Audiences crave sincerity. Follow these tips to create an authentic presence.
Imagine you’re a middle manager at an automotive parts company. You have the chance to make a good impression on top executives by giving a presentation at a company-wide meeting. Although you’re naturally a gregarious person, you feel you should adopt a more formal image. You carefully script the whole presentation, even practicing where and when to gesture with your hands. The big day comes, and in your attempt to follow the script, you neglect to make eye contact with your audience. Struggling to remember when to move your hands, your words and gestures don’t line up. Your natural friendliness does not shine through. In the end, you come off as wooden and off-base. You seemed inauthentic and did not elicit your listeners’ attention and agreement.
After, another speaker takes a different approach. They’re comfortable and don’t feel the need to present a different persona to their audience. They studied the facts until they could quote the major ideas from memory. They reflected on the aspects of their presentation that would resonate most with top management. They spoke without notes, in a conversational tone, and made frequent eye contact with audience members. When finished, they knew they had connected successfully with listeners. Later, the head of the division praised them for being sincere and authentic.
Authenticity is a much-vaunted quality in business communication. In an era of bombast and fake news, audiences crave sincerity. Unfortunately, even an earnest speaker can project an inauthentic image if they are uncomfortable in their skin.
Being authentic does not mean winging it or saying whatever is on your mind. It requires thought and preparation. Communications coach Nick Morgan writes in a Harvard Business Review article that since neither casual spontaneity nor traditional rehearsal leads to compelling communication, “You have to tap into the basic impulses underlying your speech. These should include four powerful aims: to be open, to connect, to be passionate, and to listen. Each of these aims informs nearly all successful presentations.”
The intention to connect to your audience and listen to their reactions guides authentic speaking. But how can you develop these foundations of authenticity? Here are some suggestions.
Match your gestures and tone to your content.
As Morgan writes in the Harvard Business Review, “People’s natural and unstudied gestures are often indicators of what they will think and say next.” If we try to control our gestures, our words and motions might get out of sync and confuse our listeners. Rapid movements, studied gestures, nervous tics, and other physical tells detract from your image of authenticity.
Be vulnerable but don’t over-share.
Allowing yourself to show your humanity is a good thing. Blurting out personal information is not cool. As presentation skills expert Judyth Jernudd says, “Delivering a speech is not therapy.” Share personal information only if you are confident that doing so will not make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that sharing offensive content is a sign of authenticity; on the contrary, that kind of honesty shows a lack of judgment.
Sometimes speakers wonder if they should confess to their audience that they are nervous about giving the presentation. Jernudd suggests that speakers keep these feelings to themselves. If you wish, you can share with the audience when you have successfully completed the speech that you were nervous about it, but why bring it up at all?
Don’t speak from a script.
Authenticity implies naturalness. Reading from a script is the opposite of natural: It is forced and often stilted. Moreover, it takes you away from connecting with your audience by limiting you to standing at a podium and keeping your eyes on the script instead of your listeners. Even if you have access to a teleprompter, you will be more fluid and flexible if you stay tuned in to your audience, know your material cold, and speak from a notecard of high-level points rather than adhering to a script.
As British playwright Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” You are the only you to ever exist: Let your true nature shine through when you speak, and you will always seem authentic.