As a young actress in Hollywood, it didn’t take me long before I began to notice something interesting at auditions. Every once in a while, someone would enter the room and immediately draw everyone’s attention, even before uttering one word. You had no idea if they were any good, but something about the way they carried themselves made you curious about what was coming next.
Other actors would arrive incredibly prepared. You could tell they had spent hours rehearsing the scene over and over. And yet, once they started performing, all of that preparation didn’t necessarily translate into anything all that interesting.
What were we responding to? It’s typically called stage presence, which makes the whole thing sound slightly mystical. We’re led to believe some people have “it,” while others apparently missed the day when charisma was being handed out. After years as an actor and now as a communication coach, I don’t buy it.
There are things powerful communicators do with their eyes, voices, bodies, and attention that influence how an audience experiences them. And researchers have actually studied some of them. And yes, I’m going to share some of that science in this article, as well as the critical component to stage presence that no one talks about!
For now, just understand that stage presence isn’t about being the biggest personality in the room. It’s about becoming the clearest signal in the room.
Stage Presence Starts Before You Speak
One of the first things acting teaches you is that a scene doesn’t begin when you say your first line. You’re already in the scene before you speak.
The same thing goes with presentations, though most leaders aren’t quite aware of it. They walk to the front of the room while staring at their notes, or they immediately start clicking around on the laptop, apologizing because the slides are taking a second to load. Then they finally look up and say, “Okay, I guess we’ll get started.”
Guess what? You already did. Your audience has been experiencing you from the moment you became the person at the front of the room.
That doesn’t mean you need to make a dramatic entrance worthy of Beyoncé. It just means you should recognize that your entrance is part of your communication.
Before you begin, stop. Look at the people you’re about to speak to. Let yourself arrive. Give the room a second to arrive with you. That tiny moment can feel enormous when you’re the one standing in front of everybody. Let it.
Eye Contact Is More Powerful Than “Look Up”
At some point, most public speakers are given the same advice: “During your presentation, look up every once in a while.” So we look up every few seconds, sweep our eyes from left to right, and maybe pick three spots on the back wall and rotate among them like very nervous security cameras.
Technically, our eyes are up.
But are we actually looking at anyone? Are we making real, genuine eye contact?
There’s interesting science behind why that distinction matters. In one study, researchers compared people’s physiological responses to direct and averted gaze during face-to-face interaction, a live video call, and prerecorded video. Direct gaze increased autonomic arousal during the live interaction and the two-way video call, but the same effect wasn’t found when people simply watched a prerecorded person looking toward them. The researchers concluded that the experience of being seen played an important role.
The study wasn’t specifically about presentation technique, but it points to something speakers often forget. There’s a difference between having your eyes pointed in someone’s direction and an interaction actually feeling mutual.
That changes the way I think about the usual advice to “make eye contact.” Don’t simply demonstrate eye contact. See somebody.
Choose one person and finish a thought with them. Move naturally to someone else. Let yourself register a face instead of treating the audience as one enormous multi-headed creature you’re supposed to stare at.
And yes, this matters virtually too. The fact that researchers observed the response during a two-way video interaction is especially interesting for those of us who spend half our lives on Zoom now.
Try This
During your next presentation, resist the urge to constantly scan the room. Find one person. Deliver a complete thought to them. Then move to another person and deliver the next thought.
Notice what happens to your pace. You may find yourself slowing down and sounding much more conversational because suddenly you’re talking to people instead of presenting at an audience.
Your Voice Tells Us What Matters
Read this sentence aloud: “I never said she stole the money.”
Now say it again, emphasizing I.
Say it again, emphasizing she.
Now stole.
Same seven words but completely different implications.
That’s prosody at work. Prosody is essentially the music of speech: the pitch, rhythm, pace, emphasis, and intonation that carry information alongside the actual words we’re saying.
Research examining prosodic focus found that using pitch accent to emphasize particular information recruited areas of the brain associated with attention. In practical terms, the way we use our voice can help signal to a listener: “Pay attention. This part matters.”
Actors understand this instinctively because you can destroy a perfectly good line by giving every word the same weight. Presenters can do the same thing!
If every sentence has the same rhythm, every point gets the same emphasis, and every slide is delivered at the same pace, your audience has to do more work to figure out what’s important.
Your voice should help them.
Try the One-Sentence Test
Take the most important sentence in your next presentation and say it three different ways. Change the word you emphasize. Slow down before the important phrase. Try lowering your voice instead of raising it. Put a pause where you normally wouldn’t.
Listen to how the meaning changes.
You don’t need to turn your quarterly update into Shakespeare. You just need to stop making every word fight for equal billing.
Please Release Your Hands
Somewhere along the way, many speakers learned that looking professional meant controlling every part of their bodies. So they lock their hands together somewhere around their stomach and keep them there for 45 minutes.
Please release your hands.
Gesture isn’t necessarily a distraction from communication. It can actually be part of how we communicate meaning. A large meta-analysis looking at 83 independent samples found that gestures had an overall positive effect on comprehension, although some kinds of gestures were more helpful than others.
The takeaway isn’t wave your arms more. Please don’t leave this article and start windmilling through your next board meeting.
The point is that meaningful movement can support meaningful communication. Your hands can show scale. They can separate two ideas. They can demonstrate movement or direction. They can help make an abstract idea physical.
Think about how you communicate when you’re telling a great story to a friend. You probably aren’t thinking, Now I shall execute Gesture Number Three.
Your body participates because you’re connected to what you’re saying.
Give Your Movement a Job
Choose two moments in your presentation where a gesture or movement could reinforce the meaning. Maybe you’re describing growth or comparing two choices. Maybe you’re talking about moving from one stage of a process to another.
Rehearse those moments and see what your body naturally wants to do. The goal isn’t choreography – it’s alignment of body with message.
Stage Presence Happens Between You and Them
Here’s where the science gets especially fascinating.
In a well-known Princeton study, researchers recorded the brain activity of someone telling an unrehearsed real-life story and compared it with the brain activity of people listening. During successful communication, patterns of activity in the speaker’s and listeners’ brains became coupled in interesting ways. When communication broke down, that coupling diminished, and some of the stronger connections were associated with better comprehension.
I want to be careful here because this is exactly the kind of research that can turn into a ridiculous headline about HACKING YOUR AUDIENCE’S BRAIN!
That’s not what I’m suggesting.
What fascinates me is the larger idea behind the research: communication is something happening between people. That’s exactly how I’ve always experienced stage presence.
You aren’t broadcasting information into a room full of passive receivers. You’re paying attention to them while they’re paying attention to you.
Did they lean forward?
Did their faces change?
Did that joke land?
Did everyone suddenly look confused?
Did you just say something important and then barrel straight into your next sentence before anyone had time to absorb it?
Great speakers are present enough to notice.
Stop Performing Confidence
Please don’t read everything above and walk into your next presentation thinking: Eye contact. Hands. Voice. Pace. Posture. DON’T BE WEIRD. Because now you’re probably going to be weird.
When speakers become obsessed with appearing confident, they often start monitoring themselves instead of connecting with their audience.
Where are my hands? Am I moving enough? Am I moving too much? Should I smile? Have I been looking at Steve for too long? Steve looks uncomfortable. STOP LOOKING AT STEVE.
Meanwhile, you’ve completely stopped thinking about what you’re trying to communicate.
Technique should help you remove the things getting between you and your audience. It shouldn’t become another thing standing between you and your audience.
Stage presence grows when your attention moves outward.
What do I want these people to understand?
What do I want them to feel?
Where do I need them to come with me?
That’s a very different mental state from, How am I doing? And that leads me to my final tip…
The Clearest Signal Is That You Give a Damn
I’ve spent most of this article talking about the mechanics of stage presence, and I’ve done that for a reason. As an actor, a communication coach, and someone who has worked with countless leaders and speakers, I know these things matter. How you use your eyes matters. Your voice matters. Your body matters. Learning how to use all of them more intentionally can absolutely make you a stronger communicator.
But I’ve saved the biggest secret of stage presence for last.
You have to give a damn.
You have to care about the people sitting in front of you and believe that what you’re sharing can somehow be useful to them. You have to want them to understand it, feel it, question something, see something differently, make a better decision, or walk away with something they didn’t have when they entered the room.
That’s what I mean by becoming the clearest signal in the room.
The signal isn’t “Look how confident I am.” It isn’t “Look how polished I am.” or “Look how good I am at this.”
It’s “I believe this matters, I believe it can matter to you, and I’m here with you until you get it.”
When that intention is real, all those techniques we’ve been talking about finally have somewhere to go. Eye contact becomes a way of actually seeing people. Vocal variety comes from wanting them to hear what matters. A pause gives them time to absorb an idea. Your body responds naturally because you’re connected to what you’re saying instead of monitoring every move you’re making.
That’s the special sauce. You can practice the mechanics of stage presence, and you should. But eventually you have to stop performing the techniques and allow yourself to care enough about the message and the people receiving it that they can feel you there with them.
You Don’t Have to Be Born With “It”
I still think about those actors who could walk into an audition and somehow make everyone look up. At the time, it felt like magic. Now I understand that there were skills underneath it, but the best performers weren’t thinking about those skills in the moment. They were simply there, completely invested in what they were giving us.
So practice eye contact, the voice, and the movement. Get comfortable taking up the space. Then, when it’s time to stand in front of people, stop thinking so much about yourself and focus on what you came there to give them.
You don’t need to be the biggest personality in the room. You just need to care enough about the people in it to become the clearest signal.
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Ready to Become the Clearest Signal in the Room?
Powerful stage presence isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about making sure the best of who you already are actually reaches your audience.
With our 1-on-1 Public Speaking Coaching, you’ll work directly with an expert coach to strengthen your presence, sharpen your delivery, and learn how to use your voice, body, and message to create genuine connection every time you speak.
You already have something worth saying. Let’s make sure people feel it.
