How to Walk Into a Room Like You Belong

Your first 60 seconds in any room set the tone for everything that follows. Most professionals walk in apologetically and wonder why they struggle to command respect. Executive presence isn't about height or volume — it's about three specific things you do before you say a word that signal you belong.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Thanks for joining us again today on Lead with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. This is your daily dose under 10 minutes on actually how to lead with more confidence. This is sharpening your power skills, hardening your soft skills. I mean, soft skills are 85% of our career success. I just hate the word soft skills. So one of my friends mentioned it that is that it's power skills. So let's go with power skills for now. All right. We're going to be talking about executive presence, okay? How do you walk actually into a room and command presence as a leader, as an executive, all right, versus someone that walks in and kind of waiting for acceptance? All right. This is how to walk in a room like you belong. All right, let's dive into this. All right. What's interesting is people, how long do you think it is until people realize how long someone should be in the room or not? If that made sense. So pretty much, people, on average, it takes about seven seconds for people to decide if you belong in that room before we even said a single word. So how we communicate, I want to kind of uh clarify this. A lot of times people think it's the words, right? You've seen presentations where people know the words, but it's boring, it doesn't connect, and there's no meetings after that, right? You see pitches where it's very monotone, this is what we can do, this is what we like, use us for this, and all that stuff, and there's no break, there's no pause. So people are so highlighted. Words are a most successful way to communicate. It's only 7% how we communicate. If you really want to be, if you really do want to be a master communicator, focus on your body language, which is 55% of how we communicate, and your pitch and tone, your cadence, how you use pauses, your inflection, and also your deflection, right? So your pitch, tone, cadence, your body language makes up 93% of how we communicate. But everyone's always focused on the 7%, the words, right? We all know that's we all know that the words is not really the most effective way to communicate. So actually, how do you carry yourself? How do you walk into a networking room? How do you walk into a boardroom to command that executive presence, right? So the problem is a lot of times you walk into, I mean, I'm I'm guilty of this as well. I remember before in my career, I'd go to a lot of like networking events, right? A lot of times I would walk in waiting for permission to like join a conversation, or I'd kind of be a wallflower and stick on the side until I saw a familiar face that I already knew, and I'd go over and start talking to them and kind of burn the day talking to my buddy who was there as well. And the whole point of networking event is actually expand your network. So that was very not well received. So I would often sit there and wait for people to invite me in, right? I was waiting, well, when a good opportunity when I should enter the room or should enter a conversation, right? Another problem is, you know, you can think about this the next time, next time you're at a networking event and all this stuff. You can tell when someone walks in the room, even if they if you even if they're they're on the other side of the room what their body language is saying, um, if they're confident, if they're happy to be there, if they're if all that. I I think the most interesting thing that I heard is that executive president, presidents, executive presence is the ability to walk in and make other people feel comfortable. All right. So how are you walking in the room? Are you walking shoulder slouched, hands in pocket on your phone? Put your phone away, please. That's that's a sub thing. Put your phone away when you're at a network event, especially when you're meeting someone for the first time. It can wait. All right. How are you walking in? Are your shoulders back? Are your hands, are you relaxed, are your hands by your side, are you smiling? Smiling is one of the best ways to bring people in and make people feel welcome around you, right? You think that executive presence is about being the loudest person in the room, so you either shrink or you overcompensate, okay? So we all we all can imagine that one person walk in the room that just you feel that that person is confident. They have executive presence. You know you'd want to talk to that person, right? So here's kind of the frameworks I want to offer to everyone out there. And there's three steps in this, all right? The framework is the 60-second presence protocol, all right? The first thing you can do, claim your space, all right? Walk in like you're supposed to be there. Walk in with confidence, walk in like you should be in the room versus you're waiting for an invitation to join, to join the conversation, right? The second thing is whenever you do kind of break into a circle, you start meeting some people, look at the person in the eye first before you extend your hand for a handshake. I know it's small, a lot of these things are very small and minute, but look the person in the eye, then shake their hand. All right. And another thing is there is so I this is what I work with when I work with teams when it comes to sales or work with presentations. There is so much power in the pause. So before you speak, before you respond, before you kind of provide your two cents, take about a two-second pause. It shows you're collecting your thoughts. It shows you're not reactive and being just responsive, just respond. It shows that you're actually taking time to process, think, and plan out your uh response. So use that power of the pause, okay? All right. So I remember when I first started getting into networking events, I would literally um go on the wall. I would wait for people to find me, or I'd go to a friendly face that I would see. However, once you kind of start changing up, making it a game, right? Like I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna go walk in the room this way. I started conducting myself in a different way. And so a lot of people are very nervous about going to a set, like a group of people that are already in conversation, you know, because you're on the out of that conversation. Um, I think that stems from like our middle school days. But one good way to kind of go to open, first off, at the end of the day, I want you to understand this. Networking events, people are there to meet people. So you're not ever interrupting someone, you're not ever putting someone out by going up and introducing yourself. So a lot of times now, what I will do, I'll see a very engaged group of people, you know, good energy and all that stuff, people that I kind of want to, maybe I should meet and all this stuff. And I will go over there with confidence and again, confidence, smiling, all that stuff. And if everyone kind of looks at me awkwardly, say something like this: like, hey, y'all, name's name the elephant in the room. Hey, I'm kind of here by myself. This looks like a very interesting group. I'd love to kind of introduce myself. How are y'all? JP, keep talking, y'all. And then they will welcome and be sure to have a couple qu be sure to have a couple of responses in your pocket because chances are they're gonna ask you those surface level questions. What do you do? Why are you here? And all that stuff. This is a great opportunity to for you not to have those transactional conversations and maybe talk about this. Hey, I heard about this conference. I'm curious, uh, you know, I'm curious what this is all about today. Have y'all been to this conference before? Or have y'all been to this event? Have you heard the speaker before? You know, what do you like about the speaker? What did you go to the last? So you can really dive into a lot of different tangents by just asking that. Or another time is, hey, let's say kind of like you walk in that circle of people that really don't know you or haven't invited you in, throw out something like this. Throw, hey, listen, this sounds like a pretty interesting conversation. Uh, I'm waiting for my buddy to get here, but I kind of just want to meet y'all and kind of like, if y'all don't mind, contribute to this and just kind of be there. Again, have those, your two responses in your back pocket so you can actually deliver what you do. So again, when you go, there's three ways you go to networking. I'm gonna wrap up in networking stuff. There's three ways you go to network events. Number one, you go, you stay on the wall, you don't talk to anyone, you get the free lunch, not the free lunch, you get the lunch you paid for, you check the box and you go home. Number two, you go with someone that you're friends with. And I often recommend this. Go just go with some of your friends with, but y'all just stay talking together and you leave, check the box, but you really haven't expanded your networks. The third thing you do, get uncomfortable. Tell your buddy, hey, listen, let's challenge each other. See how many groups that we can actually get into, and you're gonna start learning the gift of gab, the gift of small talk. And the gift and the small talk, big part of that is asking questions and listening. All right. That's a huge key. So again, here's what here's what I want you to do today. All right, the next time you enter a meeting or a networking event, pause in the doorway two seconds before moving in. All right. Get your energy up before actually walking in that room, breaking that threshold. The second thing you do is stop asking yourself where I should sit or what am I gonna sit on? Be intentional. Pick your seat, move there like you've already decided. All right, take action. The third thing you do is ask yourself, how would the most confident person I know enter this room? And fake it. Fake it till you make it. There's a lot of truth behind that. Every time I get on the stage to give a speech, or every time I'm working with groups, or every time I'm working with students or executives, I am always faking it, all right? Because I'm always nervous, I'm always uncomfortable, I always feel like an imposter whenever I'm doing stuff like this. So you have to carry yourself because perception, what is it? Perception is like how you project yourself, that's how people will perceive you. All right. Everyone, I hope uh this uh this made sense uh to you today. And I challenge you at the next uh networking event, start start walking in there, take your pause, lead with confidence when you're out there. All right. So thank you all for tuning in, and we will see y'all later. You belong in that room. Walk in like you own it, all right. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.