This is a recorded talk by Eric Edmeades (uploaded by Vishen Lakhiani) offering a practical method for holding audience attention during presentations. The core technique—called the Charisma Pattern—uses "pacing and leading": start kinesthetic (feeling-based), then warm into auditory (rhythm/cadence) and finally reach visual (inspiring, high-impact statements) to bring different audience types along. Edmeades illustrates the pattern with historical speakers and describes broad applications (sales, recruiting, politics) and his own long workshops.
Chapters
What we have to do is something called pacing and leading the audience. We're going to pace and lead the audience. So here's how it's going to work. We're going to start in kinesthetic, we're going to walk out and connect from a feeling base with the audience. We're going to start kinesthetic, because the kinesthetic people are going to go, oh, man, I really like this presenter. The auditory people are going to go, eh, could you speak up a little? The visual people haven't even noticed, notice it started, so everything is fine. And then we're going to start with kinesthetic, and then we're going to warm up. And we're going to warm up, but the kinesthetic people will come along for the ride once we've got rapport with them. And then we're going to warm up into a more auditory, a little bit more rhythm, a little bit more cadence, a little more delivery. And the kinesthetic people are going to come on up and then the auditory people are going to go, hey, I really like this person. This is a great presenter. And the kinesthetic people are going, yeah, I told you, right? Visual people, they're still waiting for it to start. That's okay, because then what you're going to do is you're going to build a crescendo, you're going to be giving their talk and the visual people are not really in yet, but you're going to build it up and up and up, and then suddenly you're going to say something amazing and you're going to inspire them. And the visual people are going to go, I love this. And the auditory will go, yeah, it's cool. And the kinesthetic people are going, I told you. Because you paced and led, you established rapport at each level of the audience and you brought them along the journey. Now, it's important you don't just stay there, you don't just do that ramp up once. You still got to take them on a bit of a roller coaster. But if you can take them through that emotional ride, you can hold them for as long as you like. I have workshops where I'm on stage for 10 to 12 hours for four or five days in a row, and the audience complain because I don't give them enough breaks to go to the toilet because they don't want to give up in the middle of my presentation and go to the bathroom. I had teachers where I invented going to the bathroom so I could escape their presentations. Didn't you. This will change everything about the way you present to an artist. It will change everything about the way the audience perceives you. It is extremely powerful. And incidentally, it has a name. It's called the Charisma Pattern. That launch has a charisma pattern. And that is to start soft, warm up, heat up, it's called the Charisma Pattern. And I want you to notice something. Any of the truly great orders in the history of the world use this pattern unconsciously, I imagine, because I'm not sure somebody had taught it to them. They just did it unconsciously. It just came to them, but they did. You see Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King doesn't walk out there and he goes, I've seen the promised Land. He doesn't start like that. He says, I'm not worried about any man. I'm not fearing any man, because I have been allowed to go up to the promised land. I've been allowed to go up to the mountaintop and I've seen the promised land. And he takes them on that journey. Same thing in his I have a Dream speech. I even had somebody, and this is a little dark, but I even had somebody come to me and say, what about Adolf Hitler? He was a great speaker. First of all, let's be really clear. I'm not advocating anything that he was about. What I'm saying is the Stage Effect is an incredibly powerful force, and it can be used for good or evil. But the reason people bring him up so often is because the videos you see of him are. And he's yelling and he's shouting. But if you watch the whole talk, which you never really see in media clips, what you're going to see is that he started off here and he warmed up there, and he took them there. And once he'd worked them into a fervor, he could get them to do ungodly things. You can use that same magic, you can use that same power to create influence in any area of life that you want to. Whether you want to use it to attract new business, new clients. Maybe you want to use it for recruiting the right partners, joint ventures, investors, employees. Maybe you want to use it to forward a cause. Maybe you want to run for political office. I can tell you right now, right now, more than any other skill, authentic presentation is what will win you in elections.
