Episode #362: The Physicality Of Presenting

Presenting is physical labour. We can do it with minimal energy or we can expend large amounts of effort. There are dangers with both extremes. The dull speaker, barely getting the words out of their mouth and hard to hear, isn’t going to ignite much interest from the members of the audience. The nervous speaker, pacing across the stage like a junk yard dog prowling the fence perimeter, is very tiring to watch. The energy output cannot be at one constant setting either. Full bore on being boring and hard to hear and full bore on extreme outputs throughout, both tune the audience out. Variety is the key to keeping the audience with you. They get into a rhythm, and we have to become asynchronous in our delivery, to break their rhythm to maintain a stranglehold on their attention.

Today we are in the Age of Distraction, with our audiences being trained on social media one minute video outputs, sharply shortening their attention spans. Anytime the audience gets too much of the one thing they get bored. They are scrambling to get their phones to escape us and access more interesting content, all instantly available on the internet. Delivery which is too soft, too loud, too continuously the same thing, will see audiences flee us.

There are key words and phrases we need to highlight with either more power in or less power in. A secretive yet audible whisper is just as powerful as shouting a word to the audience. The point is the whole sentence can’t be a whisper or a shout, but only handcrafted words and phrases which we highlight for effect to get into the febrile attention span of the listeners.

Pauses are blank space which can elevate words and phrases which come before or after. It allows the audience to focus on what is coming or on what has just been said. When we speak continuously without breaks, it is like winter surf, where the big rollers crash on to the shore, each one wiping out the residue of the previous one. We want a break here with a pause where the attention span can be elevated and the content can receive the concentration it deserves.

Our gestures must link up with our words and be congruent with what we are saying. If we need a big gesture we should deliver one. Often, when we are teaching participants public speaking, they are fearful to make a big movement with their gestures. When we replay the video and ask them if the larger gesture we have coached for looks crazy or out of place, they always say “no” it looks congruent. We can use gestures in creative ways. If we talk about something in the past, we can thrust our arm backward to emphasise the point, this is in the past, it is behind us.

If we refer to ourselves, we can bring both hands back to point at our chest. It indicates we are talking about ourselves and not someone else. If we want to involve the audience, we can spread our arms wide and open our palms out, to indicate our listeners. If we want to show some scale either small or large, we can use our hands to do that. If I lift my right hand to the top of my head or above and cup the hand, so it is ninety degrees to the floor, it indicates a measuring rod to show height or scale. If I push my hand down by my side and hold the palm ninety degrees to the floor, it indicates a low height or a small amount. If I say, “the whole world…” a good gesture is to spread my arms wide and extend my hands to the side at about 170 degrees. Bringing my palms together right in front of my chest shows something very small or narrow.

Breath control is important for singers who are using their voice as their medium. They get training for this but what about speakers, who are using their voice as their medium of communication. Normally, no one gets any training. The singer and the speaker secret is lower diaphragm breathing. This means the lower abdomen expands and contracts as we breathe, rather than having the breath focused in the upper chest. Place your hand on the front of your tummy at about navel height. When you breathe in the tummy should expand out and push against your hand. When you exhale, it should contract and draw your hands into toward your body. This gives us a rich source of oxygen and breath control to use when speaking, such that we never sound tinny and short of breath.

Another powerful element for speakers is to project your ki (気) or intrinsic energy into the audience. By directing your energy into those in front of you, they feel energised by you and they keep listening, rather than reaching for their phone to escape. Try to imagine you are pushing your energy to the back wall of the venue, covering the entire audience. Don’t keep your intrinsic energy bottled up inside of you – share it with the assembled masses. To help with this, use big gestures and use voice power when speaking loudly, to drive the force into the audience in front of you. This requires conscious thought at first, but after a while you will be doing this naturally, without any thought required.

We have physical power and we need to plan for this when we are preparing to give talks. This is another reason why rehearing our presentations is so important. If we work on these things in preparation for the talk we will be able execute them during our presentation.