Presence : What is it and how to get it

Seductive title, right? The assumptive opening: presence exists–and you too can acquire it, turn heads, and own the room!

I started my adult life wanting to be a Shakespearean actor—the center of attention, radiating charm and ease. I worked with many acting teachers using many different techniques, and I also worked with many actors, in class, in rehearsals, and in performance.  Let me say this: some actors have presence and some don’t.

Peter Brook, the great English theater director said, “One actor can stand motionless on a stage and rivet our attention while another does not interest us at all. What’s the difference?”

Same with leaders in politics and business: some have it, some don’t.  Those who have it often lead their followers astray, while those who don’t have it often fail to energize and motivate.  

Presence is morally and ethically neutral. It’s not the aura of a saint or the malevolence of a madman, but it bestows power on the individual who has it, and can be used for good or ill. 

Who Has Presence?

Let me give you some examples. Hitler had presence. Mussolini had presence. Jim Jones, the mass Kool-Aid murderer of Jonestown, had it. And so did the wacko in Waco, David Karesh. He had presence.

But so did Ronald Reagan have it. Oprah Winfrey has it. Muhammad Ali had it. And actors like Seth Rogen and Jack Nicholson have it too. So does Meryl Streep. 

In fact, my barber has presence. The security guard in my old building had presence. There are even dogs that have presence. My friends Dikki and Robin had a dog named Cole, and he could command your attention. 

You and I would like to have it too. We don’t need to have the kilowatt power of the lights on Broadway, but we’d like to be noticed. We’d like to be heard. We’d like to be able to command attention when we speak. 

So what is it and how can we get it? 

First, it’s not one monolithic thing. It’s a bunch of different things. 

Sheer physicality

Can you picture the actor John Wayne? Can you picture him walking? He moved as if the air around him was made of clay, and he was molding it with every step. His extraordinary physicality lent him presence.

I once saw Merce Cunningham dance when he was quite old, near the end of his career. The dance floor was crowded with beautiful young dancers, muscled and lithe, men and women dressed in white. And then this older guy with curly hair stepped on stage, and he was so alive inside his body that I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Every movement was a testament to the miracle of man, the miracle of the human form.  The mindfulness of his gestures made even his kneecaps speak.  I was totally engrossed. 

And I have sat close to first base at Yankee Stadium and seen some of the best athletes in the world walking, jogging, running, throwing. The extraordinary kinesthetic beauty of their movements was mesmerizing.  They are different from me and you. Their bodies are built for the zone of peak performance. 

Noticing what you see

Most of us look at stuff but don’t penetrate into what it means, what it signals. We lack curiosity.  Machiavelli said, “All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.” People with the gift of penetration have presence.

They read faces. They read gestures. They are curious about why we raised our left eyebrow, or why we pulled the corner of our mouth back while they were speaking. 

And they’ll ask us about it. “Sims, tell me what you’re thinking. You’ve got that look that says you’ve got something on your mind.” I may deny it, but I’ll know that I’m dealing with a person who’s noticing what he sees.

You can tell when your spouse is feeling glum. One look and you know, right? At work, most of us are very busy putting our best face forward, so it’s a little harder, but when you notice what you see, it’s possible to step into a more personal, intimate conversation with people, and that makes you a greater presence in their lives.

Listening to what you hear

Hearing is passive. Listening is active. You can hear lawnmowers out the window and tune them out, and you can hear people speaking to you and do the same thing. In fact, we often do it to our significant others for several reasons:

1. We are distracted by other thoughts.
2. We are predicting that he or she will say the same old thing he or she always says.
3. We resent what they are saying and want to defend ourselves, so instead of listening to what they say we compose rebuttals in our heads.

Listening to what you hear is like being in the ready position to receive the serve of Roger Federer. You should be metaphorically alert, bouncing on the balls of your feet, ready to move in any direction to respond to what comes at you. It could be faster than a speeding bullet, spinning like a twister, or curving from right to left. No matter where the ball goes, you’re going there.

Listening to what you hear gives you license to engage with other people, ask them questions, probe deeper, and let them know that you are curious–really curious–about what’s on their mind.  You want to listen so effectively to what you hear that you suspend your self-orientation. Not only do you get what they’re saying, but you communicate to them that you get what they’re saying, so that they feel gotten. That’s being present.

Refusing to accept labels, jargon, and buzz words

Labels kill thought. “He’s a right-winger,” is an assertion that left unquestioned is so amorphous it approaches uselessness. “She’s a socialist,” is a grenade that can explode in people’s minds, obliterating the chance of a constructive dialogue. To be present in serious discussions, you must question the use of labels, jargon, and buzz words.

In business, we use words like strategy, mission, vision, and goal and barely know how to distinguish one from the other.  I once attended an Advisory Board meeting at the FDA where a physician said that his data was “robust.” In a flash, a member of the board asked him a highly sarcastic question about the meaning of the word robust in a scientific context. 

When we have labeled something with a single word, or accept an idea as its label, we stop thinking any deeper about it. We stop asking questions. 

Socrates preferred spoken language to written words because he said written words can’t answer questions. “You might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing.”

If we are to be present in conversations, we must ask questions to clarify the meaning of the spoken words used by our colleagues. If we don’t, we cannot develop shared meaning, and therefore we cannot be present intellectually with one another. 

The willingness and ability to be expressive

People with presence have socially sensitive antennae. They know when to respond intellectually, when an emotional response is more appropriate, or when a simple physical action is needed.

We just covered the need to unpack the meaning of labels and jargon words. And it bears repeating: when a friend or spouse complains about something going on in their lives, they are not asking you for solutions, which would be an intellectual response. They are asking you to listen empathetically, which is an emotional response. 

In addition, appropriate physical contact can also be part of an empathetic, emotional response. After all, we are present when we are physically, emotionally, and intellectually awake in the space and in the moment, responding to what is happening. 

But there is more. Some people are endowed with speaking voices that are highly communicative, of feeling and of thought. They can use their voices to soothe, reassure, intimidate, seduce—you name it, they can get their voices to do it. 

Some can also bring out complex meaning, subtle nuances, and fine distinctions when speaking about technical matters. Many highly accomplished lawyers are capable of making the complex clear through the highly effective use of vocal variety: changes of pitch, volume, rhythm, timbre and resonance. 

Finally, physical expressiveness includes multiple parts of your body—your face, hands, posture, and gestures of all kinds. All these communicate your inner state through movement, (or you can use them to mask your feelings and thoughts.) Your ability to signal or hide your inner states effectively can be crucial to acquiring a winning presence.

Self-acceptance

People with presence seem to accept who they are. They let it all hang out, and they get credit for the uniqueness that they are. 

I’m not calling this aspect of presence self-knowledge because the self may be too big and mysterious to know. But self acceptance allows you to stop correcting, judging, fixing, condemning and repressing who you are, and let’s you use all that energy for making the most of who you are. Self-acceptance helps you to show up more honestly in the world.

(This assumes that you’re in your right mind, not overly prone to self-deception, or suffering from a massive identity crisis.)

Stop trying to be the person you want to become and be the person you are. When you do, it can feel like you’ve taken off a pair of tight shoes you’ve been wearing all your life. 

I don’t mean to say that you should stop wanting to grow, to acquire new skills, earn more money, or be a better person, but you have to get to those other places by starting from where you are. 

So here it is:–get presence by developing an: