According to The Book of Lists, fear of public speaking ranks number one in the minds of a majority of people…however, overcoming this can truly transform your life! After the successful completion of our Annual NLP Trainers Training and seeing our new graduates transform themselves into bulletproof presenters, I thought it would be fitting to provide you with some tips that you can use to help you transform your stage presence and be an excellent presenter!.
1. Be in control of your State
State means your emotional state, the way that you are feeling at any moment. When you are feeling really good within yourself you are probably going to behave differently than if you are not feeling good about yourself. You know this in your own experience. Compare your behaviour in those good times with the not-so-good times. A good state enables you to get far better results.
The state around you will affect everything else going on in and around you. Therefore you need to be in the right state for what you want to do and be able to change your state at will. Remember this: To a large extent the way you feel inside determines the results you get.
2. Create Rapport with your audience
You can build Rapport with someone by matching their ways of communicating
- Use the actual words they use. Use their jargon, their preferred terms, even if you think they are using the ‘wrong’ word. It is what it means to them that matters.
- Use the same tonality. Say the words the way they do.
- Adopt the same physiology. Use the same posture and gestures.
When you are in rapport with someone and matching them in these ways, they will be paying attention to you and open to hearing what you have to say.
3. Be yourself
When first presenting, many presenters think, “It is not OK to be myself!” The more presenting we have done, the more we have realised that the best results were achieved when we were spontaneously being who we are, rather than doing any pretending. Most people need to let out more of who they really are. The more of you that is available to the audience, the more they will be able to connect and bond with you, and feel comfortable with you. Now, this does not mean that you have to reveal all of your private life to the audience, it simply means that you have to remove the barriers, so that the true you can emerge. Just remember: Being you is all you ever need.
4. Elicit Positive States for your audience
As a presenter you will always be eliciting states within an audience. At every moment they are going to be in some particular physiological and emotional state, and this will affect how they are paying attention to you, how they are learning, and so on. But are they in the states you want them to be in? As a presenter or trainer it is your responsibility to know how to make sure your audience is in the most appropriate and ideal state for receiving and processing the information you are offering them. You want to maintain your audiences interest throughout your training or presentation by providing variety and richness in the states they are in: low, quiet, meditative, thoughtful states, or high, energetic, excited states; states of curiosity, great motivation, and so on.
The ability to elicit positive states within an audience will take you from just being a good provider of information, to being an entertaining and captivating presenter. We strongly believe that if you are going to stand up in front of an audience, you’d better be entertaining! An audience wants this and part of the entertainment comes from the states you are eliciting within them.
Here are four quick ways that you can elicit positive states within your audience.
- Go into the desired state yourself (When you get into the state, they will follow you into the state themselves)
- Ask the audience to remember a time in the past when they were in a desired state- for example motivation (As soon as they do this they will get the feelings that go along with that memory)
- Ask them to imagine a time in the future when they will be in the desired state (You are helping them paint a mental picture of what it would be like)
- Tell them a story or metaphor (a story evokes thoughts in your mind, and these thoughts elicit states in your body)
