It's the thing that all presenters dread – the silence that follows a presentation.

The days that follow your presentation are critical to success. This is when the people you presented to should be passing on your content to others, becoming content ambassadors and evangelists for your message. But in that silence, it can be hard to tell what is really happening.

Have you ever sat through a presentation or even read a book and thought, This isn’t for me, what is this all about? or Why am I bothering with this? That isn’t how you want your audience to feel when you present, but I can’t tell how often this happens.

This usually occurs when the audience for this specific presentation isn’t clearly identified upfront. As a result, different pieces of content get added for everyone ‘who might be interested’ or who might attend the meeting. All bases get covered. What could have been a clear message for the right audience, addressing a clear problem, becomes a waffly rambling collection of something for everyone.

When we think about the idea of showing up, of fitting in or standing out, we can be drawn to the superficial and the projected; we can think that this is all about identity when, in fact, it is about your presence.

Who are you being in this moment?

I like powerful questions, questions that stop you and make you go, ‘Huh, I never thought about that’. And that is one of them.

But what I find more interesting than the question itself is what comes up when you hear it for the first time. What other questions do you ask yourself, and what thoughts pop up in search of or to avoid answering this?

You know that feeling when you get turned down for a job, lose a client, or a candidate takes another job over the one you have offered them? A relationship ends, or you feel excluded from a social group or didn’t get picked for the sports team. Even if this happens to someone close to you, you can feel like it happened to you.

Meet rejection. We feel it in all these situations, and it can wield an incredible, even debilitating, force over us.

Belonging isn’t something we openly talk about much, certainly not in the work context, yet its presence or lack of it influences our self-image, motivation, behaviour, health and well-being, and the lengths we will go to fit in, often at the expense of our own identity.

Think back to a time when you found yourself in a situation where you felt out of place, and that familiar voice in your head whispered, “I don’t belong here.” Can you recall the rush of emotions that followed that thought?

The Show Up Paradox that we are living with right now is where we need to be seen and form meaningful connections more than ever at a time when we have never been more invisible.

It is not just external factors such as distraction and diluted attention that contribute to this; the choices we make, whether consciously or subconsciously, can gradually alter how others perceive us and even affect our own self-perception.

There are two significant challenges that, when not well managed, erode how we keep an audience connected and engaged as we unpack our strategic business stories.

The most common of these is giving away too much too soon, unpacking every detail coming up before going through every detail in even greater detail. This is a surefire way to have the audience tune out and miss critical points when they think they know what is coming next.

40-60% of your pipeline isn't lost to a better solution.

It's lost to indecision.

Your prospects aren't choosing someone else.

They're choosing to do nothing and taking the safe option where they won’t get fired for getting it wrong.

We live in an era of great distraction. There is more information more readily available and constantly competing for our attention, a feeling of less time to take it all in, and as a result, we are more easily distracted than ever.