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This week’s DARE at a glance:

Every week, you get to DARE with me: take a Decision, try a new Action, share your Result and Evaluate the impact.

Partnership with The Rundown AI: The latest developments in AI, explained.

Your Decision, Action and Result: It’s holiday time, so something a little different this week.

It’s been a high energy start to the year, and a wonderful one, for me. Thank you all for that!

Recovery makes that pace sustainable for me. So I am on holiday this week and next with friends and family. The newsletter will change shape for these two weeks.

When I wrote about the differences between professional and amateur presenters I got a huge response. So I am offering you those differences again in two parts.

This is a good refresher for me too. When I return, the film crew and I go directly to the Comedy Store to prepare the new course.

Presenting is the closest I will get to flying.

I jump off a cliff as I walk onstage and trust that my wings will open. Something close to spiritual has space to happen: trust and connection build with a group of strangers.

Through energy, stories and an honesty about our humanity, hopes, dreams and fears, a priceless shared experience is created. We become a connected tribe and we change together.

But it wasn’t always this way for me. Presenting is a learned skill. When I was a young lawyer, I was a very painful presenter — nervous, insecure, hiding behind my job title and my slides crammed with facts to show off how well I ‘knew my stuff’ .

Trust me when I say: if I can learn to present as a professional, so can you.

The ”Present Like A Pro’ webinar in January was my personal way of giving back to my friends and followers. This is a two-part summary of what we covered together. Presenting is an artform. So feel free to disagree with my approach: take what helps you and discard the rest.

Learning this skill has transformed my life. My hope is that these ideas will help you to connect, inspire, touch hearts, create change and turbo-charge your impact and career.

Presenting and Discomfort: Embrace It!

Cross your arms the wrong way. How strong is the urge to rearrange them back to your preferred way?

Now imagine doing that in front of an audience — feeling exposed, judged, and choosing to be uncomfortable as you stand there rather than running back to safety.

The instinct is to protect yourself, to make it safe. To return to the lectern, the PowerPoint, the monotone, the low status body language, the lists of dull ‘update’ facts.

The stage (including the front of a meeting room) is inherently unsafe. You have to accept that if you want to access its power and make something happen.

If you want a new Result, you will have to dace the discomfort of new Decisions and Actions. And some uncomfortable Evaluation.

If you are making it safe and controlling it carefully, you are not able to access the energy needed or create the connection you want to have with your audience.

Presenting is an act of love; creativity; forging human connections. It requires a transfer of emotion; energy creation; giving and seeking trust. All of that is high risk! But I promise you, you can access this and your risk taking will be rewarded.

Difference #1: The Aim - The Task

The main difference between a professional and an amateur presenter is the stakes.

For the pro, if they fail, their family doesn’t eat. That changes the game. It changes how you prepare and the risks you are willing to take. But there is nothing stopping you from taking the same approach.

What is it that the professional must ‘not fail’ at?

We are paid to generate action, in people we’ve never met before, and we do that by creating emotion, transferring energy, and building a new perspective in the minds of the audience members.

So that is our aim as we prepare and as we deliver. How can I create Emotion, transfer Energy and build a New Perspective?

Most amateur presenters have the aim of telling people facts and passing the test. It is an easy win to be the best in class in most companies.

Difference #2: Authenticity

Trust That YOU Are the Magic in your presentation. You may not always feel magic. I certainly don’t. But you (and I) have to trust that to other people we are unique, with a uniquely interesting view on the world and unique experiences to share in order to engage and inspire action.

Everything that distracts from you and your work to generate emotion, energy and a fresh perspective is to be minimized. That includes PowerPoint (your number one enemy) and audience questions (until you are ready to take them).

But here's the twist: Be authentic to the best version of you, not to the emotions you feel in the situation (the nerves you feel on stage).

Picture yourself in a passionate meeting with your team yesterday. That’s the authentic you that your audience needs to see. It is not ‘inauthentic’ to be that version of you onstage even though it feels unnatural and ‘inauthentic’ to your emotions on stage in that moment!

A Special Note for Women

There is a whole industry targeting bad advice at female presenters. Here is my view on that from years of watching and reflecting.

There is a narrative (coming largely from women) that women need special help and must transform in some way to present with authority:

Deepen your voice, be more/dress more masculine. The often repeated:  ‘Studies show’ that women will be seen as ‘strident’, ‘difficult’ or ‘bossy’, if they assert or lead / men will be immediately respected when they do.

Men come across as bossy, strident, aggressive and domineering when their intention on stage is to impose their will on the audience in an inelegant, ugly fashion. So do women.

The women who most famously discarded their personal magnetism to conform to this advice would include Elizabeth Holmes, the one-time billionaire founder of Theranos (currently incarcerated for fraud) and Mrs Thatcher. A more recent British Prime Minister, Theresa May, famously adopted an extraordinary ‘power stance’ (advocated, briefly, by the Harvard academic, Amy Cuddy) to much derision and hilarity in the global press.

We all need to find our natural status and authority onstage. Males also want to give this status away to gain favour and affection from the audience rather than leading them: until they learn that they are doing this and find the courage to stop it..

One of my personal favourite female super-communicators is the softly spoken Baroness Hale, the most senior judge in the UK from 2017 - 2020. There is nothing ‘masculine’ about Brenda Hale, her dresses or her brooch collection. But she has an extraordinary authority in the room.

My ‘DARE: to speak’ High Performance Presenting Course launches on 28th April

Difference #3: The Brief

Many presenters lose their way because they don’t fully understand the brief.

Know what action you want the audience to take after your presentation – agree that specifically with stakeholders. Build everything around that.

Be sure what is required of you – and what you want from the opportunity. Ask senior people the dumb questions. You are exposed up there – be sure you know what you are doing.

Then decide on the task you have and deliver that task.

Difference #4: Status and Confidence

We are hierarchical animals — we naturally look for leaders. That may be an unpopular fact, but a fact it is.

When you step onto a stage, the audience wants you to take the lead. The physicality of the stage, lights, microphone, of the gap between the stage and the front row that ‘moat’ of differentiation, the fact that you have been invited to stand up there: all off this bestows leadership status on the presenter. The ‘tribe’ is gathered before you and looking to YOU to take them somewhere.

· Pro: Accepts the status and leadership role of the stage.

· Amateur: Tries to give the status back, apologising for being there. As soon as you seek comfort in:

• Shuffling about to demonstrate submission (like a spaniel dog)

• Replicating every other presenter to ensure you don’t stand out

• Showing lots of slides and directing the attention away from yourself to the screen

• Speaking with low energy to avoid revealing your personality and humanity

You signal to the tribe that you don’t accept the leadership role.  There are many ways that we non-consciously do this and I cover these in DARE: to speak.

Now that’s your choice to make – but do be aware that you made that choice when you then hear feedback that you’re ‘not yet a leader’.  So becoming conscious of how you communicate your status onstage is vital if you are serious about being seen as a leader.

Next week I will bring you the final 5 ideas – including explaining why PowerPoint is your number one enemy as a professional presenter.

 Write your story 🖋️

Jim