When I was first starting out in the business of persuasion, I had some difficulty with anxiety surrounding live events and seminars. Prior to a seminar for about a week, I'd become unbearable to be around. The wife and kids avoided me, even the dog steered clear. I didn't like it, but thought it was just the cost of doing business. And as if that weren't bad enough, after the event, I'd have an equally difficult "crash" or let down, not because the event wasn't successful, but because a huge amount of energy was expended and released and left me feeling as if I needed some recovery time.

Slowly my comfort with public speaking increased and i became more confident of the effect I was having on students and clients. Along the way I picked up some techniques to create an even faster rapport and ease in the process which is responsible for lessening by far, the anxiety and quickening, by far, the connection and cohesion.

There's one technique for creating an amazing group rapport which I use often. Simply, I imagine a shovel, like a huge snow shovel, as wide as the audience is and this shovel sits at the back of the room waiting for me to use it. The shovel (in my imagination) starts just over the tops of my audience and curves back around.

I imagine I am drawing energy through my feet and projecting it out through my eyes so it settles over the audience like a blanket gently resting on the tops of everyone's heads.

The snow shovel catches this blanket of energy, and whips it around and just as it is coming to my feet, it hits a box that is sitting right down in front of me. The box is a filter.

I'm bringing in everybody's energy, and this filter eliminates the negativity. I never want to take on all that myself, unfiltered. So I see the energy come back, and as see it coming to the box. As it hit the box, it becomes completely clear.

Then energy then comes right up through my feet and out through my eyes to the back of the room where the shovel is, and back up. That's how it starts.

This process starts slowly and builds up speed and intensity until I can simply step aside and watch it moving faster and faster.

This energy has a life of its own. As I give presentations I let this go the whole time.

When I do trainings of 250, 300 people or more, it bonds the group like nothing I have ever seen.

Of course this bonding and rapport could have everything to do with what I'm saying, the words I'm using, the presuppositions, the patterns. . . It could be because we are all there for a common reason, to learn and work together and experience curiosity and fun. For me, however, this exercise dramatically increases my ability at the front of the room.

Consider this another frame or construct you can use when you work with big groups.