I have a speaking assignment coming up and I want to do something new.
I’ve worked hard on strategy and messaging for my talk. I have defined what I want my listeners to do. I have crafted a few simple messages and developed evidence to convince them that my request is valid.
But last night, after rehearsing for most of the day, I had a dream about the presence of a speaker. I dreamed about a speaker, faceless and nameless (although he might have been the Dalai Lama) who was radiant with optimism and confidence. He was relaxed, cheerful, and engaging. He lifted the aspirations of the people he spoke to, and gave them the feeling that change was possible, and that the change could (and should) start in them.
Yes, he had good things to say, but how he said them (or who he was) spoke as loudly as what he said. There was something about his inner state that was infectious. He was not exhausted, overly serious, or intense and theatrical. He was joyful and in the moment.
As an actor, I often had intense stage fright before a performance, which occasionally became a psycho-physical experience of calm and self-possession once I set foot on stage. I entered an inner-state in which I was truly “playing” with the other actors on stage. But I have also experienced soul-destroying anxiety in front of an audience, which was an out of body experience that I never want to have again.
Mastering our substance, or our content, gives us Intellectual Presence: we can engage in the dialogue going on in the room. Expressing our strongly held opinions gives us Emotional Presence: we can be emphatic. Or by listening to an opposing point of view, and responding without feeling threatened, that is also a kind of presence. All are “neck-up” kinds of presence: they have mostly to do with thinking.
“Neck-down” presence is different and comes in many forms. For some, like Martin Luther King, it was a compelling speaking voice. For others, it’s a kind of kinesthetic grace and composure. It can also spring from the ability to be private in public, to be immune to the pressure of an audience. I’ve seen Howard Gardiner, the author and Harvard Professor, speak in a whisper from a lectern, causing a large crowd to sit still and lean in, listening.
Neck-down presence isn’t entirely physical. I would call it psycho-physical, which includes the mind and the body, thought and expression, movement and stillness, silence and sound. Psycho-physical presence is the real deal. It’s what great actors have, which is essentially an alignment of all the human faculties–will, feeling, intellect, and imagination–or thought, word, voice, and gesture–all working together in a state of flow.