I'm Matt Abrahams, your guest host for the week.
Welcome to Radio Headspace.
I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business and I'm the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter and the popular podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart.
I've spent my career helping people feel more comfortable and confident in their communication, whether it's giving a presentation, making small talks, speaking up in a meeting or asking for a raise.
We're closing out this week of mindful communication by talking about presence.
Presence is what allows us to manage our nerves, listen deeply, craft clear messages and engage authentically.
But it's also what many of us struggle with.
It's how we use our body and our voice to really emphasize what it is we're saying.
Many of us focus so extensively on our content, what we're saying, we want it to land, we want it to be confident, we want it to really help our audience, that we forget to focus on how we are delivering it.
We are in our heads so much that we don't think about what people see.
That's our body.
What people hear are voices.
So what ends up happening is people's presence is degraded by their over-focus on their content.
Now, I am certainly not saying that we should not focus on our content.
We absolutely should.
But we also need to make sure that we spend time practicing and reflecting on how we show up.
I have helped many people with their physical presence in lots of different ways.
What comes to mind right away is I was working with someone who was relatively new to their management position.
They had been a great individual contributor and they were promoted into a new role where they really needed to exert confidence and influence.
So we got rid of the filler words, the ums, the uhs, the likes and I-means by working on their breathing.
They would breathe very shallow as they spoke.
As they'd get excited or nervous, they would breathe in their upper chest.
And when you do that, there are times where when you're done speaking...
You still have air in your chest.
And what often happens is, as part of the exhale, to get that air out.
Before you speak again, you'll say a filler word.
Try it at home.
Try saying the word um while exhaling.
It's very easy.
Now try saying the word um while inhaling.
Now that's impossible.
So what we trained and worked on with this person was to end sentences fully out of breath so that they couldn't say out and they couldn't say anything.
They needed to take an inhalation which builds in a pause, which slowed them down and got rid of those filler words.
So there are things that you can do to reduce your filler words.
Now, this person also looked down when they were speaking.
So by practicing speaking while staring intently, they became more comfortable with looking more casually.
So there's a lot of things that go into presence.
Filler words are one of them that we need to reduce.
And then looking people in the eyes really does make a difference when you speak.
When it comes to presence, we are not the best judges of our presence.
So we have to do a few things.
One, we have to solicit feedback.
Go up to people and just say, what is one thing I can do to make my presence stronger?
Another thing that you must do, I believe, to improve your presence is to digitally record yourself.
You can do this when you're virtual.
You can do this when you're in person live.
A great way to practice presence is to record yourself and then watch it.
Not once, not twice, but three times.
I make all my students do this.
They hate it, but they love it because they learn so much.
After recording yourself digitally, watch without sound.
Second, listen without video.
And then finally watch both together.
I want you to pay attention not just to the things you'd like to change, but pay attention to the things that go well.
That's really important too.
All of us have a strong presence, some of us stronger than others, but we can find things that we like and we need to lean into them and keep doing them, and we find things that we need to change.
I'm often asked how presence and authenticity connect.
It is absolutely true that you should be authentic to yourself and be who you are in your communication.
That said, a large way that we establish our authenticity is how we show up.
So I never recommend that people be disingenuous or do things that are phony for themselves.
That said, really reflect on what's true for you, and how can you mirror and demonstrate that in your presence?
So if you're somebody who's really passionate, maybe you'll speak a little quicker than I might like, or you might gesture faster.
That's okay, as long as it's being consistent with Thanks so much for joining me this week.
Communication is critical to your success in business and your personal life.
Taking time to be more confident and connected will only help you.
My name's Matt Abrahams.
Check me out at Think Fast, Talk Smart on LinkedIn or at FasterSmarter.io.
Thank you.
