question rather than making a statement. It creates hesitancy in the person’s delivery that makes it unclear whether the person is asserting a position or checking in with the listener to see whether the other person agrees. It’s hard to convey a sense of confidence when asking a question.
Many of our consulting firm and law firm clients hire us to coach their associates as they approach consideration for partnership. We often start with a conversation with the Chief Talent Officer to understand the needs of the individual being coached. In the last few years, many of those conversations have sounded the same: “He’s a smart guy. The clients like him. He does great work. He just doesn’t sound like a leader. He can’t command the room. He doesn’t sound confident enough. Everything sounds like a question.”
Often, people use up-speak to sound more accommodating.
“Where do you live?”
“I live in Hoboken?”
Obviously, the person knows he lives in Hoboken. He phrases it as a question as if to say, “Have you ever been there? Are you familiar with it?” It’s a softer way to reply. Unfortunately, if it becomes your speech pattern, and you reply to requests for advice that way, it impacts your credibility.
That doesn’t sound like advice. It sounds like you’re hedging your bets in case the client doesn’t agree. As we progress in our careers, others look to us for advice. Advice and guidance should sound like statements, not questions.
If you know that up-speak is an issue for you, here’s an effective way to sound more certain and self-assured. Use sharp, clear, definitive hand gestures. We’ll discuss this issue more in depth in the section on body language.
How we carry ourselves says a lot about how we feel about ourselves. It also tells our audience, of one or 100, how to perceive us. Here’s a simple example. If someone walks to the front of the room with her arms folded in front of herself, she will automatically be perceived by at least some of the audience as standoffish, distant, upset, or even angry. That closed-off body language is considered negative. And yet, just because the speaker folds her arms does not, inherently, mean she feels any of those things. In fact, she may just feel comfortable in that posture or, as is often the case, she may be cold.
Closed body language is not intrinsically negative. It’s negative because it leaves the speaker vulnerable to being misinterpreted. Your goal with your body language is to minimize the audience’s ability to misperceive you.
We have discussed the need to deliver clear messages so that you can control how people hear your content. Your body language is a huge part of the message you convey. You want people to focus on your content, not be distracted because they are trying to interpret your body language. As we’ve discussed from the first page of this book, being a more effective communicator means focusing less on ourselves and more on other people. You focus on the needs of the audience by eliminating distractions for them. If you have open, neutral body language that’s hard for someone else to misinterpret, you make it easier for your audience to pay attention to your ideas. Maintaining an open posture or stance and using open hand gestures and facial expressions allow you to appear more conversational, which puts your audience at ease and enhances the perception that your audience is getting the “genuine you” at the meeting.
In all settings, you must convey that you are comfortable in your own skin. A confident, genuine self carries a certain sense of being comfortable. Think of the last time you watched the Olympics. The athletes not only accomplish great feats beyond what we mere mortals can achieve, but what makes it fun to watch is that they make it look easy. They might be sweating at the end, but they swing around those parallel bars or take off from that ski jump or spin and tuck and flip off the high dive with such grace that we all sit back and think both “Wow!” and “I bet I could do that” at the same time. That’s the magical part.
Presenting with confidence won’t qualify you for the Olympics, but when done well, it helps you carry the air of a champion.
Everything about your presence in the room should convey that your focus is on your audience, not on yourself. When we are sitting at a meeting, whether across the desk from one person or at a boardroom table, our energy should be directed across the table at other people. If you sit all the way back in your chair, you risk being misperceived as disengaged, bored, disinterested, or distracted.
If you can feel any part of the back of the chair against your lower back, chances are you are leaning back in the chair or slouching. If you slouch during a meeting, you will get tired faster. All of your upper body weight is pushing down on your lungs and you can’t breathe as easily. In addition, if you are all the way in the back of a swivel chair, you have positioned yourself so that any extra or nervous energy will go into swiveling, which will make you look distracted, bored, or childish. Pull yourself out of the back of the chair and sit up straight. If you sit on the front two-thirds of the chair, where your spine is an extension of the pedestal under the seat, it’s almost impossible to start swiveling. In addition, because you can’t feel the chair against your back, you are more likely to sit up straight, which increases your height at the table, makes you look more like a player at the meeting, and allows you to breathe easier, which will help you maintain your energy throughout the meeting.
Try to keep your spine perfectly vertical. If you lean to one side because you are resting your elbow on the side of the chair, you look less commanding and professional. Keep in mind that these aren’t hard-and-fast rules, but rather overall guidelines. It’s not wrong to lean when you’re sitting at a meeting; it just doesn’t look as good as when you sit up straight.
One of the key reasons people lean to one side when sitting is that they cross their legs. If you need to cross your legs, cross your legs. Just be conscious of keeping your spine straight.
Take your space at the table. You’re there because you or someone more senior than you feels you deserve a place at the table to share your ideas and opinions. You’ve earned the right to be present. Don’t disappoint those around you by shrinking from the role you’re in. Avoid sitting with your hands in your lap. It pulls your energy down into the chair and can make you appear supplicant and shy. Sit so that your forearms rest on the table just broader than your shoulders. Keep your hands apart. Here’s an easy trick to remember where to place your hands. You’ll almost always have a pad with notes on it when you’re at a meeting. Put the pad directly in front of you. Think of it not just as carrying your content. Think of it as a prop. Your hands should stay on either side of the pad. They should not be on top of the pad or in between you and the pad.
Why keep your hands apart? As soon as your hands come together, they are likely to engage in the fidgety behaviors that make us seem nervous. When we’re at a meeting, we all have a certain amount of energy. That energy will work its way out of our bodies one way or another. We’ve all seen the man whose leg starts bouncing uncontrollably or who spins his pencil around between his fingers, or the woman who keeps rubbing her hands together or twirling a lock of hair. All of those motions reflect energy trying to find a way out. All of these actions beg other people to misinterpret our intent. Regardless of how we actually feel at the meeting, we can be misperceived as impatient, bored, anxious, distracted, or in need of a bathroom break. Our fidgeting is distracting and diminishes the impact we could have.
If you keep your hands apart, you’ll be more inclined to use your hands to make a demonstrative gesture that helps convey your point. We all gesture to some extent, clearly some people more than others. Gesturing doesn’t mean flailing your hands around wildly. It means allowing your hands and your face to help tell your story. When you’re relaxing with your friends and family, you gesture naturally. Bring that same you to the meeting and you’ll look and sound more genuine and therefore more convincing.
Regarding your hand gestures, your goal isn’t to play charades or act out what you’re talking about. You’re just bringing energy and enthusiasm to your topic. You can use gestures to show size, shape, movement, and feeling. If you’re talking about a major initiative for your department, your gestures have to be broader and more expansive. If you say, “I’ve got a big idea,” with your hands close together, there’s a disconnect between the words you’re saying and the image you are conveying. Our sense of sight is much stronger than our sense of hearing. Your audience is more likely to believe the visual rather than the words. Make sure the gesture reinforces the words, rather than runs counter to them.
Let’s say you are moving resources from one department or location to another. Show that movement by putting your left hand off to the left and then showing the transition to the new place off to your right. This creates a mental image for your audience and helps it see the transition you envision.
Some people have been told to rein in their gestures; that they talk too much with their hands. I have been coaching people on their presentation skills for 18 years. I have met three people whose gestures were so large and emphatic that they were distracting. Rarely is using your hands too much the issue. Let loose and be yourself at a meeting. Chances are you’ll be fine.
There’s an easy way for you to use gestures more convincingly and therefore appear more conversational at a meeting. Simply follow the suggestion above about how to use eye contact. If you talk to only one person at a time, even if you’re in front of a large audience, you’ll gesture naturally because you’ll look and sound as if you are speaking in a more intimate setting.
Your face is a powerful tool for conveying how you feel about a topic. The entire videoconference industry exists because we all feel the power of being able to see each other when we’re meeting. Most content can be conveyed just as effectively through an email. But we feel we get a better, more complete version of someone’s opinion when we meet with her face-to-face. We can hear the message coming from her lips, listen to the tone of her voice, and can see her expressions as she shares her ideas or reacts to ours. Yet, many of us can appear stone-faced at a meeting, whether we are sharing an idea or listening to someone else’s.
Years ago, I met with a small group of partners from a global law firm to discuss a program for mid-level associates on how to start cultivating client relationships. They were recruiting from the best law schools. Their associates were all smart people. After a few years on the job, the associates had already developed solid legal skills and understood the context for the work they were doing. And yet the partners were hesitant to bring many of the associates to meet clients, or even have the associates speak up on the phone. When I asked why, one partner said, “They come into my office to get an assignment or tell me the results of their research and the looks on their faces and the tone of their voices are blasé, as if they don’t really care. I can’t risk that they’ll have the same tone in front of the client. It’s offensive.”
Another partner said, “An associate came in my office the other day to tell me we had won on our motion to dismiss a major case. His facial expression was so flat you would have thought he was telling me he ordered a salad for lunch.”
The partners’ main concern was that the associates needed to convey their messages as if they cared, and their facial expressions needed to play a big part in that impression.
When presenting information face-to-face, one of the keys is to smile. I mentioned this earlier when discussing tone of voice. But it’s equally important from the perspective of an overall impression. When you meet with someone, you should look like you want to meet with him. If the issue or news is neutral or positive, your face should reflect that. A smile doesn’t mean a big goofy grin; it means look engaged. If you have to deliver bad news or the topic you are discussing is awkward or uncomfortable, and smiling would seem inappropriate, you should still look like you are glad to be present to help the other person through a difficult time.
If you have ever been told you look severe or even angry when you aren’t, here’s a simple trick. Simply part your lips slightly when you are listening to someone. Don’t drop your jaw: you’ll look stunned. Just a slight part of the lips is all you need. It softens the look of your face and makes you seem more open to other ideas.
There’s an odd juxtaposition about presenting to a large group of people. All eyes are on you, and yet the presentation isn’t about you at all. The presentation—why you’re in the room—is about meeting the needs of the audience. So although your listeners are looking at you, they care less about you and more about whether you are going to meet their needs. To meet their needs, you have to appear confident in yourself and your ideas.
When you’re standing in the front of a room giving a presentation, whether you are using notes or a projected visual such as PowerPoint, your stance conveys a great deal about how you feel about yourself and your material. As with all body language issues, your goal with your stance is to minimize the audience’s ability to misperceive your intent.
Take a solid stance.
To project confidence to an audience, take a solid but neutral stance. Place your feet directly under your hips. If they are too close together, you’ll look tentative or unsteady. If you stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, you’ll risk being perceived as too casual or too aggressive.
Keep your weight evenly balanced. Most of us prefer to put more weight on one leg than the other. Unfortunately, after about 10 seconds, you will need to shift your weight to the other leg. Soon you’ll be swaying back and forth in front of the audience. That’s the antithesis of steady.
When you’re standing, keep your hands apart. When you bring your hands together, whether sitting or standing, you are likely to appear either more fidgety or more closed off. In either case, you will diminish your presence. Your best bet is to drop your hands by your side. It’s a completely neutral posture that is hard for your audience to misinterpret as too casual, too aggressive, too nervous, or otherwise. Also, because it will feel ridiculously awkward to stand with your arms just hanging by your sides, you will be more inclined to use your hands to gesture naturally. By contrast, if you fold your arms across your chest or stick your hands in your pockets, you will likely feel so comfortable that you won’t gesture, and then the nervous energy will “leak” out in other ways, such as rocking back and forth on your feet, swaying side to side, or nodding excessively with your head.
I reiterate, these are not “rules.” Presenting with your hands clasped in front of you or behind your back is not wrong. However, it can be less effective, as it diminishes your overall appearance to your audience.
I have worked for years with the members of the senior leadership team of a national food distribution company. When I first began working with them, they asked me to attend their national business meeting where the men I would be coaching presented to an audience of about 1,600 people. Each executive took his place on the broad stage, one at a time, and spoke to the audience for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. All were adequate presenters, but each had his own approach. One rocked back and forth on his feet. Another paced from side to side across the stage. A third moved back and forth on the stage, coming close to the edge and then retreating to the back of the stage. A fourth shifted nervously and fidgeted with his fingers. The CFO, the person with the flattest content to deliver, stood perfectly still in the center of the stage. All of his energy was concentrated in the upper half of his body. His gestures were large, and he routinely gestured out toward the audience while he spoke.
Each man was able to watch his colleagues, and because the event was recorded, all were able to watch their own performances after the meeting. I debriefed with each executive. Before watching the recording with them, I asked each man who he thought had done the best job presenting at the meeting. Every one of them, except the CFO, said the CFO had the strongest presence of the bunch. (The CFO wasn’t stupid. He said the CEO was best.) Each executive felt the CFO seemed the most credible, the most confident, and the most comfortable in his own skin. None of them was a bad presenter. But the ability to control his nervous energy set the CFO apart from the rest of his peers. It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about more effective versus less effective. The cumulative effect of a number of different behaviors impacts the overall impression you leave with an audience.