When I speak, I like to move. I walk around. Being able to move is a big part of how I hold a room's attention.
In April 2016 I had a busy weekend of speaking booked. Good rooms I was looking forward to. There was just one problem. I was on crutches and not allowed to put any weight on my leg.
So I had to speak sitting down.
Taking away the stage
Not being able to walk around felt very weird. Like someone had tied one hand behind my back and asked me to juggle.
But it taught me some fantastic lessons about different ways to keep an audience engaged. Five years later, when Facebook served those memories back to me, they were still with me.
What sitting down forces you to do
When you can't move, everything else has to work harder. Your voice matters more. The pace matters more. The pauses matter more. You can't hide a weak bit by striding across the stage. The words have to carry it.
Eye contact matters more too. Sitting down, you're closer to the audience's eye level. It feels less like a performance and more like a conversation. And I've come to believe that the best presentations are exactly that, conversations that happen to have a lot of people in them.
You also learn to bring the audience to you. Questions, hands up, a bit of back and forth, a moment where someone in the room does the talking. If you can't go to them, you invite them in.
None of that is new. Good speakers do all of it standing up. But having one of my favourite tools taken away made me notice the others, and practise them properly.
There's a business lesson in it too. Plenty of owners lean on one strength for years. The founder who wins every deal in person. The shop that relies on one big customer. It works, until something changes. It's worth knowing what you'd do if your favourite tool was taken away for a while, before life makes you find out.
When those memories popped up in April 2021, we'd gone a long time without live events. I missed them. I missed the buzz before you walk on, the faces, the conversations afterwards. I was hoping we'd get back to them soon.
I'm grateful for that awkward weekend now.
For your next presentation, pitch or team meeting, take away the thing you lean on most. The slides, the notes, the pacing, the joke you always open with. See what you do instead.
