5 Presentation Hacks to FEEL & LOOK more Confident, & have Greater Impact | Shadé Zahrai

1. 0:00 – 0:30

   Why nerves happen—and what confident speakers do differently

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai0:00

      Remember that time you were about to give that presentation at work and your heart was beating out of your chest? Look, we've all been there, in front of people whether on stage, in a meeting room, maybe even on a Zoom call, and for no reason we're just really nervous and anxious even though we're well-prepared. But the difference between an experienced and an inexperienced speaker is that the experienced speaker knows how to handle their nerves. It's about managing your emotional state. So in this video, I'm going to share with you five of my best tips for

2. 0:30 – 2:00

   Shift the spotlight: from being judged to serving the audience

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai0:30

      managing presentation stress and anxiety. Hi, I'm Shadé Zahrai, and I help professionals to hack their careers, overcome their limiting beliefs, and confidently create the extraordinary life they deserve. Now for a little bit of background, I'm also a professional speaker invited to speak at events around the world and a former three-times Australian Latin dance champion, so I'm no stranger to the stage nor managing nerves. As a foundational principle, when you're focused on what other people think of you instead of focused on how you can be of service and of value, you're then exposing yourself to believing that you might be judged or might not be good enough for them. Basically, you're putting yourself at risk of anxiety and fear kicking in because you've put the spotlight on yourself. But what is presentation really about? It's actually about your audience. It's about the value that you're offering them. So the number one thing in any presentation, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, is your audience. When you're focused outwardly on how you can give value and actually improve the conditions of your audience, the people who are listening to you, you're less likely to remember your own shortcomings, and your mind will seek the best possible ways that you can present value. It doesn't give time for your imagination to wander. It doesn't allow the inner critics to take over. It takes you out of that fear mode and switches on your prefrontal cortex. So here are my five simple tips guaranteed to calm those nerves and give you a more confident presence. The very first

3. 2:00 – 3:32

   Tip #1 — Powerful posture to hack your emotional state

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai2:00

      one is powerful posture. When experienced speakers speak, they can still feel the nerves. I can absolutely vouch for this. Their heart rate still increases, their breathing quickens, but instead of doing what a lot of people feel like doing, which is listening to their body and rocking backwards and forwards in the fetal position in the corner, they do quite the opposite. Research has shown that your physical posture changes how you feel. For example, how would someone sit when they're sad? Probably hunched over, head down. Through what we call a postural feedback loop, the brain picks up on the posture of the body and the physical cues, and it responds by reinforcing the emotion of sadness. This affects the posture even more, and then you've just created a negative feedback loop and someone sadder than they really needed to be. So how can this actually help you with nerves? Well, according to research, it turns out that you can hack this loop by changing your posture, and that's exactly how experienced speakers hack their nerves. Imagine that you're in front of an audience feeling nervous, but instead of letting your posture shrink away you adopt an open and expansive posture. You keep your arms open and wide, shoulders back, chin slightly raised. This allows oxygen into your lungs to reengage the prefrontal cortex. And by commanding a powerful stance you can make yourself actually feel more powerful due to postural feedback. And when you feel more powerful you look more powerful. So when you stand in front of an audience of any size you want to be consciously large, expansive, take

4. 3:32 – 4:32

   Tip #2 — “Coffee cup” eye contact for calm, credible presence

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai3:32

      on a broad posture, consciously confident. Even if subconsciously you're not quite feeling it yet, still do it because the confidence will come. My second tip is coffee cup eye contact. When you're looking and talking to your audience and you're feeling the nerves, a lot of people will tend to only look at one part of the room or familiar faces or their eyes will dart around too quickly. This is a telltale sign that you're nervous. To tame your wild eyes what you want to do is look at your audience as though you're serving them coffee in a cafe. Let me explain. My first real job was as a waitress at a cafe where I learned all too well what happens if you rush placing down a full coffee cup on the table. It spills and you might have to take it back and make a new one. So the time it takes for you to put down that coffee cup without any spills, that's how long I want you to be making eye contact with one person in the audience. You want to take your time here, at least a couple of seconds of eye contact. Now there are a number of advantages to this. It gives the audience the impression

5. 4:32 – 5:33

   Tip #3 — Purposeful palms: deliberate gestures that amplify meaning

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai4:32

      that you're composed. It adds to the impact of your statements, especially when your pauses are timed. You see what I did there? Yeah, that was probably a little too long and more on the creepy side, so you want to practice this until you find that right balance. The third is purposeful palms. You'll also probably have noticed that experienced speakers use gestures that are very purposeful. When I first started presenting in public almost a decade ago my nerves would make me flail my arms around like this, and for some reason my nerves and anxiety completely took over and my hand gestures were all over the place. A very, very sweet lady approached me after one of my sessions and she told me straight, she said, "Shadé, you might want to record yourself speaking. You'll notice that sometimes your gestures are quite distracting." Now I'll admit that it hurt at the time to hear it, but I started then asking colleagues to record me and, yep, I definitely saw what she was talking about. I've since learned to bring in my dance training with my hand gestures, and you might have noticed that when I present I'm often extremely deliberate.

6. 5:33 – 6:03

   Research note: why gestures carry outsized persuasive weight

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai5:33

      One other thing to keep in mind is how you can use gestures to enhance your message. Vanessa Van Edwards, the founder of Science of People, shares a TED Talk where she speaks about the power of gestures and she references a study that her and her team conducted analyzing TED Talks. She shared that most speakers come out and they say something like, "Today I want to talk to you about a big idea. I'm going to break it down into three areas that are going to change your life." She explains how not only are they communicating with

7. 6:03 – 7:03

   Tip #4 — Belly breathing to calm fight-or-flight and control pacing

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai6:03

      their words, but also their hands because as she says, "Your brain gives 12.5 times more weight to hand gestures." There's a lot of power in mastering your hand gestures when communicating an idea, so make sure that you consciously practice gesturing for your next presentation with purposeful palms. The fourth tip is a really important one, and it's the belly breath. I'd argue this one's possibly the most important tip, and you should practice it even before you start speaking. When your amygdala has been pressed in your brain, your heart rate increases and your breathing quickens and becomes more shallow. This is brought on by your fight or flight response. So my biggest piece of advice is before you're about to go in front of any audience to speak, practice belly breathing, diaphragmatic breathing. Then when you're actually presenting, use breath as a tool to slow yourself down. Use it for dramatic effect, to make a point, to separate your sentences or your ideas. And this is especially important if you tend to speak faster when you're nervous. I can relate to that. Once I'd learned about how I could play

8. 7:03 – 8:35

   Tip #5 — Feed your thoughts first: reframe self-talk to rewire confidence

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai7:03

      with breath throughout presentations, my whole presentation game changed and my nerves calmed. And the final tip I want to share with you is to feed your thoughts first. It all starts in your mind with what you're telling yourself about your ability to present. This is called cognitive appraisal, how you explain something to yourself. I've heard professionals say to me, "I'm worried that people will secretly laugh at me. I hate presenting because I feel like I'm being judged. I get shaky and my voice quivers. I'm terrible." Your brain has a remarkable way of making you feel whatever thoughts you're feeding it. So if you're feeling nervous, you usually have nervous thoughts, right? Like, "I'm so nervous. This is going to be bad. I'm going to mess up." And then because of a whole range of cognitive factors and through the fact that your thoughts do influence your emotions and how you feel, this shapes your performance. It influences how you actually show up and perform when you're in front of people. But here's where you can start to rewire your brain. If you use positive self-affirming self-talk to yourself like, "I'm confident and prepared. I'm delivering a valuable presentation. This is a really great opportunity to help my clients," you will start to feel the difference. Research published in The Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology found that athletes who actually used positive and motivational self-talk ended up performing better than those who didn't. And in another study, they found that positive self-talk improved self-confidence. So there you have it. I really hope you found these tips useful. Practice them before your next presentation

9. 8:35 – 8:52

   Wrap-up: practice the five hacks before your next presentation

   1. SZDr. Shadé Zahrai8:35

      and use them to help you overcome your presentation jitters. I'm Shadé Zahrai, and I'll see you next time. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 8:53