Lately I’ve found my work expanding in several areas that were each sparked by this idea of “presence”. As a way to help people make sense of how these areas are linked, it seems that another common thread that each offers is that of engaging in meaningful conversations.
With that in mind I now have an umbrella blog called Meaningful-Conversations.com which explains how the three legs of my work are linked together. These three legs are:
- Public speaking presence coaching – programs and services
- Large group conversations around issues that matter
- Daily photos and questions that evoke deeper reflection and conversations
November 30, 2009 at 10:26 am
Hey, cool post. My son and I were discussing this the other day, and he had some weird ideas! lol Are you going to extend this? I would love to learn more
November 30, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for your comments! I’m curious about your conversation with your son. What were his weird ideas?
So often when we are preparing to speak, it’s all about us. We focus on what we’re going to say, how well we’re going to do, how can we impress our audience. And, because we can begin to anticipate how we could easily mess up by just being human, this sets us up for high anxiety and fear.
If, instead, we change the direction of our focus, so that we make the needs of the people in our audience the center of our attention rather than how well we perform and begin to attend to how we can be of service to them, we actually bring them into the “conversation” energetically and so give them presence.
Audiences easily sense that this is happening and become much more engaged with the speaker. When this happens, there is a shared collective presence that begins to emerge that’s beyond either us as speakers or any single individual in the audience.