How to Hold the Room - Lessons Learned On Stage

All right, welcome back to the Brilliant Balance podcast.

Thanks for tuning in today.

We're gonna talk about how to hold the room, which I think that's a pretty self-explanatory phrase.

It's the way I really think about presence.

Something that women get coached on a lot and maybe given feedback about a lot is, do we have presence? Do we lack presence? Do we know how to wield that presence in a way that elicits the results that we want? And so while mostly I think about holding a room when I am in an engagement as a speaker, because it's really everyone's expecting you to have to hold the room as a speaker, I think that what I'm going to share today realistically applies well beyond that.

You know, you might think about times when you are leading an important meeting.

You're sort of the person at the head of the table.

Or when you are presenting.

in a work setting or elsewhere and you have to like stand up and deliver something maybe that has slides maybe that doesn't but you know like you kind of are the speaker even if it's not a speaking event like you're the presenter that might be a different frame another one I thought about was interviews when you are the person being interviewed um And you want the job.

And you have to create an impression and sort of hold the room, the energy of the room in a high stakes moment like that.

So what I'm going to share today really should translate into any of those environments.

But I'm specifically going to come at this through the frame of speaking because that's a place where I have a lot of experience.

I do a lot of speaking work in this phase of my career.

And I think because it is such a terrifying experience for so many people, I mean, I think it's like still the number one fear among adults, at least American adults, is public speaking.

Because it's such a fear, I think breaking down some of the maybe lesser known elements of that experience and things that I've observed and learned from my vantage point as a speaker, I think can be helpful in creating some ease in these environments.

And in fact, ease is what we really need in order to hold the room.

Okay.