Stop Doing What You’ve Been Told

The problem?

You go in front of your audience and begin your presentation. And you have your fake smile, your shoulders back and down, and during your intro, you fist bump to your audience to show you’re confident, and you speak much more slowly than normal and the problem, the problem, the problem is…you’re not connecting.

The audience is clearly disinterested. Your’re not nailing this presentation.

What you want to do is instead is a little trick I teach all of my clients - Meet them where they’re at.

Think of yourself sitting in an audience, slightly apprehensive, not sure how long this presentation is going to be. You’re feeling a little anxious right? Now when you come out and fist bump to an audience who feels like this, you’re in a completely different space to them. You’re displaying a completely different kind of energy. That disconnects you from the audience immediately.

Instead, you need to look into the audience and match their energy as much as possible. If they look quite bored and disinterested, quite frankly, you begin a little bored and a little disinterested. If they seem a little nervous and a little agitated even, you can actually seem a little nervous and a little agitated - just in the first 10 to 20 seconds of your presentation. If they seem super confident and super relaxed, again, you match them. You put yourself into a position of feeling super relaxed and showing that you’re super relaxed.

The more you match your audience the better. We like people who are like us. And so it goes. Match your audience as closely as possible. Particularly in their energy levels. And if you do this, I promise you will start to nail your presentations.