How To Own the Room

Thankfully, Viv Groskop, journalist and author, stand-up comic and all-round confidence coach, has an uncanny ability to demystify the art of owning a room, pulling back the curtain on what it takes to get your message across in a compelling – and memorable – way.

In a conversation with journalist Jessica Salter at Hanover’s London office, Viv imparted some of the wisdom she’s gleaned from interviewing some of the most impressive people on the planet (Hillary Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Google CEO Matt Brittin, Succession’s Brian Cox), teaching senior executives in the City how to show up and pivoting her career from Daily Express hack to champion of the unheard.

Here we share five key takeaways from the event.

1. Push yourself to learn new skills

When testing whether comedy was something she genuinely wanted to pursue, Viv did it by tackling 100 stand-up gigs in 100 days, which, by her own admissions is a tad extreme. But the principle is clear: push yourself, stress-test your ambitions and throw yourself into something new. It’s sink or swim, but when you succeed you emerge newly confident in your ability to handle what might have before been or seemed daunting. This is as true in learning comedy as it is training yourself to master speaking in public. Once you’ve tackled it 100 times, it will become second nature.

2. Seek the science behind the art

While Viv made it clear that learning how to own a room comes from a sense of inner calm, she also said she adopted a research-led approach to mastering her performance. By studying the videos of her heroes, such as Joan Collins, Viv built up a mental bank of little tricks and tips for how to show up well, providing a foundation of confidence she could always tap into as she perfected her own style. This is an approach we approve of at Hanover, as we always ensure our methods are backed up by thorough strategic insight.

3. Hold the pointless pen

It is an age-old conundrum for anyone speaking publicly: what do you do with your hands? Viv's answer is to hold the 'pointless pen'. Using a pen as a prop while speaking achieves two things - one, it provides you with an anchor, keeps your hands busy and lends a certain purpose that comes with gesticulating (gently) with a fixed point. And two, it will push you to streamline your notes to something that can be only glanced at and deters you from reading notes from your phone, which, though accepted in 2024 as a legitimate alternative to cue cards, still gives the sense to many that you're in the middle of texting a friend.

4. Break the circle

Less a point about performance but more about social interaction in general, or more specifically, the dreaded networking. As Viv explains, when you walk into that everyone is in the same boat. No one really likes networking and this means shared sympathies are easy to find. Viv recommends that instead of standing back and waiting for the conversation to come to you, approach a circle of people who have already made those tricky opening connections, and simply tap someone on the arm to join in. If the people are then rude enough to ignore you, they don't deserve you.

5. Create your own micro-media training

Practice makes perfect, but very few people get regular opportunities to test their performance credentials for real, in front of senior executives, the world's media or the scrutiny of select committees. How then do we try out what we might learn on paper?

Viv recommends creating our own micro-media training moments. She says there are plenty to be found in our daily lives: initiate toasts when out with friends, take the floor in an internal meeting, give thanks at a family dinner. These little trials will train you to have comfort with the uncomfortable, when all eyes are on you. What's more it is a good test for another of Viv's pointers: learning how to finish speaking. She says, to save you from drifting, petering out with a mumble, always know how you are going to end what you plan to say before you begin. And, of course, don't ask everyone to raise a glass, then initiate applause...