Talk Tip: Take the Stage

Q: My manager wants me to come across as more confident when we report out to the higher ups. I am confident in what we’re doing, but she says it takes me a minute to warm up. She’s worried I can lose people, or they will get impatient and derail me with questions instead.

If you want to hold people’s attention long enough to get them to think, feel, or do something different, you need to be convincing from the first moment they notice you. When presenting to the higher ups, you usually want to convince them of one of two things: 1) you need their help with a problem, or 2) you and your crew are totally on top of it, so let's wrap up this report and go about our business.

When you present from a stage, it’s easy to know when you have to start being convincing: you “take the stage,” meaning you step out of the wings and into the light where your audience can see you. In a meeting room, taking the stage can be more subtle. It may be when your boss calls on you to speak, but usually starts way before then.

If your meeting is in person, do you make eye contact and greet people? If on video, do you join with your camera on and say hello? If you are sending texts before the meeting and someone calls your name, do you respond immediately without fumbling your phone? There are all kinds of ways to show you’re alert and engaged before you present.

And then, when it is your time to speak — your time to formally step into the light — you want to nail the transition from the previous speaker to you. An easy way to do this is to thank the last speaker—bonus points for detail—before launching into your presentation. If you’re in a conference room, this could mean saying thank you as you stand up, and then making eye contact with everyone in the room and introducing your topic even as you’re walking up to the front. If you’re on a video call and need to bring up your own slides, rather than narrate how you’re bringing up your slides (which everyone knows you’re doing anyway), your might use that time to talk about how jazzed you are to show everyone the progress the team has made since your last update.

See how this works? The attention is going to be on you anyway, so you might as well be aware of it and actively influence it to help meet your goals.

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