All the preparation in the world can’t always help you capture the attention of your audience.

“Every speaker can have a great speech in which they are able to grab their audience’s attention. However, in order to do this we first have to take the time to understand what our personality type is,” writes Jim Anderson for Accidental Communicator.

“Once we know this, we can then deliver a speech that is true to our personality and by doing so we’ll be sure to capture our audience’s attention and successfully deliver our message.”

Anderson explains how to captivate your audience with authenticity:

• Know yourself. Some people are naturally magnetic. Others might think they have to fake it on stage, but this can have a negative effect on your speech.

“If we try to be a personality that we are not, then we will end up lacking confidence and we will appear to be unfocused,” writes Anderson.

“If we can [be ourselves] then it will come across in our speech because we will be more engaging, we’ll relax, and we will be able to focus on the message that we want to deliver.”

• Harness charisma. Charisma is a form of emotional focus and the words we use can have a major impact on how our audience receives us, writes Anderson.

“What this means is that what we don’t want to do is to use any weasel words or appear to be using bureaucratic double talk. Make sure that you let your audience fully understand what they should expect from you and what you want them to do,” he writes.

• Stay focused. “If we allow ourselves to start to think about all of the different things that could possibly go wrong during a speech, then we can end up getting distracted,” explains Anderson.

“When this happens, during our speech our body language will let our audience know that we are distracted. When we take the stage, we need to make sure that we don’t wear out our audience by walking all over the stage. Take a position and then allow your charisma to come out.”