“By ‘guts’ I mean grace under pressure.” Hemingway was not commenting on public speaking but he might as well have been. Your gut is probably the first and most acute experience of your anxiety around delivering a presentation. Gracefully addressing your audience is a principled blend of pacing, poise and purpose.
The swarm of butterflies in your stomach are simply seeking a way out. When you focus on them they just beat their wings faster, which tends to disrupt your last meal, as well as your speech. Having a purpose beyond yourself, say, a concrete benefit to share stemming from a conscientious concern for your audience, transforms your frenetic fears into focused feeling. Focusing your feelings, causes the butterflies to fly in formation.
Poise is simply an equal distribution of weight. So before you even start speaking, stand with your weight equally distributed over both feet. Take a breath and exhale. How much you can physically say is determined by how much air you have. How you breathe determines your pace. Balancing your breath and your stance inevitably communicates poise.
Pace your comments with your breath. When you speak fast, notice how you are forcing your breath out. When you speak real slow, you constrain your breath. Use pauses like periods to punctuate your points or you can attempt to be as extreme as Victor Borge. Often your thoughts will follow your breath and your breath will follow your thoughts. Strive to balance their pace and your communication will become more graceful.
It takes guts to stand up and speak, but without grace you may find few people listening. Being aware of your pace, establishing your poise and focusing your purpose will transform the pressure in your gut into grace under pressure.