Presence and the tools you need before public speaking can flow

We teach presence. That is what speaking circle teachers do around the world when we are teaching public speaking. We think that learning presence first is really important. But what is presence?

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.

Additional Note added 19th October 2016

I now teach this in two stages. Public being before presence. Can I be? Can I be seen, can I look? Can I breathe when I am the centre of attention? Very small steps around public being before it leads to presence.  I think it's easy to teach and to learn.