1. To continue the musical metaphor, it is the spaces between the notes that give the music meaning. It is also true that the spaces, punctuation and pauses in how you speak brings life to the content of your deliverance.

If you do not breath with ease and with a relaxed posture you will not deliver a powerful presentation. I hope that is clear! Your single most important job in developing the powerful voice of command and conviction is to relax and breathe deeply and rhythmically.

1. Warm up your voice and treat your presentation like a performance and prepare by rehearsing your breathing. Breathe deeply into the bottom of your lungs. You should feel an expansion in your rib cage just slightly higher than your navel and imagine your rib cage moving sideways. Sigh out and repeat this three times. A sigh is a signal to your body that all is well and it's OK to relax. Make a siren sound, descending from a comfortably high note down to a lower one at the bottom of your range. With practise, you will soon find that your low note will connect to that place you located just above your navel. This is your natural voice pitch.

2. Relax your shoulders: The muscles in your shoulders directly support the larynx, so tension here has an immediate effect on the voice. Roll out your shoulders. Imagine warm water pouring onto them, draining away any tensions down your arms, into your hands and out of your fingers. Imagine lengthening the back of your neck by tipping your nose slightly downwards.

• DO - Drink room temperature water as often as you can to keep your voice organ hydrated. If you only have cold or hot water available swish it around in your mouth for a moment to equalise the temperature before swallowing. This action will keep your voice organ from being startled and therefore stressed by different temperatures.

• DO warm-up and cool-down. Warming-up the voice is important before prolonged speaking engagements. A simple, yet effective vocal warm-up is to perform lip-trills while gliding up and down the full extent of your pitch range. After your presentation, cool down your voice to prevent damage to the vocal cords. The simple practice of gentle and relaxed humming can serve as one excellent, easy form of cooling-down.

• DO - Get plenty of rest before a presentation. A tired body promotes a tired voice, which directly influences your audience who then become tired with you.

• DO - Avoid dairy products prior to a prolonged presentation. They cause thickening around the membrane of your vocal cords and dry up your saliva. A dry throat makes you swallow constantly in order to promote saliva and when you are unable to produce saliva your vocal cords retract and your voice squeaks or at worse disappears.