Life is short and people close to us die. When they do so can we stand by our beloved's coffin and say goodbye or do we let that occasion pass?. Can we take our place in the world even when it might be the hardest day of our lives?When I spoke at my father's funeral I felt a deep honour in representing the family, a deep sense of awe talking about a man's life  and what that meant to me and a deep sense of purpose that his death had to be marked well.

Of course getting your head around public speaking is mainly for work but its for celebrating our lives too.

I've just added a two day weekend course for public speaking in Manchester on October 20-21.  Its my favourite course - "taking your place in the world"  I want to get my courses thriving in Manchester so if you know of anyone who might want to come please tell them.
cheers
John

Here are some thoughts about what presence is.

• the ability to at ease when you are the centre of attention

• the ability to be comfortable with silence and pauses and taking your time

• the ability to connect and be relational with others when you are your authentic self

• the ability to be fully in the moment - to be here right now

• to be comfortable in our physical bodies - to notice the heart rate increase and see it as normal

• allowing ourselves to take risks and to be appropriately vulnerable - and in the process  helping the audience to trust us

It doesn't stop there - you could add

• the ability to inspire people to action (however from being who you are,  rather than putting on a performance)

 So presence isn't about learning how to do the right gesture, how to structure a presentation or how to dominate an audience with power words. Its NOT about learning to bolt-on behaviours.

It's really about internal changes in how we think. Re-thinking how we are in front of people. Some of the learning is actually more about unlearning all the advice and practice that just gets in the way.
But the good thing is that its about learning to be ourselves with more ease. That means we don't have to travel that far to really understand why we need to learn presence first.

So presenters please re-think. Remember its not just you doing a powerpoint presentation on the day - we had 8 presentations using slides. One presenter on hearing the audience groan about him using powerpoint said "Don't worrry, mine is far more interesting - far more interactive". It wasn't, it was not interactive at all. I felt even more let down by that promise. Remember facts are something we can easily get from handouts/pdfs/the net if we want to. But make us want to rather than force feeding us.

Please, please think about presentations FROM the audience point of view. Edit your information right down to one or two main points not 25. Tell us personal stories about what inspires you and how your work changes people's lives, get the audience to think out loud and to play with your ideas, get us moving, help us meet fellow members of the audience. Learn how to connect as a real person rather than as a performer. Then we would leave feeling alive and really connected to the organsiation and each other. Pretty please.