Five Alternate Tips for Establishing Personal Presence

Dianna Booher has been writing about professional presence and communications for decades and has a number of bestselling titles under her belt.

Here she lists five lesser-known techniques that are easy to remember and yet make all the difference when establishing presence and influence with others:

1. Take a stand: Stand to the left side of a group when you deliver laugh lines and you’ll get a better response (as opposed to the right side, where you should deliver emotional stories and appeals).

2. Observe the one-sentence rule: Recognize the importance of summarizing your concept or idea down to its core essence. If you can't summarize your idea in a single sentence, you're going to have a significantly more challenging time trying to convince the folks in the boardroom.

3. Talk to the back row: Project to those farther away from you rather than keeping your eyes on the friendly faces down front when you speak to a group. Talk to those seated in the back row, last seat. Your brain will automatically adjust your energy level, voice, and body language to project so that you can engage those people at a distance. Those even closer will engage with you as well.

4. Pause before you launch. Talking on trajectory makes you look nervous. Whether just leaving your seat to walk to the front of a meeting room, simply rising from your chair at the conference table, or joining a conversation when someone asks your opinion, pause before you begin will increase the impact and importance of what you say.

5. Stick to the facts. Prefer verbs and nouns to adjectives and adverbs. Verbs and nouns express facts (or what sounds like fact). Verbs motivate, persuade, and demand action. Adjectives and adverbs express opinions and therefore invite people to nitpick and argue.

Thoughts? Reactions? Other ideas?