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

This is not a time to be quiet, keep your head down and hope that someone might hear your modest, interesting whisper.

It’s hard to know what a form of behaviour will look like in you when you haven’t seen anything similar in someone like you.

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

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

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

It means that, instead of being overwhelmed by the speech and trying to mould yourself into something you’re not, you find ways of being yourself and making the speech fit around you, even if you’re a quiet, modest person.

—If you have spoken for a while and suddenly realize it was too fast, have the guts to admit it and stop. Say, ‘Let me give you a moment to take all that in.’ Then take a couple of deep breaths and continue at a more easily understandable pace.

Yes, she owns the company. But when it counts, she cannot own the room.

While happy high status is a state or an attitude, projecting presence is an action.