We often quote the title of this Blog post directly in our Presentation Skills or Personal Impact Coaching sessions here at Working Voices. And it is absolutely true:

“Relax and your audience will too…”

They are in fact a direct mirror to how you yourself are feeling. And you can “infect them” (as it is so called) with your MOOD – either positively or negatively – depending on how you are feeling.

We all know what is like to sit in front of somebody who isn’t comfortable – we immediately feel uncomfortable too. But happily – the opposite of that is true too…

This is a really nice clip of Barack Obama taking a moment, during a recent campaign Fundraiser, to pay tribute to the great soul singer, Al Green, who Obama knew was in the audience.

It is a lovely moment of relaxation and humour – and demonstrates Obama’s great sense of ease when standing in front of an audience. He is so relaxed in fact – that he’s even willing to sing!

What I also really like – in a nice moment of disclosure* – is that he confides in us, that his team didn’t actually believe that he was going to do it!

It was a potentially high risk moment: We can all imagine – in the wrong hands or with the wrong set of tonsils coming to the fore (!) – just how badly this moment could have gone! But as you saw, the audience absolutely loved it!

*(I’ve blogged before about how, in my opinion, the best speakers disclose or somehow “let us in” to who they really are – and are prepared to be vulnerable.)

So yes. A top tip:

Relax and your audience will too. They’ll TRUST you – and then they’ll generally go with you, wherever you want to take them.