This first week we will look at what is (and isn’t) a powerful presence. The good news is that with practice you can learn to increase your presence. And this week we will take our first steps in learning how to reduce tension, help craft your intention, and have you cultivate your attention. We begin, though, where all speakers must; with audience analysis and a look at the structure and content.

For the coming week we will be looking at internal presence – how you can build your confidence. We will look at your objective for a talk or communication, followed by how to manage that inner critic that sometimes tries to sabotage us. We have a great deal of strategies to share this week which can help manage nerves: you may have heard of breathing, and visualizing, but we also have some unique ones like eating greasy chips!

This week we will look at some of the many aspects of external presence: the Five Ps (pace, pitch, projection, posture, pausing), as well as eye contact, movement, gestures, and rest positions. If you speak slowly, for instance, you could be perceived as not smart, or you could be giving the audience time to process. Conversely, speaking quickly can make people see you as smarter, or they might miss what you are saying.  Make sure that you are consciously competent and making that choice.

This week we are going to look at how to prepare for a presentation and how to structure that presentation. Starting with strategy, to the body, and then the introduction. We’ll also look at how to structure for an audience who is short on time.

This week we are going to approach presence from the angle of storytelling. We’ll look at the art and science of storytelling, the story pine, passion pitch, and vulnerability. Stories are crucial to being a powerful presenter. Your only real job in giving a talk is to have something valuable to say and to say it authentically in your own unique way.

This week we are going to approach presence from the unique angle of strengths. Just a reminder, this will reference the VIA character strengths survey you did way back in Week 1. If you haven’t done it, then now is your chance. This is a common area of positive psychology, but not many programs focus on using your strengths to present, or on how to pull up a lesser strength by using a top strength. We’ll also explore the concept of acting “as if” you have a strength you need to present as well as how you get to Carnegie Hall: as the old joke goes – practice, practice, practice!