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

Most of all presence is about looking and feeling comfortable in a space. It suggests readiness. This is not quite the same as happy high status, which suggests availability to lead or to command.

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.

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

Watch how Susan Cain does this in her TED Talk. First she talks about how it was for her when she turned up at summer camp as a shy child with a suitcase of books. She moves swiftly into discussing statistics and research about how we treat shy people in society. Good speakers move easily and quickly between the personal and the universal.

You just need to say what you came to say, without getting caught up in doubt and fear.

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.

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

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