Last night I went to a public talk after work to hear a very interesting speaker talk on the importance of sunlight on health and well being. The speaker new his stuff, had an interesting voice and a good message. The only problem was that he had some irritating mannerisms which detracted from his talk.

To be specific, he was a purposeless pacer! Throughout his talk he paced three steps forwards and three steps back and after a few minutes this started to get on my nerves. As a result I had to work extra hard to focus on the content which was good. His impact and authority would have been much higher had he just learned to tame this one little habit.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of us will develop some irritating mannerisms, particularly when we first start to speak in public. We don’t need to be perfect, however we need to do something about it when those little habits start to affect the audience’s ability to pay attention to our content.

The good news is that there is a simple and powerful solution. I call it “suck it in and pump it out!” because that’s the metaphor we need to develop.

First, think of those nervous, irritating movements as evidence that your energy is “leaking out” through the periphery and as a result diminishing the power of your delivery.

Now, when you notice yourself doing these “leaky behaviours” all you need to do is imagine you could suck up that energy from your hands and feet and pump it out in your voice, expression, gestures and eye contact in a way that will energise your content and enthrall your audience.

It really is as simple as that so what are you waiting for? Next time you start to leak remember to “suck it up and pump it out!”

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