All great speakers know how to get in front of an audience and just control the room. They know exactly what to do the instant they step up on stage.
If you know how to command a room then you’re seen a more confident speaker and someone that people pay attention to. So naturally, you’re going to get a better response from your audience.
You’ve probably seen speakers who walk out on stage and they already look defeated. They don’t look confident, they speak soft, and you almost feel sorry for them because you know it’s going to be the longest 60 minutes of their life.
But then you’ve seen speakers who just walk out on stage and they just own it. They own the space they’re in, they control the audience, and they just kill it from the stage.
It’s obvious as to which speaker is more effective…the only question is how to you come out on stage and instantly own the room?
First, it’s important that you don’t think of this in terms of techniques.
Lots of speakers who want to know how to command a room try to think about techniques that allow them to do it. They think about how if they walk fast or if they speak loud or if they do a demonstration, or whatever the technique is…they focus on the technique.
That’s the wrong way to do it.
Commanding a room starts with your psychology as a speaker.
The reason you can see a speaker walk out and instantly own the room isn’t because of all these techniques he uses, it’s because of the psychology he has.
What happens when you know something inside and out? I mean when you really know it…when you’ve seriously mastered it and you’re really good at something?
You instantly become confident.
You don’t have to persuade yourself to be confident, you just are.
A chess grand master doesn’t have to tell himself before every match that he’s good at chess. He just knows it.
Michael Jordan didn’t have to tell himself how great of a basketball player he was before every game, he just knew he was great.
But why?
They know they’re great because they’ve mastered what they do. They trained all their lives for it and it’s not something they have to think about…it’s who they are.
Commanding a room starts with who you are.
If you know, and I mean really know, that what you’re about to say to the audience is going to change their life then you will naturally have this compelling charisma.
If you’re a motivational speaker and you know that what you’re about to say is going to change the lives of people in the room, then it’s almost like you have this super power. You know what you can do, the audience doesn’t know it yet, but you know it. And because you know it, you radiate confidence.
When you command a room, you’re really in control of yourself.
Every speaker who hesitates with their presentation didn’t practice it enough. But if you look at the speaker who owns the room, you’ll notice that they just know their presentation cold. They’ve practiced it so many times that they don’t have to think about it, it’s part of them.
But the speakers who haven’t practiced, they’re the ones who keep looking back at their slides, they hesitate when they speak, and you can just feel that they’re not as experienced.
I’ve been doing mind reading demonstrations since I was 10 and I remember one guy who asked me about speaking on stage. He asked me if I get stage fright and I told him no…because I’ve been doing it for so long, I don’t even think about it.
When I step on stage, I know that this audience is in for something they’ve never seen before…and when they see the ending, they’re really going to be blown away.
And I know this because I’ve done it a million times. I know how people are going to respond, I know the energy it creates, I know anything and everything because it’s all muscle memory.
If you want to walk out on a stage and command a room then you have to start with your psychology.
You have to know that what you’re about to do on stage is going to transport people into a whole new world. And when you have that type of psychology, you naturally command a room.