For many years now, I’ve been coaching my public speaking clients to act as if they felt confident by embodying that feeling through how they sit, stand and walk. These simple techniques serve to “trick” the mind into feeling comfortable and confidence while speaking. Recently I watched a TED talk by social psychologist Amy Cuddy More…
Tag: anxiety
Closing the Presence Gap: Simple tools for rediscovering this innate leadership ability
(The three people described below are each composites of a number of clients who have come through my public speaking programs and services.) Jane was bright, experienced, and the only female on her work team. Frustrated, she felt that nothing she said at team meetings was taken seriously and her participation was frequently discounted or More…
Absence: The Number One Obstacle to Presence
(Original article copyrighted in 2008) I was at a team meeting recently where a group of us were talking about the leadership training program in an organization employing about 275 people. One person in the group asked the CEO, “What’s the opposite of leadership?” The CEO without any hesitation immediately said, “Absence!” How interesting! I More…
Can’t remember what you’d planned to say?
Has this ever happened to you? You have an important presentation and you’ve done all your preparation. You don’t want to memorize the talk, but you also want to have a clear sense of what you are going to say and how you are going to say it. The morning of the talk you practice More…
Presence: A stress management tool for anxious times
Recently I was driving to an appointment and running late. My mind was racing, my breath was shallow, my heartbeat was off the charts, and whenever I thought about it I realized that my muscles were clenched, I was leaning right up next to the steering wheel, and every cell in my body was urging More…
The power of a smile
Do you have an inner critic who finds fault with everything you do? I do, and she can be especially loud when I have been less than perfect. And, it seems most everyone else has the same issue. Yesterday I had two separate conversations with friends who each felt badly because of something they had More…
What do fear of public speaking, trauma, and yoga have in common
I had a conversation with a colleague today about how much I incorporate yoga practices in the coaching I do with my public speaking clients and it reminded me of this article, which I wrote back in 2008. I thought readers of this blog might be interested and so here it is: In 2008 I More…
Lessons from a lint filter, water bottle and electric toothbrush
Somehow, as much as I’m trying to slow down and simplify my life, I always seem to be in a hurry. Every time I do my laundry I’m reminded that hurrying through my tasks isn’t the most efficient way to get things done. I always seem to want to quickly empty the lint filter in More…
Openings… The biggest stumbling block
“The first few moments of a presentation always terrify me.” “I know my subject really well and know what I want to say, I just don’t know how to get started.” “If the first few minutes go well, then I relax for the rest of the talk.” Statements like these are almost universal. It seems More…
Speaking with both feet on the ground
Several weeks ago I gave a workshop on this topic with the intention of, for the first time, beginning to clarify what I mean by the phrase “embodied presence”. Here is some of the thinking that went into the workshop. Where we put our attention, that’s where energy goes. This is probably the core principle More…