There have been times in your life when you have made yourself heard across a room, a park or a parking lot. There have been other times in your life when someone had trouble hearing your words even though you were only a few feet away. What made the difference?

Most of us are capable of speaking loudly enough and clearly enough to be heard in most situations. When giving a presentation in a reasonably sized room with a reasonable set up, we know that our voices are capable of getting the job done. We can make enough sound with enough articulation so that the people in the room will understand us.

Often, you have been sitting in the room while someone was speaking and could not be heard. The trouble was clearly not that the person lacked the physical capability to speak. The trouble was that the person lacked the belief that other people wanted to hear what s/he had to say.

No one wants to sit in a room and half-hear what is being said. No one wants to be left out or to be uncomfortable. You feel left out when someone is mumbling or distracted or speaking only to their notes or computer screen. You want to hear. You want to listen. Your audience wants to listen to you.

Your real voice - the one that can be heard loud and clear - gets used when you are sure that someone might want to listen.

You want to be heard. You want to be understood. You want to feel that the enormous effort it takes to speak to a group is worthwhile. You want to have a voice.

You do have a voice and your voice - whether it is high or low, fast or slow, whatever its accent - your voice is capable of getting the job done.

If you are really shy, then understand that the best way to disappear into a room is to speak so clearly that people focus on what you are saying and not how you are saying it. Use your voice to move the attention of your audience away from you and onto your topic.

If you are not really shy, enjoy being heard. It's a wonderful opportunity to notice that having a voice feels good and enables you to get great results.

Researchers agree that a human brain can only hold a few pieces of information in conscious awareness at once. Some say the number is as low as one; others make it as high as nine. No one makes it higher than nine. If you make a top ten list, then no one can hold the whole list in conscious awareness at one time.

As you gather information in preparation for giving a presentation, keep this in mind. Everything should fit in three to five categories and everything should fit in only one of those categories. As complex and wonderful as you may find your subject, you need to reduce it to about three categories and produce one memorable statement of what each of those categories holds.

How can you keep a presentation interesting with so few points? Just keep making the same points in different ways. As you reread this article, you will notice that each paragraph makes the same point. There is really only one point here: you must take all the information you want to use and simplify it into about three categories, then provide a one sentence description for each category.

When you give the presentation, you will be able to fill in details and give examples and tell stories. They will all make sense and some of them will even be remembered because everything you say will be tied to one of only three (to five) key points. The result of your pruning and organizing will be that it is easier for people to really hear what you have to say, to hold it in their minds as a single message, and to remember what you want them to remember.

As a bonus, once you have reduced all of your information to three key points, you will be absolutely clear on what you have to say and how it fits together. You will always be able to hold all of your key points in your awareness at once. You will look and sound clear and confident - because you will be clear and confident.

No one can guarantee what people will remember about the presentation or speech you give. There are lots of guidelines for catching attention and holding it long enough for memories to form. None of them are absolute.

If you know what you would like people to remember, you have a better chance at persuading them to remember it. You have to be selective: you already know that people have selective memories. They will only remember a few points. What points do you want them to remember?

Do you want them to remember that you were excited or do you want them to remember what you were excited about?

Do you want them to remember what you said or what you wanted them to do?

Do you want them to do the right thing or to know what the right thing is to do?

Most presentations hope that people will remember far more than people are likely to remember. They are like parents who take their five year old on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation because "he'll always remember this."

So what can you do? Know what you want to say and say it as clearly as possible. Say it in lots of different ways. Say it with words and with pictures and with expression. Say it in ways that connect directly with your audience's experience.

Do not expect too much. You own brain is filled with a wonderful, eccentric compilation of bits and pieces of memories. That's what you can expect from the brains of your audience.

You want to speak, and you are scared. That's okay. You've been scared of lots of things. Look back over your life. You will notice some things that scared you once but no longer scare you. You will notice other things (like speaking to groups!) that scared you in the past and still scare you now. You will notice that you are here, reading this, thinking about how to deal with speaking to groups. So far, you have survived all the things that scared you.

How did you do it? What moved you ahead when you were almost paralyzed with fear? Everyone is different, and everyone shares some common strategies for getting past fear so that we can do the things we want or need to do. We'll start with two things that help everyone.

The first is breathing. Try this. Think of a time when you were safe and confident and wrapped up in something you liked to do. Notice how your breathing changes as you think about what that was like. It might get faster or slower, deeper or more shallow. The point is that it will be different than it was before you starting really imagining yourself as confident and engaged.

Now think of a time when you were scared and notice that your breathing changes again. As long as you breathe naturally, your breathing will correspond to your emotional state - it is a large part of the physiological changes that create our emotional experience. Change that breathing, and you will also change the quality of your experience. Try it. Stay focused on the same time when you were scared and take control of your breathing by counting 4 or 5 beats in, then 4 or 5 beats out. Move your breathing from your chest to your diaphragm (or from your diaphragm to your chest - just make it different). Within a few controlled breaths, you will find that it is harder to remember to be scared.

Moving helps too. Notice that when you get scared, you either get very tense and stuck or perhaps your movements become agitated and fidgety. Change them. Think of a time you were scared then pull your shoulders back so that they are open and comfortable. Walk across the room, swinging your arms, holding your head high and putting a bounce in your step.

You can breathe. You can move the way you move when you are relaxed and prepared. What else gets you through when you're scared? Being scared is how you start - not how you have to finish.

As I began to work on this lens, I was shocked to realize that none of the books or videos I was recommending were produced by women. As a woman who regularly speaks, teaches, coaches and writes, I had been so focused on the work that I had missed a key component of the conversation: there are not enough women speaking.

This explains a lot.

All of the men featured on this lens are good at what they do. They are all good models of aspects of what it means to open up communication with a group of people. They give good advice.

That being said, my mission is now to find the women who are also opening powerful conversations. I have encountered many of these women in other contexts: the arts, religion, education and parenting. It is important that we hear their voices and learn from their models in business, too.