Chapter 4

You

Before I start talking about you, let me make sure we get something straight. When you are presenting, it is NOT about you. Too many presenters believe that when they get up in front of a crowd, big or small, it is all about them. It is their time to shine because all eyes are on them. This could not be farther from the truth. When you are on stage you are there to serve, educate, inspire, and engage. You are not the hero; the audience is the hero. To put it simpler and in the words of Nancy Duarte, the speaker is Yoda and the audience is Luke Skywalker.¹ Yoda was the teacher. His job was simple: He mentored and taught Luke to go on a journey to change who he was. Yoda helped Luke to realize his potential and led him to greatness. Every member of the audience will go through some sort of transformation when you present. Some will feel inspired to change something in their lives. Maybe you will have convinced them to hire your agency or buy your product, or maybe they will learn something new about themselves, their job, or the world. Whatever change, the fact is that your presentation will influence a new behavior. This is the basis of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey. There are hundreds of books out there focused on The Hero’s Journey (and I suggest you read at least one of them), so I will keep this short. Mr. Campbell puts it perfectly,

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.²

In this quote, YOU are the fabulous force that takes the audience on a mysterious adventure. How awesome is that? When you present you get to take people on a journey that will change them in one way or another. When I first realized this, it took an enormous amount of pressure off me as a presenter and performer. Sure, people look at me and have expectations, but not for the reasons I once thought. They look at me because they want to experience something new, fresh, and exciting. They want to be entertained. They seek inspiration to make a decision. They want to be persuaded down a new path.

Aristotle once said that one of the most important parts of a speech is to produce persuasion.³ If you work in sales or business development, nearly 100 percent of your presentations are pitches. It is your job to get the audience to choose you over the other guy. After a job of 20 years of selling, I can tell you from my experience that nine out of ten times I won the pitch not because of WHAT I was selling but HOW I sold it. When you are presenting it comes down to three things: passion, persuasion, and respect. Passion is about emotion—how you feel and how you transfer that feeling to the audience. Emotions are contagious. When you truly feel happy, the audience will feel happy. When you feel excited, the audience is right there with you. Seth Godin said that communication is the transfer of emotion⁴ —and he is right. When you get up to present, you have an opportunity to change the way the audience feels. That is a powerful position to be in. And at the end of the day, it is all about your presentation style. Persuasion is about getting the audience to take a chance with you—to join you on a journey of change. Whether you are selling something or telling a story on the TED stage, you are there to persuade the audience to trust you and believe what you believe. Once you do that, you are no longer working alone. You and the audience are now working together toward a common goal. TED conferences have become the crème de la crème of speaking opportunities. Whether you are on the TED stage in Vancouver or on one of the many smaller TEDx conferences around the world, it is a privilege and honor to be there. It’s like making it onto a major league baseball team—only the best make it to TED.

Let Me Tell You a Story

I was the bass player and lead vocalist for a band in Boston for 10 years. We played everywhere they let us play. Needless to say, we played all the time—we were tight and frankly, very good. One Friday night we were playing a Fraternity party at Tufts University. The room was packed and the audience was rowdy. We were halfway through our first set (we typically played three one-hour sets), when I realized I just was not playing as well as I usually did. I was missing chord changes and forgetting lyrics. I was frustrated and it was showing. The crowd had not yet noticed, and before they did, I needed to do something fast. It was my job to entertain them and keep the party going for the next three hours. Rather than worrying about my playing, I changed my focus to my stage presence. I went wild—jumping around, dancing on and off the stage, and doing call-and-response with the crowd. It was so much fun and the crowd dug it. My mood enhanced their mood. At 2:00 a.m., when we were packing up, a guy came up to me and said, “That was the best bass playing I have ever seen.” I knew at that precise moment that my emotions were contagious that night. He had no idea how poorly I played, and it did not matter. My style that evening was to have fun and go nuts and the crowd obliged.

Your Unique Style

Style is defined as: a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created, or performed. Unique is defined as: being the only one.⁵

As a presenter it is critical that you identify and accept your own unique style. As I have said before, the way you present will be as important as the words you speak. Yet, until you identify your style, you will not be capable of focusing on what you want to say, because you will be concentrating on your voice, clothes, the way you stand, your hands, and so on. An important thing to learn is that the way you look, speak, and act can have an enormous effect on the audience. In fact, if you look and act uncomfortable, then the audience will pick up on that and pay more attention to your physical presence and not the content of your presentation. Two weeks later, they will remember how you looked rather than what you said.

Think back to a time you saw a presenter who was uncomfortable on stage. Maybe she was shifting from one foot to another and her hands were shaking. Perhaps, it was a younger man dressed in t-shirt and jeans while the entire audience was in suits. Maybe it was a woman who waved her arms in big circles and talked quickly. Chances are you were focused on their physical traits and had no idea what they were talking about because their style was so distracting.

It can be a huge challenge to identify your style. Are you cool and calm? Or, are you animated and excitable? Perhaps you are more casual and less formal in your style of dress. Whatever it is, you need to identify it and accept it so that you can move on and focus on what you want to say. Oftentimes other people and their styles influence us. As Sir Isaac Newton said, “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”⁶ There is nothing wrong with borrowing from people you admire. It could be a politician, a former teacher, a friend or relative, or even a rock star.

Let Me Tell You a Story

When I was 11 years old, I picked up my first guitar and I knew at that moment I wanted to be a rock star. The Who was my favorite band, so I modeled my playing after Pete Townshend—the swinging arms, the jumping, the singing—I did everything he did. I studied him—read books, watched movies, and did everything I could to emulate HIS style. All the while, I was ignoring the evolution of my own personal style. Truth be told, I would get extremely nervous when I would perform in front of audiences, so I would become Pete, rather than showing my true self; I was hiding behind his persona, HIS unique style. It became a mechanism for many years, which eventually caught up to me, as I started writing and performing my own songs. It did not seem right to act like someone else when I was playing my own songs. It took a long time for me to figure out that I could borrow little bits from Pete and incorporate them into my own style. The results were amazing, as once I was comfortable with my own style, I could focus on the music and entertain the crowd.

The great thing about your style is that it will always be evolving and is going to change over time. You will get older and your mannerisms will change. You may not use humor now but perhaps in the future you will. Most importantly, you will begin to adapt to your surroundings. An informal meeting with your colleagues can be casual and laid back, where a presentation to the board or a TED talk will require you to step up your game. Sometimes a t-shirt is acceptable, whereas other times you need to be more business casual. Whatever the arena, you need to stay true to who you are. It is okay to borrow from others, but make your style your own. Not many of us can present like Steve Jobs or Bill Clinton. And that’s okay. They are unique in their own way. Your job is to learn from them but not BE them. As Marilyn Monroe once said, “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are.” If we try to be someone else, then we are not being authentic.

I was once preparing to keynote a large technology conference. I felt underdressed and told someone on the event staff that I was sorry for what I was wearing. My good friend and colleague, Robert Rose pulled me aside and said, “Don’t ever apologize for who you are. Now go up there and knock ‘em alive!” Robert always felt that saying “knock them dead” was the wrong approach—I couldn’t agree more!

As you identify your unique style, ask yourself a few questions:

1. Am I a fast talker or do I take my time?
2. How do I use my hands?
3. Do I like to wear a suit and tie, or am I a black turtleneck kind of person?
4. How do I use my body? Do I move around or stay put?
5. Do people think I am funny?
6. Do I speak softly or am I loud?

There are no right or wrong answers. The goal is to get you to think about who you are and how you appear when you present.

Your Voice

Your voice is your main instrument when you present. You will have your slides, your hands, and your body, but in the end it is your voice that connects you with the audience. It can be an extremely powerful tool that you can use in many different ways. Be it cadence, volume, or pitch, you can use your voice to excite, engage, and inspire the audience. A perfectly timed pause can make your point that more important. A whisper will force the audience to listen, and you will pull them in. A loud exclamation will make your audience sit up and listen. However you use your voice the most important thing to remember is that your voice needs to be natural and authentic. Not necessarily conversational or too casual, but not forced or robotic. Not too loud, but loud enough to garner attention. Not singing, but with enough variation in tone and melody that it comes across rehearsed and engaging. Remember, the audience will know when you are trying too hard and in that moment you will lose them.

A Quick Exercise #3

Over the course of one day have three conversations with three people with whom you have varying relationships. Pay attention to how you speak—not what you say—but how your voice changes. Are you softer with some people? Louder? Do you talk quickly? Do you make jokes? For example, call your mother or father (or an elder you have a close relationship with). Then have a conversation with a close friend. And finally talk with a superior at work. Pay attention to how your voice changes: your inflections, your emphases, and your cadence. Do you feel more comfortable with some people and not others? Does your voice quaver? The important thing is to pay attention to how your voice changes based on the audience.

Cadence

Merriam-Webster defines cadence as a “rhythmic sequence or flow of sounds in language or the beat, time, or measure of rhythmical motion or activity or finally the falling inflection of the voice.”⁷ Think of your cadence as the pace in which you speak. It is your own personal rhythm. Sometimes you will speed up to show enthusiasm and excitement and other times you will slow down to emphasize a point and give you and the audience a break. What you have to say is important; using cadence makes it that more important. Cadence is something we all possess. The question is whether it is effective.

I am from Boston. While I don’t have the accent (I don’t say Cah in place of Car), I do talk fast. And when I am excited or passionate about something, I talk really fast. So fast that people can have a hard time understanding and following what I am saying. When I started presenting, it was very hard for me to slow down. But I needed to. My cadence was quick and rapid fire. I learned very early on to slow down my pace, but not so much that it feels unnatural. I still talk quickly, but I use it to engage the audience. I start slowly, but near the end of a presentation I talk at a fast clip to show enthusiasm and passion. It works for me. Now is the time to see what works for you.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a master of using cadence. We are all aware of his “I Have a Dream” speech. Some say it may be the greatest speech of all time; who am I to argue? While it is an amazing speech in regard to its message, it is also a masterpiece on how to speak to a rapt audience. Take a moment to find the speech online and watch it from beginning to end paying attention to Dr. King’s rhythm. He starts slow and poised, and by the end, he is almost singing every single word. He used his voice as an instrument to play out his words. This is not something that came from the cuff. Dr. King worked tirelessly on his style and delivery. As you watch him from the perspective as a presenter, you will see how great he was at using cadence.

On the day Dr. King delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech, he had what I call the presentation trifecta:

1. Set and setting: There were 200,000 rapt audience members begging to be educated, inspired, and engaged that day in Washington.
2. Subject matter: Whether it was controversial, emotional, poignant, or simply needed to be said, Dr. King had it all.
3. Confidence: Dr. King had this in droves. He believed in himself and more importantly in the words he was saying.

When you have all three of these, it is nearly impossible to fail. And on that day in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. had it all. And what he also had was a controlled cadence. What do you remember about the speech? More often than not people remember two things: The final few minutes and the use of repetition. And frankly that is all you need to remember. Some have said that it was at the end of the speech that Dr. King went off script and was improvising. What I know is that it is at the end of the speech when Dr. King has the audience in the palm of his hand and can do no wrong.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New ­Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of ­Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of ­Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.⁸

His use of the words “Let freedom ring” from the instantly recognizable song “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee” is not only relatable but it also allows him to make his point over and over. He uses something that everyone knows and turns it into his own. By the end of his speech, Dr. King is at a fever pitch, pausing after each sentence to let the audience roar with approval and understanding. It truly is an amazing thing to witness, as it is a nearly perfect and flawless performance.

A Quick Exercise #4

There are two exercises I use to get people in touch with their own rhythm and cadence. First, I want you to learn and master a piece of dialogue that is not your own. I suggest taking dialogue from a favorite film or a couple of minutes of a favorite comedian’s routine. The reason for this is to focus on the delivery and not so much the content. It is not an exercise on what you say, but how you say. It may feel like an acting exercise to learn a soliloquy, yet, what I want you to do is pay attention to the actor’s pacing, inflection, volume, and overall delivery. Practice with them and then try it out with some friends and family.

When it comes to honing my craft as a presenter, I spend a large amount of time watching comedians. I do this because their entire success of telling a joke comes down to one thing: timing. In 1991, I happened to be one of Roseanne Barr’s personal assistants. The stories I could tell…. But I digress. Roseanne was a master at telling jokes. Jokes were faxed into the production office from random people every day (it was 1991, so there was no e-mail or Internet, yet). One day, I pulled a joke off the fax machine and read it to myself. It was not that funny. I shrugged and was about to throw it away, when Roseanne grabbed it from me. She read it over two times and then told the joke. Not only did I laugh but so did everyone in the office. It was not so much the words on the page as it was Roseanne’s impeccable timing.

During a lunch break, fire up YouTube and search for your favorite comedians. From Jerry Seinfeld to Louis CK to Sarah Silverman, you will learn a lot on cadence, timing, and storytelling.

The second exercise is quite simple. Record yourself giving your presentation. I only want you to record the audio. If you video yourself you are going to get hung up on how you look, how you use your hands, and so on. Once you get over the sound of your own voice, you will be able to notice your pacing and your overall rhythm. People are always surprised by how quickly they talk when they are presenting. So often, people confuse passion and excitement with speaking too quickly (just as I used to). Record yourself a number of times employing different cadences and techniques. The one piece of advice I can give you without even knowing a thing about you, is to slow down and speak slower than you think you actually are. I suggest doing this every month or when you are working on a new presentation. Listening to your cadence and rhythm will give you enormous insight on how you present. Yes your words are important, but the way in which you deliver them is just as important.

Your Body

As I discussed earlier in Chapter 2, nonverbal communication and body movements play a large role on how you present and engage the audience. I discussed how the audience will pick up and focus on your body movements rather than what you are saying when you are physically and visually uncomfortable. Conversely, if you are comfortable and are feeling confident, your body movements can play as big a role as the words you say and the cadence at which you speak. There are many ways you can use your body during a presentation. I have already talked about hand movements in Chapter 2, so for this section I am going to discuss the rest of your body.

I am a big fan of using as much of the stage as possible. Remember, I am a performer so I like to move around. If you are not on an actual stage, but in a conference room, you are still standing in front of an audience and, therefore, you have the floor; so use it. Sometimes you will have a lot of room and sometimes you will have a small area to use. Whatever you do, do not become confined and stay in one place. It will look unnatural. As I have said a number of times so far and I will continue to say time and time again, you have to be authentic and look natural when you present. By doing so, you are respecting the audience and their desire to be engaged by a real and authentic person.

Standing in one place for 30 minutes is not normal and the audience will know it. So move around. But, and this is a big but, don’t move just for the sake of moving. The audience does not want to watch you pace back and forth across the room. Respect them and don’t treat them like they are at a tennis match.

There are different ways to move around the room:

1. Pick a spot in the room where you want to emphasize your points. Think of it as a symbolic exclamation point. The idea is that every time you want to make a strong point, you go to the same place. The audience will begin to recognize the pattern, so as you make your way to that spot, they will know something important is about to be said.
2. If your presentation follows a linear path, such as a story with a beginning, middle, and end, you can start at stage right and make your way all the way to stage left for the ending. It will give your presentation a physical flow to help you move through your content.
3. When you are on an actual stage, it is implied that you are going to do more than just talk to the audience. There is an expectation that you are going to entertain in addition to educating the audience. There is an implication that you are going to put on a show. So use the stage. Find two or three spots and consciously move within them. There may be no rhyme or reason to your movements, but at least you are moving and keeping the audience engaged.

A Quick Exercise #5

When I was discussing cadence, I suggested you to record your voice so that you can hear how you are speaking. This time, I want you to video yourself so that you can see how you present. But I want you to video yourself doing two very distinct things.

Before you begin, I want you to find a place in your home (or apartment) where you have some room to move around. Move chairs and lamps out of the way. Create a space to present. I do not want there to be an audience, unless of course you have a dog or cat.

First, I want you to video yourself telling a story that you have told a hundred times. I want you to choose something that you know every single detail by heart. The reason for this is because I don’t want you to focus on the content. I want you to know the material as if it were second nature. Then tell the story to your imaginary audience. Get into it. Have fun. There is no one to judge you, unless you have a cat (a dog would never judge you). Do this a couple of times using the techniques I discussed earlier. Choose a spot to make your point. Move from right to left. Have fun.

Second, I want you to video yourself giving a real presentation to your imaginary audience. Choose a recent presentation so you know the material. Do the same things—find a spot to make your points, move from right to left, and so on.

This is an exercise you should do from time to time. Again, once you get over how you look and sound, you will begin to notice how you use your body to help you make your points and engage the audience. Your body, head, eyes, hands all play a major role on your unique style. It often feels odd to watch one’s self, but this is a great way to see yourself the way the audience sees you. These videos are tools from which you can begin to identify and improve your unique style.

The truth is that some of you do not need to do these exercises. You are part of a special group who are born with the innate abilities to engage and entertain audiences. But for every one of you, there are one hundred others who are not born with huge amounts of charisma. But I ask you, is charisma something we are born with, or can it be learned?

Charisma

What makes a person charismatic? Is it their ability to hold the attention of an audience and inspire them to take action and make change? Is it their voice, their story, the way they excite the audience? Is it the way they look, their personal, unique style? Truth be told, it is all of these things. Who do you know that is charismatic? For me, names like Bill Clinton, Jim Morrison, Martin Luther King, and Oprah Winfrey come to mind. Yet, when I did a Google search for “charismatic leaders of the 20th ­century,” I was surprised by the images on my screen: pictures of Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson were mixed among pictures of Steve Jobs, Caesar Chavez, and Winston Churchill. And when I sat back and thought about it, it made sense. Incredibly charismatic people can control an audience and influence them to do whatever they want them to do. Hitler and Manson may have used their charisma for evil deeds, but at the end of the day they were incredibly affective and influential leaders. And truth to be told, they were amazing speakers and presenters.

There are many definitions for the word charisma, but the one I like best is: “A special charm or appeal that causes people to feel attracted and excited by someone.”⁹ It is the use of the word excited that resonates with me. If I can excite the audience when I am on stage, then I know I am getting through to them and this in return excites and fuels me—which is the best kind of relationship you want with an audience. The Greek definition of charisma is gift of grace,¹⁰ which can be interpreted as a gift from the gods—or put simply, a special characteristic that we are born with. For years there have been debates that we are either born with or without charisma. While there are some people who are born leaders, I believe that anyone can learn to be charismatic.

Charismatic Leadership Tactics

In their Harvard Business Review article, entitled “Learning Charisma,” John Antonakis, Marika Fenley, and Sue Liechti state that the greatest leaders have mastered the art of communicating clear and visionary messages that engage and inspire audiences of all sizes.¹¹ They go on to say that great speakers help listeners understand, relate to, and remember a message. The number one trait that these leaders possess is charisma. For many years, charisma was a trait that most people believed was innate. Great leaders were simply born charismatic. Yet, according to Antonakis, Fenley, and Liechti, charisma is something that can be learned. They break it down into twelve traits they call Charismatic Leadership Tactics or CLTs. Of the dozen CLTs, there are four that I believe are extremely useful when it comes to presentations: Metaphor, Story, Contrast, and Confidence.

Metaphor

Aristotle said in his work, The Rhetoric that metaphors make learning pleasant; “To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are the pleasantest.”¹² A metaphor is a great way to create imagery in the minds of your audience and stir up their emotions.

In case it has been a while since you were in school, let me quickly define metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech that identifies one thing as being the same as some unrelated thing, thus strongly implying similarities between the two.¹³ It is more powerful than a simile, which simply compares two things. Examples of metaphors:

1. He broke her heart.
2. I am a rollercoaster of emotions.
3. You are the light of my life.
4. That homework was a breeze.
5. Her voice is music to his ears.

Metaphor is a wonderful way to take confusing or challenging subject matter and present it in a way that the audience can understand and relate. When you are presenting data or analytics to an audience, oftentimes you and the rest of the people in the room can get lost in the numbers and have a hard time understanding what it all means. I always urge people to dig deep into the data and find the story within the data. By using a metaphor, you can take the mundane and make it engaging and interesting. When you see your audiences’ eyes start to glaze over and the smartphones come out, it may be a sign to use a metaphor to bring them back from the brink.

There are two ways to use metaphor in a presentation: planned and adlibbed—and both are easy to learn but hard to master. You can always take the time to figure out and create a metaphor for your presentation. If you are talking about financials, then using images of deep valleys and high peaks are great ways to illustrate trends. Do not use metaphors just for the sake of it. Use them accordingly and remember to respect the audience’s attention span when it comes to the mundane. This is when the adlibbed metaphor is best used. If you notice that you are losing the audience or someone asks you to better explain your idea, then you may have to take a left turn, go off script, and create an image so that they can better understand the complexities of your subject matter.

A good example of this was when I was leading a seminar on e-mail marketing. I was talking about calls to action and explaining how e-mails have to have areas to click as calls to action. I started to talk about opens, click through rates, and how to measure success. My audience was made up of old school marketers who had spent most of their careers marketing offline. Email marketing was a new tactic. A click through meant nothing to them. They were not getting it and I was losing my audience. I switched gears and said, “We have to give the customers a big shiny red button to click. Each time a customer clicks the red button we will be able to follow their path from that e-mail to our website all the way to the moment they make a purchase. When we send a catalog in the mail, we don’t know if the customer saw a product on page 12, drove to the store, picked the product off the shelf, walked to the register, and bought it. But with the shiny red button, we know exactly the moment they clicked it and can follow their entire path to the register which in this case is the cart on the website.” I adlibbed a metaphor (the shiny red button) and it worked.

Story

I talk a lot about story in Chapter 7 and how it is crucial to use in order to engage your audience. By using story you will not only grab your audience’s attention, but also take them on a journey filled with imagery, emotion, and action. Charismatic leaders tell stories all the time. At his famous 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University, Steve Jobs opens up by telling the audience that he is going to tell them three simple stories each about certain periods in his life. Was Steve Jobs a dynamic speaker? Not really. He stands behind the podium the whole time and reads the speech from his papers. But because he is such a true leader, a successful businessman, and a visionary, he captures and engages the audience by using personal stories to reel them in.

Affective storytelling is a great way to engage the audience. Just saying these six words, “Let me tell you a story,” will open the ears and hearts of your audience. It is not a very difficult task to tell a story. We do it all the time. When someone asks you how your weekend was, chances are you tell them stories about what you did. To use story in a presentation takes practice. You have a captive audience. The opportunity is there to engage them. You can use a script or adlib to tell a story. It is a muscle that needs to be strengthened, and the best way to do that is by flexing it as often as you can. To be a great storyteller, you need to practice, practice, and practice some more.

Contrast

Contrast is a bit easier to use than metaphor because you just have to explain what you DON’T want. To tell the opposite of what you are trying to get across. As Antonakis, Fenley, and Liechti put it, “contrasts are a key CLT because they combine reason and passion; they clarify your position by pitting it against the opposite, often to dramatic effect.” Think of John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” When a leader is rallying the troops, he or she may say, “We don’t want to fail!” Or, when a store manager is talking to his staff, he may say, “I don’t want more than three customers in line at a register.” Or, when a teacher is prepping her students for a test she could say, “No one can get below a 75 on this test.”

Sometimes when we are presenting, we are so focused on ourselves and the outcome we want; we expect the audience to immediately understand and jump on our train of thought. But the truth is that sometimes the audience does not fully get it until we tell them what we do not want. By using contrast, you can very quickly get across what you do not want. As soon as you get the contrast out of the way, you can then focus on what you DO want and the audience will understand. I believe that opening with a contrast statement will get your idea across, engage the audience, and create tension—which is always a good thing!

Some contrast statements I have used in the past:

• “A 1.5 percent conversion rate will be considered a failure. We have to get to 3 percent by January!”
• “Don’t just stand there and read your slides.”
• “The last thing I want is for our customers to come to the web page and not know what to do.”
• “Just because you are sitting in the back row doesn’t mean I won’t call on you!”

Confidence

In regards to the CLTs, confidence is about setting high goals and conveying that they can be achieved. This goes hand in hand with passion. The more you believe in what you are saying, the more passionate you will become and by doing this you bring the audience with you on your journey. Most of us can agree that Steve Jobs was incredibly confident; some confuse this with arrogance, but in reality Steve was passionate and believed he had the tools and knowhow to change the world with technology. What made Steve such a charismatic leader was that his confidence had no boundaries—he instilled it with everyone he worked with.

There is a wonderful story about Steve Jobs when he was first developing the iPhone told by Susan Kalla, a Forbes contributor, back in April 2012:

When Apple first started developing the iPhone, Jobs found the plastic display scratched easily, so he decided the front needed to be glass. Corning had developed a chemical process in the 1960s called Gorilla glass that was highly resistant to scratches. So, Jobs called Corning’s CEO Wendell Weeks and ordered a huge ­shipment of Gorilla glass for delivery in six months. Corning had stopped making the glass years before and transitioned the factory to LCD displays, so Weeks told Jobs it would be impossible to make the glass in volume. “You can deliver, don’t be afraid,” Jobs insisted. A stunned Weeks, unfamiliar with the Reality Distortion Field, tried to explain a false sense of confidence would not trump the product’s engineering challenges. Yet, Jobs was unmoved. He stared unblinking at Weeks and said, “Yes, you can do it. Get your mind around it. You can do it.” An astonished Weeks called the managers of Corning’s Kentucky facility making the LCD displays and told them to convert to Gorilla glass immediately. “We delivered in under six months,” Weeks said.¹⁴

The real power behind confidence is simple: Believe in yourself. I realize this is a lot easier said than done. There are thousands of self-help books out there focused on confidence and self-esteem. This is not one of those books. And while I have a Masters in Counseling Psychology, my goal here is not have you delve deep into your psyche and figure out how you really feel about yourself. What I can offer are some suggestions to make you feel more confident in front of an audience.

The first is to believe in what you are saying. In fact, if you do not believe it, then the audience will not believe it. Whether you are on the TED stage telling your personal journey or in front of a client presenting media buy results, you have to truly believe what you are saying. Because when you do, you come across confident and passionate and there is no way the audience will lose interest.

Second, use words that instill confidence. Words such as I think and Maybe and Possibly do not instill confidence as much as words like, I know and I believe and I am positive. It may be subtle, but look how changing a couple of words can make a statement sound more confident:

• “I think you can rise to the challenge” versus “I know you can rise to the challenge.”
• “I think we can get this done on time” versus “I am positive we can get this done on time.”
• We will try to figure this out” versus “We will figure this out”

When you are putting your presentation together, use words that give you the confidence you need to get your message across. While it may have backfired on him, when George H.W. Bush said, “Read my lips; no new taxes,” he said it with strong conviction and confidence. It would not have been as powerful or frankly as memorable if he had said, “Read my lips; I don’t think there will be new taxes.”

As a presenter, being charismatic will enable you to better educate, inspire, and engage your audiences. By learning the four CLTs that I just described and working them into your presentations, you will be better equipped to win over your audiences and persuade them to join you on your journey. And while this all seems like a lovely relationship, the reality is that sometimes you simply cannot win over an audience. They can be a finicky group, so let us talk about them.