The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (31 page)

To create this sense of comfort and intimacy, David (the new executive who was preparing his crucial presentation) focused on projecting warmth. He made good use of the internal tools detailed in
Chapter 5
, especially the angel wings visualization. He told himself that the people he was presenting to were
his
angels, gathered here to work together. He told me that he felt a kind of warm pride, a surge of affection for his audience that he knew was palpable.

David also focused on increasing his voice fluctuation to enhance
persuasiveness, on smiling when he wanted a warm voice, and on dropping the intonation of his voice when he wanted to convey confidence and authority.

David called me within hours of delivering his presentation with the wonderful news that it had been a major triumph: he’d been so inspirational that people came up to him for days afterward to express their admiration.

Pause, Breathe, and Slow Down

When I woke up on the morning of my very first speech, I was feeling quite confident. It was a short, easy piece, encouraging my fellow students to donate blood for the local children’s hospital. I’d been granted the first five minutes of a plenary lecture, so I knew that I would be facing a full auditorium, but saying a few words for a good cause seemed easy. I was eighteen years old, and though I had never faced an audience of twelve hundred before, I thought, “Really, how hard could this be?” In fact, I was quite eager to bask in the spotlight and climbed the stairs leading to the stage with assurance and aplomb.

But with each step, more butterflies started fluttering in my stomach. By the time I reached the top, I was feeling ever so slightly out of breath. When I turned to face the audience, reality hit me like a ton of bricks: a sea of faces, twelve hundred pairs of eyes looking expectantly at me. My mind froze in panic, and I went through the entire speech nearly without breathing. In case you were wondering, this is officially
not a good idea
. By the time I finished I could barely see, the lights blurring in front of my eyes. To this day, I’m not quite sure just how I made it off the platform.

For the next five years, every speech outline I prepared was emblazoned with one bold word scrawled across the top of every page:
BREATHE!
Today, when learning a new speech, I’ll often still include notes to myself every few pages:
Pause. Breathe. Slow Down.

Though this may feel unnecessary in the comfort of home or office, things are very different on stage. In the heat of the moment, with adrenaline flowing through your veins, your brain speeds up.
This is why everything around you can seem to be happening in slow motion. With your brain going on hyperdrive, you’ll also tend to speak faster. But your audience is still operating at normal speed.

In addition to practicing, it can be helpful to ask a member of the audience to give you a prearranged signal reminding you to slow down. It’s really worth paying attention to your tempo because the slower you speak, the more thoughtful and deliberate you will sound, and the more attention people will give to what you say.

During that first speech, I felt certain that if I were to pause even for an instant, I’d lose my audience’s attention forever. It takes courage to pause. But, just as in conversations, pausing regularly during your presentations is an important skill to acquire. It’s one of the hallmarks of effective speakers and really is one of the key tools for great speaking. Throughout your speech, pause frequently, deliberately. Have the confidence to make your listeners wait for your words. It’s called a
dramatic pause
for a reason: it adds drama.

After delivering a key point or an impactful story, pause for a few seconds to let your audience take it in. If you’ve just used humor, have the courage to wait for the laughter to swell and subside before you move on. Pausing is important both to begin and to end your speeches. When you walk on stage, come to the center, face the audience, and stop. Remain completely silent as you count three full seconds while slowly sweeping your eyes across the crowd and making eye contact. This may feel endless, but it will be well worth it. Nothing rivets an audience’s attention like this kind of silence.

Pausing is equally critical to end your presentations. Don’t run off stage.
Sicilienne
is a slow, somber piece of music by composer Gabriel Fauré. A young musician told me: “The pause at the very end, right after the last note, is so critical that without it, the entire performance is ruined. On the other hand, when done right, the audience is so spellbound that often not a single person stirs for a full minute.” After your last words, pause, then say “Thank you” and stay there while you endure the applause for a few seconds.

If you’re having trouble pausing, try color-coding your speeches. I used this technique for years when I first started out. I would use one blue bar for a one-beat pause, two red bars for a two-beat pause
(having the difference both in color and in markings helps in the heat of the moment, when your mind is racing and you can’t think clearly).

I would also underline any part that needed warmth, to indicate that I should smile. Yes, it really worked—people actually told me I seemed wonderfully at ease, fluid, spontaneous, and natural.

You can try out a lot of these tips in low-stakes situations, for instance, during a parent-teacher association, service club, or homeowners’ meeting. Let’s say you’re at your next PTA meeting. You’ve always thought it would be nice if the school’s fading hallway could be repainted. You’re going to get a few minutes to present your case, and you need to keep everyone focused on what you’re going to say. Since this issue is really not a big deal for you one way or the other, this would be a good time to try out the techniques you’ve just learned: voice fluctuation, strategic pauses, and intonation drops to make your message compelling.

Midcourse Corrections

Imagine that you’re in the middle of a presentation, and you suddenly make a mistake. You stutter, you say the wrong thing, you miss a point, or your mind simply goes blank.

If you let your internal critic take over and start berating you for this, you risk launching your fight-or-flight response. Your body would shut down “unnecessary” functions such as your brain’s ability to think rationally—probably the last thing you’d want in that particular situation.

So what to do?

If you’ve luckily noticed the critical thoughts before the corresponding emotions fully blossomed, aim for a quick perspective shift (rewriting your reality). Just considering, even for a second, the mistake you made as a
good
thing can be enough to stop the fight-or-flight response in its tracks. Because the brain’s first reaction to new concepts is to accept them as valid, in the extra second it takes disbelief to arise, you will already have moved on with renewed confidence.

You can tell yourself, for instance, that business moguls and
entertainers make mistakes purposefully to make themselves more relatable to the audience. Sam Walton (the founder of Walmart) would drop his notes on his way to the lectern. Frank Sinatra would carefully mess up his shirt collar before stepping on stage. You’re in good company.

If the negative emotions have already arisen, you’re going to need to flood your body with oxytocin to turn off the fight-or-flight response. To do this, follow the instructions below:

Though this may seem like a lot of steps, the whole sequence can happen in less than two seconds. With practice, this becomes so natural, it
happens at lightning speed and you’re back in grounded confidence within seconds. The human mind is astonishingly quick and agile.

Practice this process with little crises as often as possible, so that when a big crisis hits, it’s second nature. Use the go-to visualization you developed in
Chapter 5
.

You could practice this during meetings. Imagine that you’re not completely happy with an answer you gave and your inner critic is acting up. While the rest of the group converses, run through this midcourse correction before you speak up again.

Speech Day: Getting into the Zone

The single most important guideline for a successful speech is simple: make it about them, not about you. As soon as you start worrying about yourself—wondering how you’re doing, or if this or that sentence was good enough—self-criticism can easily arise. If, instead, you can make it all about your audience—wondering how they’re doing—you take the focus off yourself, lift your self-consciousness, and get into a state of goodwill, which will be read and appreciated by the audience.

Use any of the tools you learned in
chapters 4
and
chapters 5
either to get yourself into this state of goodwill and stay there or to get back there whenever you need to.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Your presentation should have one main, simple, crystal-clear message, supported by three to five key points.

Support each point with an entertaining story, interesting statistic, concrete example, or vivid metaphor.

Make your presentation short and entertaining. Watch the value of each sentence.

Arrive early if you can; walk the stage to visualize and own it.