Energy is Everything — How Your Physical Presence Changes Every Room You Enter

Your physical and emotional energy literally rewrites how people respond to you. Most leaders show up tired, nervous, or checked out — and wonder why their teams aren't engaged. Here's how to master your energy before it costs you the big moments.

Transcript

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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. Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. Today we're all talking about we're getting frou-froo. We're talking about energy, the energy you have as you walk in a room, the energy you carry before you enter a high stressful situation. And real quick, what you're about to dive into, this is a five to 10 minute episode where we cover Monday through Friday, five to 10 minutes of soft skills you can actually use to help you show up and lead with more confidence, leading, influence, and connecting communication, how you carry yourself, that's what it's all about. If you got 15 seconds, head over and leave, you know, subscribe, like, comment, share it, all that fun stuff. Um, I like getting comments in this to help me kind of understand, like, hey, listen, if you're out there and you are facing maybe some soft skills challenge or a bottleneck or something like that, comment, share it, and all that stuff. Like, let me know so I can actually cover that. So let's dive into what we're talking about today. This is the energy that you carry. And I'm a firm believer on how what we project people perceive. So, what energy are we projecting for people perceiving on how we're acting? All right. So the root again, I always I we've talked about this before, but our how we communicate, where we're always so focused on the words that we have to land, right? Okay, if I go in there, I nail this script, if I nail this pitch, if I nail this presentation word by word, line by line, then it's gonna be my message across. That could not be farther from the truth. Our body language is 55% how we communicate. Just our body language, just by people looking at us, that's how we communicate. 55% just by our body language. 38% is our tone, pitch, cadence in our voice, and only 7% is our words. So how we enter a room, the energy we have as we enter the room and our body language and our cadence and our tone, our shoulders back, how we enter the room directly affects kind of how people perceive us, okay? So there's a lot of high-stakes meeting people walk into, a lot of crucial meetings people walk into, right? And people carry in their imposter syndrome, people carry in their nerves, people carry in their timidness before they walk in the room. And sometimes we mask it by being cocky and confident and overly robust. And sometimes we kind of sink in and let the nervousness kind of guide us in that room. And that sucks. I've been there, right? I've been absolutely been there. You know, you think your content or the quality of your presentation is gonna overcome your low energy or your timid energy, but that's could be further further from the truth. We just talked about that. It's your energy that's gonna communicate your energy, not your content, all right? And remember, these high-stakes situations, all it does is amplify what's under the surface. Okay. So if we're nervous, we're gonna be more nervous, right? And we've seen this before. We've seen present people give presentations, and I'm guilty of this. The more nervous I get on stage when I'm giving a presentation, the more I mess up. The more, uh, the more it's real, the the more I guess people can see that I'm nervous, the more I guess it kind of infects the the audience around me that I am nervous. Or if I am nervous, rather than kind of getting wrapped up and warped up in the nerves, kind of like shifting it in my mindset quickly and projecting confidence. And next thing you know, things go a lot smoother that way. People connect more, and I just feel so much more in the flow. There was this one store I was working with a client and they had a meeting, a high-stakes meeting with a private equity uh company. And they were extremely nervous about this. It's a lot on the line. This is they're obviously a lot on the line because they they held the purse strings to their next opportunity. So they were extremely nervous about walking this room. You know, they were going over the presentation, the slides look good, the words look good, the data's here, all that stuff. They were so focused on that, but yet their energy was so nervous. It was, it was just like they didn't believe in themselves, right? So think about this. Again, sliding doors. Walking into that room with those nerves, right? With thinking, okay, well, we have the slide, but man, I'm nervous. I shouldn't be in this room. There's a lot at stake here. So what we did, we worked, actually coached them, uh, them and the team. We talked, you know, we started listing their experiences. We started putting down their uh their accomplishments. We talked about, hey, listen, like this is how we approach the situation, not with nerves, but with excitement. And that was a completely different meeting experience that they had versus that they walked in with a lot of nerves. And, you know, I mean, the results of the job, yeah, result it was a success, which is great. I like to think I played a little part in that. Uh maybe, you know what, I didn't, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But again, walking in that room with a lot more confidence and I guess the the evidence of your success and your achievements, that built up excitement versus walking with nerves. Okay, so this is what we're gonna do. Next time you have very nervous, high-stressful, high stake uh situation environment you're walking into. Before we even walk in that room, let's think about the energy. All right. I like number one, stepping aside and doing the Superman pose. That's when you put your hands in your hip, you puff up your chest. I talked about this before you give a presentation. Same thing before you walk into a high stressful meeting, all right? It's the same type of nerve, same adrenaline. Your heart starts racing faster, shortness of breath. Take some time, pause, breathe a little bit, all right? The next thing you do, start categorizing your wins. That's exactly what I did with this other team, right? Start listing why you belong in that room. Like what, like what's your accomplishments? Why should you be in that room, right? Start listing that and just being like you're talking to a friend, right? How would you talk to a friend and list their accomplishments? Do the exact same for yourself, okay? The second thing is name your differentiator. What makes you unique to walk in that room versus everybody else, right? So this person walking this private equity office, you know, a lot of what made them different, right? Everyone's got a pitch to or a pitch to provide or a deal they want to hustle or something or a vision they want to see come true. But what makes you different? Lean in on that, right? That's your strength right there. Your uniqueness and your individuality is your strength. All right. So what makes you different? Why would I go with you versus someone else? Why would I go with you versus all your competitors? Okay. And the third thing I want you to do is embody the outcome. Walk, talk, and present like someone who belongs in the room. All right. So embody that outcome. Fake it till you make it. Project confidence. That's what people will perceive confidence. If you project nervousness, people will project nervousness. So embody that outcome. Walk, talk, own the room like you belong to be, like you belong to be there. All right. So the next time that you uh have a crucial meaning, spend about five minutes beforehand writing down why you're qualified why you're qualified to be there. Stop walking to important rooms carrying your anxiety. Listen, we're always nervous before this stuff, right? That's that's that's that's contagious, right? Walk in there with your expertise, your successes, your your credentials, the stuff that you've won, all right? And ask yourself this week, what energy are you bringing to your team meetings, right? And what what is that costing you? Are you being low energy? Are you being monotone? Are you not being excited? A lot of times right now in the world that I'm seeing, there is a lot of external noise out there. There's a lot of doom and gloom out there. How are you leading your team with all this surrounding noise? What energy are you bringing to your team with all this? Are you being stable? Are you being nervous? Are you being anxious? Are you being calm, cool, and collected and transparent? All right. So again, the closing challenge I have for you is that confidence in uncomfortable zones isn't just nice to have, it's a must-to have. It's the difference between leading and following. Bring the energy you want to see. So bring the energy to your team, to that room that you want to see. So, everyone, thank you for tuning in to Lead with Confidence. Me, your host, JP Warren. I hope you're enjoying this. Uh, these are just quick little nuggets to help you lead more with confidence. We're very hyper-connected yet disconnected world. This is how we're gonna level up our career. It's 85% of our careers, our career success is our soft skills. So thanks for tuning in, and we'll see everyone soon. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren. Lead with confidence.