Episode #130: The Presenting Persona

Be authentic, be yourself, be conversational - all good advice, except the presenter does have a distinct role to play though. When we are speaking in front of others, it is no longer an intimate one on one conversation. The talk has a purpose, there is an audience, there are expectations, time limits apply. We have to rise to the occasion.

Telling ourselves that the people are gathered here for the information and not all that fluffy stuff that goes with presenting is self-delusion. Today, everywhere you turn people are hammering you with video of themselves presenting something or other. The technology is such that you don’t even have to click anything yet the video is off and it has subtitles, so you don’t even need the sound. Live video on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc., is another no safety net new innovation that is merciless. Social media has unleashed a monster of constant content deluge and high wire danger.

Once upon a time, you didn’t have to concern yourself much with self promotion, but in this day and age of endless outmuscling the competition, everyone is a self proclaimed expert. The flood of exposure makes it hard to remain relevant. Your competitors are perpetually pumping out an array of content to reinforce their personal branding, to make sure they, and not you, are top of mind. Imagining that your inherent wonderfulness and righteousness will be discovered is wishful thinking.

When we get up to speak in front of others we are being judged. The audience is questioning whether we have the goods or not? Do we know what we are talking about and are we bringing value to them? Most of us spend 99.9% of our time speaking with others at a distance of under a meter apart (unless you are in the countryside, in which case I will be two meters!). This is a case of using everyday conversation where we don’t need to project our voice or body language.

When we are on stage as a presenter, we have a different role. We need to radiate credibility at distance and a big part of it is the amount of energy we pump out into the audience. This is known askior chi- the intrinsic energy we possess. I have studied Tai Chi for ten years and Karate for 47 years, so I have seen and experienced it. I know it is a fact. People who are low energy, quiet, softly spoken types struggle with this projection piece. They are fortunate though, that the microphone technology today is so very good, that you can project quite well, without having to have a big voice or shout yourself hoarse.

The energy projection to the audience part however, is a bit harder because there is no technology to help with that. Strong and big gestures though can accentuate a vocal point we are making. The tendency with a lot of speakers who are untrained, is to use no gestures or to use them quite low, around waist or hip height. Holding your hands protectively in front of your groin or clasped behind your back, kills the opportunity to add gestures to the mix of your communication catalogue. Using gestures held too low means, they are hard to see, invariably small in scale, not very dynamic and totally fail to engage the audience.

Get them up and around shoulder level and make them larger than you think they should be. From our point of view, as the speaker, it seems we are getting wild with our gestures, but from the onlookers viewpoint, it looks congruent with what we are saying.

The voice strength is the same concept. We need to hit the words that bit harder than normal. The power we put into the words translates to the audience as credibility and trust. We sound like we are convinced and the audience wants to see that from us. We don’t want to be hitting all the words at the same power.

We need a solid stream of strong vocal delivery, from which we vary our strength, either up or down, for variety. A monotone puts people to sleep, so we need vocal change to break through and grab attention. Counter intuitively, an audible whisper is very effective to draw attention to the point we are making. This works particularly well when we combine it with the body language of whispering a secret, something just between the audience and ourselves.

Mentally we need to get into a different space when we are presenting. Our persona needs to switch up from normal everyday interactions. We are now in the realms of showbiz and we have to exaggerate things a bit more than normal. Pausing for effect is more powerful than just delivering a constant stream of words. We need to give the audience thinking time so that the ideas don’t just crash over the top of each like a succession of wild waves in the surf.

Using our facial expressions, in combination with our words, is more theatrical than normal conversation, but it is very effective. A quizzical expression when we mention something we doubt, just adds to the power of doubt we want to foster in the mind of the audience. If we watch plays, then we see this usage all the time, because the actors are restricted to face, voice and body to get their message across. We don’t have to be manically melodramatic but we can up the tempo quite a bit by using the same techniques when we are presenting.

Part of the problem is self constraint on our willingness to do this. We mistake normal conversation as the base of reference when we are a presenter. Our starting point should be the stage and what actors are doing. It is also too much. We need to wind it back from that, because that is too exaggerated for business. Having said that, we do need to lean in a bit harder in that direction, more so than in the direction of a corridor conversation.

Mentally, we need to see we are now in a different role. We are there to perform for the audience, to lift them up through our information, our passion, our belief, our commitment. The delivery of the information is critical and there is no escaping that some things work better than others. Speak in a tiny little voice and you will rapidly become totally invisible to your audience. Start striding. around the stage like a berserker, left to right, left to right and you will distract the listeners entirely from what you are talking about. The bigger the audience, the bigger the venue and the larger the persona you need. We have to step out of our everyday selves, to step up. We need to project if we are going to get cut through. Shrinking violets have no place on stage.