Without energy, your presentation is Frankenstein on the slab

A few minutes of mulling in my darkened fifth-row seat, and I arrived at a diagnosis: It wasn't that the delivery was bad. It was that her underlying energy was wrong. Her words extolled the virtues of her idea, but her energy said, "I find this kind of depressing." And no amount of 'correct gestures' could save it.

Energy is a big deal. Just watch the crowds walking through a mall. The brow-beaten, gawky-teen, scanning the floor with his everything-sucks-stoop, versus the up-beat young business woman with a gathered posture, a perky confidence and a sprightly step.

Yes, the difference is in the body language, but the body language is informed by the underlying energy.

When a speaker infuses an idea with just the right level of underlying energy, it lights up the collective neural circuits of their audience. The idea starts to crackle with authenticity and excitement. The audience leans forward. Your persuasive power increases.

The lifeless body of a script

When it comes to dissecting presenting styles, I admit, I'm quite into my nuts 'n bolts. I love going into nerd levels of detail about gestures, movement, rhythm, pace, intonation, placement and a thousand other terms you thought you'd only encounter in ballet class.

But watching with this particular speech taught me that, without a grasp of underlying energies, even a technically perfect presentation is still just Frankenstein on the slab. You have to animate your script with electricity, or your audience will experience nothing more than a disconcerting, slightly eerie, imitation-of-life.

But this is where we can get a little creative. Infusing energy into a speech isn't just a once-off affair: ala, Boom, done! You can go so far as to divide your presentation into its various segments, and then work on the specific energy for each segment.

An assortment of 'energies'

For a presentation to have rhythm and variety, it should have different segments. The most obvious ones are:

• Beginning
  
• Body
  
• Conclusion

...But in truth, there are usually more than that. For instance you may have:

• The chatty bit at the beginning, in which you break the ice
  
• The part where you introduce the problem you aim to address, and then emotionalize the pain
  
• The storytelling segment in which you give an example of how the problem affects real people
  
• The 'breakthrough-eureka!' moment, in which you deliver your idea/solution
  
• The expansion of this idea into practical applications
  
• The second storytelling bit, in which you paint the picture of a wonderful world with your idea
  
• The part where you challenge your audience to do something about it
  
• The conclusion.

Have you ever thought of work-shopping each of these segments in your keynote, so that you know what type of underlying energy to employ per segment? You would be astonished at the effect it will have on your total delivery and on your audience.

Using the examples above, we might design the first four segments with the following attendant energies:

1. The chatty bit at the beginning, in which you break the ice (warm, conversational tone, slower pace, with smiles and pauses. Lead with charm and charisma).
   
2. The part where you introduce the problem you aim to address, and then emotionalize the pain (switch to an energy of concern. Draw listeners in with a frowning 'meaningfulness,' which sets a serious tone in the room).
   
3. The storytelling segment, in which you give an example (switch to a storytelling style, as you create a world in their imaginations).
   
4. The 'breakthrough-eureka!' moment, when you deliver your idea/solution (change to a tone of awe and wonder at the brilliance of it all, which leads the minds of the listeners to feel reverence toward your solution).

These underlying energies, once identified, will come through in your voice, face, movements and rate of delivery. The better you get at capturing the right underlying energy, the more your audience will feel your points, rather than just hearing them. They will start to live your presentations, rather than merely evaluating them on an intellectual level. Your levels of contrast will also be greater, which will help you to hold their attention for longer.

Frighteningly effective

After watching that technically proficient but ultimately stillborn speech, I added 'underlying energies' to my own repertoire and to my training courses. While teaching it during a coaching session, one of my delegates remarked, "This is incredibly powerful and also slightly scary! It's so persuasive it's almost occult!"

Sounds funny, but so be it.

If our goal is to persuade, then let's succeed at our goal. After all, once you believe in your idea, the entire point of a presentation is to get them to believe in it too. And underlying energies will help you to get the job done.

So, happy tinkering!