How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking

It needs to be judged according to each situation. Is your audience following you? Can you see people nodding? Or frowning? Why are you talking fast? Does it enhance the audience’s experience or make it more difficult for them? Sometimes speakers talk fast because they feel pressure to over-deliver and they want to cram in everything they know on a

The main factors influencing successful public speaking are these: commitment, practice and guts.

Kenyan Nobel Prize-winner Wangari Maathai: ‘The higher you go, the fewer women there are.’

how to be powerful in your speaking.

although they all have moments of levity and humour, which are designed to raise the mood of the room. They don’t project the intensity or direct leadership of a Michelle Obama speech, but they are just as commanding in their own way.

They are to be used to boost your internal feelings about yourself, not to project power to others.

But she too ‘allows’ herself to make mistakes, to say ‘um’, to let some of her anecdotes look spontaneous and under-rehearsed.

It’s very powerful because she looks as if she’s treating it like it’s not a big deal. And this is exactly what we should all be aiming for. Yet she is clearly not a person who

Her posture and the way she speaks embody the message behind her talk: you don’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not; you don’t have to ‘pass’ as an extrovert. You can be who you are. But you need to be fully present.

—The next time you’re in a meeting, notice the pace of your own speech and that of others. Do people listen more when you slow down? Can you force yourself to speak uncomfortably slowly? What difference does that make?