You've given the same presentation before and you know your material back to front. And yet, you still don't quite get the response you deserve. People barely look up from their phones, you lose steam halfway through, or you walk out feeling like you didn't quite say what you wanted, how you wanted.

Most of the time, the issue isn't your content - it's your delivery, undermining your message and how it's received. But here's where I come in - these are all fixable patterns, and they don't even require a six-month course! Here are five communication habits for any leader or manager wanting to improve their delivery, starting today.

1. Record yourself and actually watch it back

Oof, tough one to start with, as most people hate this with a passion. Unfortunately for them, it's also the technique that works the fastest lol

Grab your phone, hit record, put the phone down, and then talk through a point from your next presentation. Even 60 seconds is great. Now watch it back. Yep, it's gonna feel like you're pulling teeth - you might squirm, cringe, or grit your teeth, but that's good, as it means it's working.

What you'll notice is specific to you. Oh, you look down a lot. You keep bouncing back and forth, like you're needing to pee. Your volume is so low, you weren't sure if you said 'hello' or 'fellow'.

You can't change what you can't see. And unfortunately, most professionals can't see how they're coming across - if anything, there's usually a big difference in how they 'think' they're coming across in their own head, versus the reality.

Do this daily for two weeks - over 14 reps, and you'll find that the cringe fades, but the self-awareness sticks around.

2. Mirror energy, not just words

When the person across from you is animated, hands moving, talking loudly and excitedly, meet them there! When they drop their voice and pull back, follow suit and come down with them. To be clear, this isn't about being performative! It's you getting on their wavelength, instead of broadcasting on yours.

By calibrating yourself according to your speaking partner/s, you mirror their energy and build a subtle but powerful connection that lends itself to influence.

3. Get comfortable with the pause

Filler words. Um, uh, like, you know. People treat these like a vocabulary problem, but really they're a silence problem.

You reach for a filler because silence feels wrong. You're thinking "Oh no, this needs some kind of sound to fill the void!" And the "Ummm...", comes out.

In response, your listener/s aren't thinking, "Oh, thank goodness they filled the silence!" Instead, they're thinking "Oh, you're unsure. Confused."

Here's what the silence is doing for you if you let it happen. The other person gets a second to catch up. Your point gets a bit of weight behind it instead of being bulldozed by the next sentence. And you come across as someone who's in control rather than someone chasing their own mouth down a hill. There's a bonus, too. Most of your "ums" and "you knows" are just you filling the gaps you were scared to leave open. Leave the 'gaps' open on purpose and a lot of that clutter sorts itself out.

Don't try this for the first time in the quarterly review. Use your next team standup. Say something that matters, leave a beat of silence after it, and watch people's faces.

4. Use the FORD method to never run dry

This one's for the conversations around the meeting, not the meeting itself.

You know the exact moment. Pre-meeting small talk with a client or someone new, thirty seconds in, and your brain is a blank wall. So out comes "so, busy week?" and a little piece of you dies.

FORD is an old rapport framework and an effective one at that: Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams. Don't run it like a checklist though, or you'll sound like you're processing their loan application. Use it as a nudge for where to point your curiosity next. Already covered their work? Drift toward what they get up to outside it. Heard they just moved cities? Ask how the family's handling it. They mention a side project? Ask what it looks like if it goes huge.

Those four areas cover the stuff people are actually glad to talk about, so the conversation stops stalling and starts going somewhere. For sales leaders this is the whole game. The pitch you give after a real conversation is a different animal to the pitch you give after a limp handshake and some chat about the weather.

5. Drop your pitch at the end of sentences

This is the subtlest habit here, and it impacts your credibility more than pretty much anything else on the list.

When your pitch climbs at the end of a sentence, it turns a statement into a question. "The report will be ready Friday?" You weren't asking. But now it sounds like you're checking it's okay with everyone. Do that enough and people trust you a notch less, and they won't even understand why. It's not your words. It's the little upward curl you keep putting on the end of them.

So here's what to do instead: take the pitch down at the end. A statement that drops sounds settled, rather than waiting for permission. The people who command a group don't trail up at the end of their sentences. They come down, they stop, and they let the thing sit there without rushing to rescue the silence. Record yourself answering a question you'd normally get in a meeting, play it back, and count how many sentences curled up at the end. Then record it again. Once you've heard yourself do it, undoing it is usually quick.

Where to start

Don't go after all five at once, because we both know you'll end up doing none of them. Pick the one that stung a bit while you were reading. That's always a great place to start.

And if you'd like a bit of further guidance to pick, consider this: If you keep losing people partway through, it's the pause or the pitch. If your relationships aren't turning into anything, it's the energy or FORD. And if you've got no idea which, it's the recording, because you don't have the self-awareness yet. So start there. Watch yourself back once. That's the entire first step, and the insights will help direct you towards the next most important thing to work on!

If you want to go deeper on all five, this is the sort of thing I teach inside Stage Academy, video lessons plus live coaching so you actually build these habits into how you talk, instead of reading them once and forgetting the lot by Monday.

Explore my flagship program: Stage Academy →