“I hate seeing myself on video!  That person I see up there is not at all the person I want to be!!!”

I hear this all the time when I show my clients their first video at the start of their workshop.  It’s torture.

To see that person up there on the screen and feel powerless because it’s not who you want to be, and not even that person you know you are.

This is the struggle.  And it’s an incredibly important breakthrough when you are able to watch a video of yourself and love seeing yourself. 

People get a little swept away by it.  It always makes them laugh with surprise.  I often hear, “I can’t believe it, I love watching myself!”  and “I can’t believe it, I couldn’t stop watching myself.  I found myself really listening to myself and I was loving it.” 

Most people are not there.  What, and who, they are being is stiff, uncomfortable, disconnected.  And very unnatural. And they hate when they see themselves being this way.

By the same token, people don’t want to look the way many people look after they’ve done “speaker training”, like a speaker on steroids, overly pumped up, overly polished, over-rehearsed and scripted, performing not communicating.  That too is unnatural.

The worst part for people watching their first video is they don’t know what’s wrong.  They know there’s something wonderful trapped inside them, but when they get up to speak, it stays trapped.  This disturbs your confidence.  It disturbs your power. It disturbs your ability to be understood.

Many people compensate for their discomfort by communicating more energetically. And they call it “passion”.  But because they’re forcing it out, it looks forced.  Not authentic.

Being in a senior executive level position doesn’t alleviate this discomfort.  As a matter fact, it makes it worse, because there’s more “pressure to perform.” Your presentations are more visible and more widely critiqued.  Many senior executives dream of being free of presentation anxiety.

I’ve just described 80% of the people I see giving corporate presentations.  It’s so common, it passes for “normal”. 

But most people KNOW they’re capable of MUCH more.  Even if not one of them knows what’s wrong or how to get there.

The reason you don’t want this suffering for yourself is not just the effect it has on you, but the effect it has on your audience – because when all this is happening, they can’t fully connect with you.  It puts them in the role of spectators, a mass of people observing you from a distance.  And an audience of spectators very easily becomes an audience of critics.  An audience of disengaged spectators is very hard on you as a presenter.  This is how most corporate audiences look during most corporate presentations.

What is supposed to happen when you’re talking to a group is a mutual interchange of energy, affinity and understanding. What that means is, you are supposed to feel something powerful and positive coming back to you from the group. This something should be constantly evolving and amplifying as you speak, until you end with a crescendo of great energy between both you and your audience.

If you don’t feel something coming back to you from the group as you’re speaking, if you don’t feel the audience changing throughout your talk, they are not really engaged.  If you can’t tell if they’re engaged or not, they are not, because an engaged audience is impossible to miss.

This back-and-forth energy and understanding between you and the group creates a beautiful spontaneity. You respond spontaneously, they respond spontaneously.  They don’t have to speak, they’re nodding, they’re laughing, they’re leaning forward in their seats, they’re moving. You can feel their energy flowing toward you.  And you respond to it. 

When you have this kind of rapport with them, the audience makes you respond in the moment, they make you laugh, they bring out the best in you.  Even when you’re virtual.  You’re the person you want to be.

When I’m asked to critique a live presentation, I spend much of my time watching the audience as I listen to the presenter.  I can evaluate an entire presentation simply by observing the audience.  Regardless of the nice things they may say afterward, their faces, especially their eyes, during your presentation are incapable of lying and I can see exactly what they’re thinking.

I just watched a virtual presentation by one of the Vice Presidents I’m coaching and the audience was leaning forward, smiling, heads nodding, eyes smiling, in love with the presentation.  The VP said, “I was in my element.”  This is another way of saying, “I was being the person I want to be.”

I just received this email from a client who completed the Transforming Your Presentation Skills Workshop:

“I want to write to share that I attained a new career achievement today, thanks in very large part to the workshop I took with you.  I presented to executives at a major conference in San Jose.

“It was a gathering of serious intellectual heavyweights, including technology fellows, international policy-makers, and thought leaders from Google and Accenture. 

“It is a little silly, but I feel like a rock star walking around the conference now with so many people approaching me to meet and to start conversations. I’ve already been asked to speak at two more events and I just got off the podium a couple of hours ago.

“This is the person I wanted to be when I signed up for your classes, and I am forever grateful to you.”

The person you want to be is who you are and is right here, even if that’s hidden from you for the moment. Some people chance upon various parts of the process required to bring this being out into the open, to show up as the person they want to be.  It’s really part art and part science.

Helping executives master this process is the reason we created the Transforming Your Presentation Skills workshop. As you can read in the comments on this page, we transform your presentation skills by transforming YOU and how you show up.

It starts with the choice to be the real you, not some “corporate version” of you. Then face your audience and become very aware of them.  Care about them.  Find something to like about them.  Connect with them before you even start to speak.  You’ll start to feel their energy and it will energize you. Love them and they’ll love you back.  You’ll start feeling like your real self and that will bring out the best in you.  Let it grow.  It knows no limits so get ready for a natural high that just keeps going.  It’s all under your control.

Be the cause!