Leah Bonvissuto Of PresentVoices On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Perspective: Most people secretly report struggling to communicate effectively in high-stakes settings — they’re just not talking about it. In my work, I find that the more privilege, power, and seniority someone has, the less likely they are to admit to challenges communicating (sometimes even to me, their coach! sometimes even to themselves!). If you have a fear of speaking up, then it’s likely others on your team feel the same. The more we can understand our innate reaction in situations of stress, the more we can see the shame and stigma surrounding it and proactively build a strong foundation for confident communication.

At some point in our lives, many of us will have to give a talk to a large group of people. What does it take to be a highly effective public speaker? How can you improve your public speaking skills? How can you overcome a fear of speaking in public? What does it take to give a very interesting and engaging public talk? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker” we are talking to successful and effective public speakers to share insights and stories from their experience. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Leah Bonvissuto.

As founder of PresentVoices, Leah Bonvissuto helps people articulate their best ideas in their most important moments. She is passionate about dismantling the systems that are silencing voices in our society so that more of us can be heard. Combining backgrounds in neuropsychology and theater direction, Leah has helped thousands of people be more powerfully present at organizations including LinkedIn, Adobe, Google, MailChimp, Nike, Square, Estee Lauder, and Dell. Leah has been featured in Forbes, Success Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Bustle, Real Simple, and Communications Week and speaks about how organizations can strengthen employee inclusion, engagement, and efficiency by harnessing the power of conscious communication.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

I was raised by a mime and a Broadway musician, so naturally, I had trouble speaking up for myself. I joke that it’s because my mother was a mime, but really, I suffered from social anxiety. I would lose my train of thought (and my personality!) when the spotlight turned to me. I had nerves that made it impossible to think clearly and access my thoughts. I was unable to articulate my ideas in important moments and it permeated every moment of my life.

Being raised in the theater, I naturally escaped to the stage. As an actor, someone told me what words to say and how to interact with others. There were rules I could follow which alleviated my anxiety onstage. Offstage, I avoided socializing at all costs.

I was very confident doing my work, but whenever I had to talk about the work (in interviews, in the press, at social events) I would shut down. My mind would go blank in the moments that mattered most to me. I was frustrated, angry, and devastated that my life’s work was being muted by my inability to express myself.

It took me many years to learn just how many people feel this way, relative to their own power and privilege in any given space.

It was in talking about this anxiety with others and learning to feel less alone in it that I began to find my voice. For the first time, I could hear myself think and I knew what I wanted to say. Talking about it with others deflated the intensity of the anxiety. That was where this work began for me.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

Before beginning this work, I was a theater director. At the same time, I spent over a decade working as a neuropsychological assistant (theater didn’t pay the bills, after all). In this work, I learned about trauma, attention, anxiety, exposure therapy, and executive functioning. Desperate for relief from near-constant panic attacks and social anxiety, I decided to apply some of these theories to my own anxiety.

I was desperate to “deal” with the anxiety, which seemed to be holding me back in every area of my professional and personal life. I joined an anxiety support group, which made the anxiety worse because it was centered even more than usual. I treated this as exposure therapy and would go running to simulate palpitations of a panic attack and practiced speaking through the breathlessness. I started meditating, which forced me to get quiet and listen to a voice I had never heard clearly — my own. And I was in talk therapy, which was essential in helping me move through this transition with support and strength.

I first explored this work as part of a healthcare/arts exchange where I helped train 1,500 frontline staff workers at a public hospital in Brooklyn. In exchange, I got my wisdom teeth removed for free (I had multiple jobs but no health insurance!).

Doing this important work with frontline healthcare workers was the beginning of me realizing the impact of this work. I loved helping people de-escalate, articulate, and advocate for themselves and their coworkers in important, fast-paced moments. Helping facilitate more clarity and compassion in communication became my life’s work.

I had grown up in the theater. I loved helping people tell stories on stages of all shapes and sizes, but directing theater wasn’t enough. I wanted to help people tell their own stories with their own voices and feel more powerful doing so. I wanted to help people trust their voices to articulate their vision. I particularly wanted to help people who felt that their voices had betrayed them. I wanted to help people who were struggling to speak up in systems that weren’t built for them.

I had done this work for myself, by myself, and it was isolating beyond imagination. I was determined to serve as an outside eye and sounding board for others through this process of reclaiming their voice so they didn’t have to go it alone.

Today, my work is living theater.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

At the height of the pandemic in late 2020, I designed and facilitated a virtual resiliency training program for essential workers at an employee-owned pizzeria in a rural part of the country. The program was facilitated on Zoom in interactive meetings of varying sizes and structures over three months. I was approached by leadership to develop this program because these young workers, most of them under 21, were being harassed by customers at work for upholding COVID-19 regulations.

I first developed a program for the team leaders, eight young women under the age of 25, and then together, we designed a program for all workers at the company. We talked about anxiety, psychological safety, trauma, shame, and burnout.

Through creating a space that was collectively-built, reliable, and intentional, we worked on tools to help the workers feel more present and powerful — behind masks, when taking orders over the phone, and on the floor of the pizzeria. Participants came out of the program feeling supported, heard, validated, and empowered with tools to help them speak their truth in moments of uncertainty and high stress. This program impacted me greatly — I learned so much about resiliency, leadership, ownership, and empathy from these young, essential workers.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I jumped right in to entrepreneurship and parenting at the same time. I wish I’d trusted my own intuition and instincts earlier in both cases. It took me a while to listen to myself — to hear and trust my own voice — something that has become a lifelong journey.

I still had my day job as a neuropsychological assistant when I started doing the work of helping others communicate. Coaching work had built to the point that I could not keep my day job, even though my work with the neuropsychologist was super flexible. I booked my very first corporate contracts, three at the same time for the same week. I was about to embark on a trip where I’d teach five workshops in seven days in four cities. And I also had just found out I was pregnant.

Diving headfirst into entrepreneurship was fun but messy. I took much from my years producing and directing theater, where being scrappy and resourceful was key. In theater, you wear every hat from marketing to publicity to creative direction to facilitation. It was similar to entrepreneurship in so many ways.

But parenting? Parenting required ease and trust and focus. I couldn’t multitask in the same way because it wasn’t effective. Parenting required my presence. Turns out, entrepreneurship requires the same.

Learning how to parent and be my own boss at the same time has taught me so much about ownership, authority, and trust. It’s a daily reminder that I make the rules, that I don’t have to do things in a prescriptive way, and that I can create my work-life to suit my needs.

I’m still learning this every day.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m grateful to my clients. Without them, I’d be a puddle of nerves on the floor. My clients give me perspective to remember I am not alone in this anxiety. They give me permission to be confident, because that all I desire for them. I’m grateful to one of my first clients, a 15-year-old girl, who taught me more about following her voice than nearly any other client since. I’m grateful to my clients who come from different backgrounds from me — a ranch manager in rural Colorado and an entrepreneur in Nigeria who help me identify my privilege and limited perspective. I’m grateful to my executive clients who remind me every day of the deep shame and stigma embedded in our communication challenges, especially as people ascend in seniority. I’m grateful for being able to support more marginalized voices to speak up in systems that feel unsafe. Every day, I learn more about communication from these experts of their own voices.

You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging and intimidating. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?

Trust your gut. I wish I had trusted my own intuition earlier on. I wish I knew sooner that most people are making things up as they go along. I wish I knew that even though someone acts confident, they’re likely secretly insecure underneath. I wish I knew that there wasn’t some generic playbook and that I can do things my own way. It would have fostered more creativity, innovation, and trust, which I desperately needed when I started doing this work.

What drives you to get up everyday and give your talks? What is the main empowering message that you aim to share with the world?

I’m devoted to dismantling the systems that are silencing voices in our society so that more of us can be heard. I want people to know that if you struggle speaking up, there’s nothing wrong with you or your voice.

You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?

I’m writing a book about communication and presence, and I plan to launch an online course about these topics this year as well. But the project I’m most excited about is the launch of the new PresentVoices Community.

I’ve always witnessed the power of group work. A team workshop where a manager admits to public speaking anxiety alongside their direct reports. Hearing my private clients say similar things, knowing that if they could talk to each other, they would feel less alone. And my group coaching programs where people learn not only from being in the spotlight and speaking in front of strangers, but from watching others change the way they communicate right before their very eyes.

The PresentVoices Community includes weekly group coaching classes and monthly workshops where members can practice speaking off-the-cuff in a confidential, carefully-held virtual space. This is an invite-only community, only open to my current and former clients.

I’ve dreamed of this Community for years, and it is exceeding my wildest expectations. It has become a laboratory where folks can practice and strategize for important interactions, meetings, presentations, and conversations. Speaking up in a space with new people simulates the public speaking anxiety that so many of us experience, creating a controlled way to practice expressing ourselves in high-stakes moments.

One of the greatest surprises has been the way that members are getting to know each other and supporting each other: Product managers meeting on the side to coach each other for interviews; members who had experienced managerial abuse helping each other navigate new workplaces after leaving traumatic environments; members in similar industries in different countries getting to learn more about best practices in other regions.

This community has been gratifying and fulfilling beyond my dreams, and it also creates a flexible, accessible way for me to support people at varying income levels

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be” by André De Shields

When I started meditating and focusing on my communication, my life slowed down. I learned how to slow my breathing and that helped me slow my racing thoughts. This created space where I could think and hear my own perspective and that allowed me to speak my mind for the first time.

Instead of focusing on the anxiety, which went at a fast-pace, I was more in my moments and because of that, I felt more in control. Pacing is almost always at the forefront of communication challenges, which can impact breath, nerves, thinking, and speaking. Exploring slowness and honoring my own rhythm has been essential.

Ok, thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Public Speaker?” Please share a story or example for each.

Video: https://youtu.be/v8KTQ2lg8FY

Public speaking is often noted as the greatest phobia of all, with national statistics hovering around 74%. My data puts this number even higher, with 86.6% of people reporting challenges with public speaking nerves (this data is not just collected from my private clients but from the thousands of people I’ve supported in corporate team workshops!).

There can be many things that get in the way of being an effective public speaker. Physiological sensations and nerves can make it nearly impossible to feel confident and in control. Racing thoughts or distractions can take us out of the present moment. On Zoom, we may be over-indexing people’s facial expressions or over-prioritizing how we’re being perceived (instead of focusing on what we want to say). We may lose our train of thought or go blank. We may not know where to look or how to speak to a group of 50 or 500 (”But I’m really good one-on-one!”).

In my work, I’m not interested in helping people present as more confident or charismatic. My work is committed to making sure that you actually feel more confident in the moment so you can trust yourself to communicate effectively. I want you to be able to access and articulate your unique perspective, passion, and personality, without losing yourself in the intensity of the moment.

We can’t do that when anxiety takes our agency away. We have to be able to make choices and those choices exist in the present moment. Here are five key components to effective public speaking designed to give you the ability to make choices in these moments of high-intensity:

1. Perspective: Most people secretly report struggling to communicate effectively in high-stakes settings — they’re just not talking about it. In my work, I find that the more privilege, power, and seniority someone has, the less likely they are to admit to challenges communicating (sometimes even to me, their coach! sometimes even to themselves!). If you have a fear of speaking up, then it’s likely others on your team feel the same. The more we can understand our innate reaction in situations of stress, the more we can see the shame and stigma surrounding it and proactively build a strong foundation for confident communication.
2. Purpose: Often, there’s an underlying intention behind public speaking that puts added pressure on us. “I want to prove I’m the right person”, “I want this to go well.” It serves us to reframe the focus on the purpose or impact of the work. Articulate an objective for the speaking engagement that matters to your audience. This will keep the purpose of the work front-and-center. Anytime you catch yourself over-thinking, refocus your attention on the greater purpose of the work and the audience you are there to serve. For example: Today, my goal is to share some practical tools to help you feel more confident and in control when speaking in public.
3. Points: When we think about public speaking, most of us focus on the content, but words themselves only account for 7% of how we’re perceived. If 93% of our communication is non-verbal, then we have to make content accessible, conversational, and intuitive. Separate content from delivery by designating time to focus on what you want to say. This is a more analytical process and can take the form of an outline of bullets, a slide deck, or just a few key points. If you tend to script, remember that doing so robs you of the opportunity to practice the emotional transitions — how you get from idea to idea. Instead, avoid sentences and focus on words or phrases. Treat content as scaffolding, designed to support you when you forget, instead of capturing every word you want to say.
4. Preparation: What makes you feel prepared? Most of us equate preparation with conquering content, and it’s essential to reframe this perspective. In the prior step, you’ve prepared content in whatever way makes you comfortable, which can include slides, an outline of talking points, or even scripting, if necessary. Once you have the big ideas down, it’s essential that you prepare in a way that serves your ability to feel confident. This does not mean sitting down at your desk and practicing a virtual presentation as if it was happening. It also does not mean running through it 20 times or memorizing it so you don’t forget what you want to say. All of this takes away our ability to trust ourselves in the moment and can reinforce anxiety. Instead, have the content visible and practice speaking it through quickly, preferably while moving your body. Speed through the content while washing dishes or in the shower. Go for a walk or even a run, which can trigger the same physiological response we experience with palpitations, and practice accessing your ideas through the breathlessness. Make changes to your content based on where you stumble and make any changes to support your ability to access your ideas in the moment. Treat this as exposure therapy and get more comfortable in the tremendous discomfort of fight-or-flight. Finally, set up your space to minimize distractions and maximize your focus and attention in the moment.
5. Presence: Anxiety breeds when we don’t have agency — it makes us feel powerless and small when we can’t make choices. We begin to reclaim some of that control and confidence when we make choices that feed our ability to feel in control and confident. To do this, we have to transform unconscious behaviors and habits into conscious choices. The anxiety will tell you to move, fidget, adjust, and restate but all of these things cause more anxiety when done unconsciously. Instead, feel the tactile ridge on a pen instead of fidgeting unconsciously with it. Lean back and feel the points of contact between your body and your chair or your feet on the floor. Think of melting physically and getting heavy, an effective response to vagal nerve dysregulation. Slow your rate of speech by taking intentional pauses to refuel and breathe, to give yourself a moment to think, and to give your audience a beat to catch up with you. Any focus that brings you into the present moment, if only for a moment before you are distracted again, helps us counter the anxiety and focuses our attention on the present moment.

As you know, many people are terrified of speaking in public. Can you give some of your advice about how to overcome this fear?

When I started doing this work, I realized that most people feel the same. We’re just not talking about it! Just by having conversations every day about the intensity of public speaking fear, my own response to it changed. The intensity began to deflate because I felt less alone in it. Trusting that nothing is wrong with you is the first step. If most people are experiencing this, then odds are, you are not alone. Even focusing on others to see if you can “see” their anxiety can be an effective redirect to bring us more into the present moment and break the intensity of our own internal focus.

You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

U.S. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says that “The people closest to the pain, should be the closest to the power, driving and informing the policymaking”. I envision a world where more voices are heard, listened to, and understood. I dream of a world where we are elevating those most impacted by the intersections of poverty, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and misogyny to be decision-makers in our future growth. I truly believe that our answers exist in learning from, listening to, and being led by those most impacted by these deadly daily forces.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!

My heroes are those fighting every day to save American democracy. I would love to have lunch with Stacey Abrams, and am grateful for her work protecting the right to vote for all Americans.

Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?

Yes! Please visit the PresentVoices website for tips, tools, and more information on this work (www.presentvoices.com). And find me on social media at @PresentVoices.co on Instagram and Facebook!

This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!