12 Easy Ways to Achieve Presence & Charisma-By Gary Genard, Ph.D

 12 Easy Ways to Achieve Presence & Charisma

1. True “Inspiration”: Breathing For Focus and Presence

- In.spi.ra.tion 1. A breathing in, as of air into the lungs => Get in the habit of “belly breathing”

2. How to Look and Sound Confident

- Create Space: Good speakers reach their level of comfort by occupying an appropriate amount of space. They strike a balance between diminishing their authority by folding in on themselves, and gesticulating wildly or pacing back and forth like a caged animal.

- Control time:  5, 20 and 40 minutes - that time is extremely subjective to a speaker – stretching out like salt water taffy or compressing shockingly – while remaining basically objective to audiences.

Practice using pauses and silence. Listeners need permission to take a “mental breath” now and again.

3. Tap into Your Natural Talents

- By acknowledging that a speech situation is simply one of the many “performances” we give every day or our lives, we can embrace each such opportunity instead of fearing it.

4. Show Audiences Your Goodwill

- As a speaker, you must place your listeners front-and-center at all times. Look at people when you talk to them, and use facial expressions – exactly the way you would to a friend sitting across from you at Starbucks.

5. Reveal Your True Self

- We need to throw away the mask, to let our true self come through for our sake and our listeners’. Hiding from who you really are is much harder work for you and your listeners.

6. Have a Dialogue With Your Listeners

7. How to Get an Audience to Trust You

- However professional we need our presentation to include an emotional component so that we reach the hearts as well as the minds of our audience members.

8. Do This to Make a Lasting Impression

9. What Is Your Body Saying? – Using Nonverbal Communication

- Communications expert Albert Mehrabian found that 93 percent of message reception comes from nonverbal communication over verbal content.

- Spend less time on the content of your presentation and more time on how you hold yourself, move and sound as you speak. Some excellent tools to help you in this pursuit are: a mirror, friends and colleagues, and more important, a video camera.

10.Speaking With Credibility and Authority

11. How to Make Yourself a Powerful Speaker

- Competence. Advertise your competence in everything you say and do. When you trust yourself and what you are saying, your audience will trust you.

- Rapport. Find a way to identify with your audience’s values and experiences, and externalize the connection by what you say. Wherever you can, show that you and your listeners share common ground.

- Delivery. Every audience arrives with preconceptions about a speaker.

12. Your Best Visual Aid Is You!

- But before you do all that – give some serious thought to how you’ll look and move in front of your audience as you make your compelling arguments. The visual element of your speech that is “you,” is a hugely important persuader.