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.

What is the purpose of an LP Meeting?

Is it to inform the limited partners about the performance of their investments? I don’t think so. 

The LPs already know the numbers.   They don’t come to the meeting to hear the numbers.  They come to hear what the manager thinks about the numbers.

There’s a big difference. 

Numbers are, we hope, facts about the past.  They are commodities—everybody has them, and their value is depressed. 

What we think about the numbers are opinions.  They have the potential for being unique and differentiated, and their value can be considerable. 

When a manager expresses a clear, compelling and fact-based opinion at an LP meeting, he has a chance of differentiating himself and his firm from the pack.

LP meetings have more to do with opinions than with facts.  If performance is down, a manager’s opinions about why are important, as are his opinions about the future.

And investors arrive with opinions about the numbers, and with a desire to hear the opinions of the manager.

Not only that.  Investors arrive with opinions about the manager and his team, and the manager seeks to use the meeting as a branding opportunity to reaffirm positive opinions about his operation, and alter the less-than-favorable opinions of the fence sitters.

Facts and opinions have to work together of course.  Facts are the bricks, opinions the building. 

LP meetings are based on facts, but they’re about opinions.

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.

I spent last Thursday with Patricia Fripp, a great speech coach and friend of mine.  We were at the National Speakers Association, New Jersey Chapter. I can’t get her out of my mind.  She is a presence!

Someone with  presence makes you pay attention. You don’t have to work hard to listen to them or watch them.  In fact, you can’t help being engaged by them.  Fripp is one of these people.   

She does it in at least two ways:  intellectual and emotional. 

Fripp says interesting things in interesting ways, such as, “The enemy of the speaker is sameness.” 

Then she tells you why she phrased it the way she did.  She will say that the last word in your spoken sentence should pack the punch.

That’s a powerful thought, one that will change the way I talk.

To be a presence in someone else’s mind on a substantive level is a good thing.  It means you have made them think, aroused their curiosity, and stimulated further dialogue.

Great conversationalists, (I am thinking of Barbara Walters, Leonard Lopate,  and Dick Cavett) can carry on a dialogue on a wide range of topics.  In other words, they can be present in almost any discussion.

There is more to presence than animal magnetism.  We take for granted intellectual presence, yet it is the currency of success for many of our most accomplished colleagues. 

Read the first blog in this series:  Presentation Skills:  Stay Tuned for a Month of Presence.

Sims Wyeth is a private speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in executive speech coaching 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.