Presence is like pornography:  it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it, or in the case of speech, see and hear it.

Presence is a powerful commodity, one that leaders, entertainers, and influencers of all types would like to have.  In fact, anyone who wants to be persuasive on the job or in social settings covets it.

Three questions.  First, admitting that it’s hard to define, can we sketch in its elements? Second, can we cultivate it? And if so, how?

What are the elements of presence?

Let’s start with what it’s not.  It’s not beauty or physical attractiveness.  There are lots of Barbies and Kens who look perfect and lack presence.

It’s not intelligence.  The socially inept genius is a cliché. 

It’s not talent, because some creative people are dull in person but vivid and electric in their work.

So what is it?  Here’s my attempt to describe it. Presence is confidence, composure, and responsiveness.  It is the capacity to communicate with others in an emotional, intellectual, and expressive manner.

Can presence be cultivated?

I believe it can be developed through deliberate practice, which is a term that has emerged over the last few years to describe how average people achieve extraordinary results.

Actors, singers, dancers, figure skaters and speakers all try to cultivate it. It’s part of their job.  For some, it’s a performance, for others it comes naturally.

Presence could include posture and a self-possessed quality of movement.  It could include an appealing voice, a sense of humor, the capacity for intimacy, and the ability to respond to the signals you pick up from others.

Presence can also derive from the perception that you don’t care whether people like you or not.  Since we are deeply social creatures, a person willing to walk away from the herd tends to get attention.

How can we cultivate presence?

Be curious.  Endlessly curious.  Be a good listener.  Ask a lot of questions.  Sit up straight.  Be expressive when listening.  Acknowledge what the other person has said so that they feel heard and recognized. 

Dress in order to dignify your encounters with others.  Have convictions and express them with care for the views of others.  Develop your voice so that it is resonant and musical.

Explain your point of view knowing what history and science have to say about organizing your thoughts for maximum persuasiveness.  Take such an interest in your audience that you care more about their understanding than you do about the outcomes. 

This is an important point.  If you have an objective you want to achieve, others sense it, and feel that you are talking at them, not with them or to them.  You have to start where they are, and lead them from that spot toward the spot on which you would like them to stand.

In other words, you must be highly empathetic, highly assertive and highly expressive.  None of us bats 1000 on all three, but presence is a journey not a destination.

It will come and go depending on the circumstances.  For some of us who are shy, or young, and surrounded by those with more power and experience, we will have to fake it ‘til we make it.

But the best way to change behavior is to practice changing behavior.  We can behave in a manner that is outside our comfort zone for short periods of time, and when we repeat those short periods for lengthier periods, we begin to find a new way of being.

And that can serve us well.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills andpublic speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

When she was a year old, I held my daughter Georgia at the closed window of our 30th floor New York City apartment so we could look out over Times Square.

Across the street, stretching the full length of a 40-floor building, was a painting of Dwight Gooden, the ace Met’s pitcher, coiled in his wind-up with his eyes staring straight at us from under his cap.

I had the habit of asking Georgia, “Is it a cloudy day or a sunny day?”  Soon enough, however, it got more complicated, and our conversation evolved.  In other words, sometimes it was not all cloudy or all sunny.  Sometimes, it was both.

So it is with effective communication.  Not in terms of sun and clouds, but in terms of assertiveness and empathy.  We need both—the will to assert and the sensibility to speak into the listeners’ capacity to hear. 

We do the audience a service to be assertive because we give them something to push against, to poke holes in, and thus create a dialogue between our experience and theirs. 

And we do ourselves a service to understand their capacity to listen—to see the world as they see it—so that we can clothe our assertions in terms that will help them see more clearly the validity of our view. 

Some of us lack empathy and find it hard to comprehend what the audience is able to hear. 

And some of us lack assertiveness and find it hard to engage constructively in intellectual combat. 

But those who can do both earn the respect and trust of followers and opponents alike.  We call these people leaders, movers and shakers, high potentials, charismatics, persuaders, influencers, top guns, visionaries, sales stars. 

My daughter and I thought Dwight Gooden was staring at us, but in reality he was staring at the catcher’s mitt, trying to hurl his pitch where the catcher could catch it.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.