4 tips to help you to be more present when public speaking

The importance of presence is often discussed as a key part of successful public speaking. What is it? Well, I think it’s one of those things that can be easier to experience than to explain, but I’ve dipped into a useful explanation by Amy Cuddy in her book, ‘Presence.’

"Presence…is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential…Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves."

Being present is not just something that happens, it’s something that we actively engage in. It’s something that we can both tap into in the here and now, and also cultivate over time. In public speaking, it helps us to connect our thoughts and feelings, body, and voice, so that we can speak with confidence. That all sounds great, but how do we achieve that?

In this article I am sharing four strategies that I use when preparing for a public speaking engagement. These are tried and tested techniques which I teach as part of my workshops and 121 training sessions, and which I used as part of preparing for, and delivering my ‘Public Speaking: Feel the fear and say it anyway.’ talk that I gave at the Women’s Inspire National Conference #WINDublin17 on 10th October 2017.

1. Visualising a positive outcome: In the run up to the event I spent time daydreaming about giving the talk, so that I could create a really rich (and positive) picture of how it would go. I pictured myself speaking comfortably on stage, and also pictured myself after giving the talk, feeling happy about how it had gone.

2. Connecting with the fear: While I am quite comfortable giving presentation to a group of 20, the thought of speaking to over 200 women was quite daunting, and each time I thought of it in the weeks and days coming up to the event, I felt a knot in my stomach. While my natural reaction would be to push this feeling away, I knew I had to do what I teach my clients to do, which is to connect with the physical sensations that we experience when we feel afraid or anxious. For me, these often include clammy palms, a tightness in the chest and nausea. This is something that I’ve written about in more depth in a previous article. By being present with these feelings, I could work with my body rather than against it, and this ultimately helped me to go into a state of ‘flow’ when I spoke.

3. Connecting with the space: The evening before the Women's Inspire event, I visited the conference room, and while at that point, it was quite bare, I stood where I was likely to stand the next day, pictured how it would be full of people. I took in the space, breathed into the space, and pictured myself filling the space with my presence, and this gave me a sense of ownership of the space. Having experienced being in the room, I could then add this detail to my visualisation.

4. Becoming grounded: I find that when I’m stressed I will naturally move into my head, so becoming grounded is so important. So, to start the day off on the right foot (literally!) I took an early morning stroll on Velvet Strand beach in Portmarnock. As the sun was just contemplating rising, I braved going bare foot and standing on the damp, somewhat cold sand, and was just there, being there, as I set a positive intention for the day.

Later on, (back in my shoes this time!), in the 10 minutes before I gave my presentation, I focused on becoming grounded again by noticing my feet in my shoes, and how they were making contact with the ground. I also noticed my body making contact with the chair that I was sitting on. This again helped me to come back to my body and thus be more present, more focused, and more in a state of flow for when I got up to speak.

Joining the dots

While I have listed these as four strategies, they are very connected, and often focusing on one alone can be enough to have everything click into place. It’s about finding what works at a particular time, for a particular situation.

So over to you, how do you prepare for public speaking? What works for you and what doesn’t work?