You want to project strength, competence, and confidence throughout your business presentation, and one important way to do this is with your presentation stance.

Your presentation stance fundamental to projecting the image of strength.

It’s basic to demonstrate competence and confidence.

But most of us never consider how we stand in front of an audience.

And this leaves aside the crucial point of how we ought to stand.   Do we want to convey power?  Confidence?  Reassurance?  Empathy?

Let’s investigate that now . . .

Stance for Power and Confidence

I assure you that I don’t expect you to stay rooted in one spot throughout your talk.

But at risk of sounding clichéd, let’s state forthrightly that it’s impossible to build any lasting structure on a soft foundation.  This foundation grows out of the notion of what we call “power posing.”

Let’s build your foundation now.  Let’s learn a bit about the principle of power posing.

How do you stand when you converse in a group at a party or a reception?  What’s your “bearing?”  How do you stand before a crowd when you speak?

Have you ever consciously thought about it?

How you stand, how you carry yourself, communicates to others.  It transmits a great deal about us with respect to our inner thoughts, self-image, and self-awareness.

Whether we like this or not is not the point.

The point is that we constantly signal others nonverbally.  You send messages to those around you, and those around us take their cues based on universal perception of the messages received.

Your Foundation – Power Posing

What is true in small groups is also true as you lecture or present in front of groups of four or 400.

Whether you actually speak or not, your body language is always transmitting.  What’s the message that you unconsciously send people?

Have you thought about the silent and constant messages your posture radiates?

Seize control of your communication this instant.  There’s no reason not to, and there are many quite good reasons why you should.

Recognize that much of the audience impression of you is forming as you approach the lectern.

Your listeners form this impression immediately, before you shuffle your papers or clear your throat or squint into the bright lights.

They form their impression from your walk.

From your posture.

From your clothing, from your grooming, from the slightest inflections of your face, and from your eye movement.

This has always been true; speaking Master Grenville Kleiser said in 1912 that, “The body, the hand, the face, the eye, the mouth, all should respond to the speaker’s inner thought and feeling.”

Do you stand with shoulders rounded in a defeatist posture?

Do you transmit defeat, boredom, ennui?

Do you shift from side-to-side or do you unconsciously sway back-and-forth?

Do you cross and uncross your legs without knowing, balancing precariously upon one foot?

Is your free leg wrapped in front of the other, projecting an odd, wobbly, and about-to-tumble-down image?

Foundation of Your Presentation Stance

For any structure to endure, we must build on strength.

And I mean this both in the metaphorical and in the literal sense with regard to business presentations.

You must not only project strength and stability, you must feel strength and stability.  The two are inseparable.  A moment’s thought reveals to you why.

Think of the confident man.

To appear unstable and fearful before an audience, a confident man must take a conscious effort to strike such a pose.

Likewise, it would take a conscious effort for a man, who has planted himself firmly in the prescribed confident posture, to feel nervous, uncertain, or unsure of himself.

That is, if he affected the confident pose and maintained it relentlessly against all of the body’s involuntary urges to crumple and shift, to equivocate and sway.

Think as well of the confident woman.

How does the confident woman’s demeanor different from that of the confident man?  Virtually not at all.

The point and the goal is to establish a foundation that exudes strength, competence, and confidence to add to your personal competitive advantage.

Essential to this goal is that you know the difference between open body language and closed body language.

It’s the difference between power posing and powerless posing.

This strong personal foundation is your ready position, your standard posture for your presentation.

For more on your especially powerful presentation stance, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.