Command The Room: Charge Your Joy, Lead With Confidence

Summary:
In this empowering and insight-filled solo episode, Lori Pine—executive coach, speaker, and former corporate VP—reveals what it truly means to command the room without losing your calm or authenticity.
Through personal stories and actionable tools, Lori shares how leaders can cultivate confidence from the inside out—by fueling their energy, focusing their minds, and grounding in joy.

You’ll learn her go-to “charge routine” for walking into any high-stakes meeting with clarity and poise, how to keep your presence strong when things go sideways, and the post-meeting recovery practices that help you lead sustainably.

This episode isn’t about performing leadership—it’s about embodying it through joy, preparation, and purpose.

If you’ve ever felt drained before a big presentation or questioned your confidence in the moment, this episode will help you realign your energy so your presence speaks before you do.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

Energy First, Confidence Follows
When you enter a room depleted, your confidence can’t shine. Lori breaks down why self-care isn’t indulgence—it’s leadership prep.
👉 Audience follow-up: What’s one habit that restores your energy before an important meeting?

The “Charge Routine” for High-Stakes Moments
Lori shares her pre-meeting ritual—breathing, visualization, and affirmation—that helps her shift from anxious to anchored.
👉 Audience follow-up: Before your next presentation, take two minutes to breathe deeply, visualize success, and remind yourself: “I belong here.”

Your Story is Your Power
People remember stories, not data. Lori explains how sharing authentic moments builds connection and trust faster than any title can.
👉 Audience follow-up: What story from your journey reveals your resilience, values, or leadership growth?

Presence Over Perfection
Commanding a room isn’t about being flawless—it’s about being fully there. Lori offers ways to stay centered when things don’t go as planned.
👉 Audience follow-up: When pressure hits, how can you return to your breath and refocus on the people, not the performance?

Recover and Refill
After high-stakes moments, your energy needs a reset. Lori’s post-meeting tips will help you process, celebrate, and prepare for what’s next.
👉 Audience follow-up: What’s one way you can intentionally decompress after a big leadership moment?

🔎 Mentioned in the Episode:

• Lori’s “Charge Routine” — breathwork, grounding, and mindset tools to build confidence before big meetings
  
• The role of storytelling in leadership presence
  
• Simple rescue strategies when you’re running on empty
  
• Why joy is the most underused confidence tool in leadership
  
  

✨ Reflection Prompts:

• When do you feel most powerful in your leadership presence?
  
• What drains your confidence, and how can you guard against it?
  
• How might joy change the way you show up for your next big moment?
  
  

🧠 Who This Episode Is For:

• Leaders preparing for presentations, pitches, or board meetings
  
• Professionals seeking authentic confidence and stage presence
  
• Women in leadership learning to balance ambition with well-being
  
• Anyone wanting to lead with joy, energy, and emotional intelligence
  
  

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

• Try Lori’s Charge Routine before your next high-stakes meeting

Follow Lori on LinkedIn to continue the conversation

• Book a Leadership Strategy Call with Lori: loripine.com

🎧 Subscribe to The Joy CEO Podcast

⭐️ Leave a review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show

• 📲 Share this episode with someone who could use a confidence boost before their next big meeting   

Transcript

Hello, I'm Lori Pine, the Joy CEO, and today we are talking about how to command the room. You know, you have a big presentation, you're part of a [00:01:00] meeting, you have something important to say, a point to make a part of the business to move forward, and you want to make sure that you nail your part.

But here's the thing. You're not going in as your best self. So imagine this, your iPhone hits red and you don't debate it. It's not up for question. You actually plug your phone in and you charge it. But what happens when it's you? When it's you who's on red, you debate it, you vacillate, you think. No, I don't need to take time and charge myself, recharge myself.

I can just push through. I can just suck it up. And so we end up walking into critical rooms with highly visible audiences at maybe a 3% battery [00:02:00] charge, maybe a 10% battery charge. And we wonder why our voice shakes. Why our message might ramble on, why we might repeat ourselves, or even worse, why our presence might shrink.

So today we are going to plug in, we are going to talk about ways where you can actually command the room and how joy is the superpower to help you do that. How it will fuel your confidence and how you can command this room without overperforming or pretending. So this is the real stuff that leaders are made of.

You know, you cannot pour from an empty cup, says the old adage. And you certainly can't lead from a drained or frazzled nervous system. Yet [00:03:00] many of us tried to do that. I have been so guilty of that. I didn't give myself enough space or enough time in between meetings, in between flights in between dropping kids off and, and all of the antics with morning routines.

And so when I talk about joy, I am not talking about fluff. I am talking about sustenance that is actually going to be the difference between your battery being on red and your battery being on green. It's the elements that are going to steady your voice.

Sharpen your choices and really help you become this magnetic force when you walk into a room. And I know that you want to be all of those things if you're not already. So let's build your charge [00:04:00] before you speak routine, like imagine a Tesla charging station. This is what you need to do before you walk into a room that really matters, and speak to people who are making judgements and discernments about you, your career, and your performance, whether they mean to or not.

So the stakes are high, and let's prepare you for these sorts of meetings when they matter most. Okay? Part one. This is why confidence drops when your battery drops. When you are on red, there are three things that are gonna really indicate why your confidence is about to wobble. One, you have low energy, you're maybe physically depleted.

Lack of sleep. You are not breathing [00:05:00] because you're so nervous about this upcoming meeting. Literally, if the human body did not breathe on its own, I think that we would forget to do it. And three, you may not be hydrated enough. Do you know that there's a study that says 80% of illnesses can be improved with proper hydration?

That is remarkable. And that doesn't mean you know your energy drinks or your, your drinks with sugar. It, it means water properly hydrating yourself. Two, you are overloaded. I mean, how many of us can readily admit we are overloaded? There are too many tabs open in our brain, and we're not clear on what the one thing is we should be focused on.

Even if we know the one thing we should be focused on in this, this meeting [00:06:00] that we're going into, we can get very distracted by the many topics we wanna cover, the many points we wanna make, and that becomes really confusing and it discredits our expertise. And so we wanna get really clear and break free from that overload so that we can whittle it all down and have a really clear focus.

And the third one is. We're carrying around other people's stuff, other people's emotions, other people's expectations. All this stuff that is outside of our hula hoop. You'll often hear me talk about the hula hoop. If you're new to my podcast. You know, the hula hoop is this idea that what's inside is us and we only control us what's outside is pretty much everything else, and we don't control that.

So if you [00:07:00] are carrying around other people's stuff that is outside of the hula hoop and you don't get to control that, can you empathize? Yes. Can you love them? Yes. Carry it around, have it ruin your day. That might not be the best approach. So joy can counter each one of these low energy overload and other people's stuff by really reclaiming what's yours, restoring your energy, narrowing your focus and helping you focus on what's what matters, and then restoring you to what's inside your control. What's inside the hula hoop. So if we were to do a quick check right now, if you were to scan your body and your internal battery had a color, would you be green, yellow, or red?

What do you think? What would you be? All right. Part two, I'm gonna take you through what I [00:08:00] think can be this pre-game warmup before a big meeting. You wanna command the room and walking in there ice cold, likely having come from another meeting. It's not your best approach. When I played college sports, we did not go from one high level game to another high level game.

We had a week's rest in between. And then before each big game, we had a pre-game warmup. And so you need a pregame warmup before you are going into high stakes meetings. So one, you can start with some breath work. You are like, Lori, I don't have time for breath work. That sounds absolutely ludicrous, but here's the thing.

Breath work is known to bring down any anxiety you have. It actually helps you get back into your body and [00:09:00] it will remind you of what it is that is important and the points that you want to make. It's a calibration for your whole nervous system, so you just wanna do five rounds of 4, 2, 6. Inhale to a count of four, hold for two, and exhale for six.

This is gonna slow you down and if you could do six of these breaths per minute, you're just gonna know that this could boost your heart rate variability. And the body's calm, steady reflexes and going into a high stakes meeting, you want as much of that calm as possible because what this is gonna translate to is a steadier voice and clearer thinking.

Okay, now imagine you're feeling extra amped up for this meeting. The last thing [00:10:00] you want to do is have an energy drink or even an extra cup of coffee. What you really wanna be able to do is have a super extra long, what they call a physiological sigh, more breath work where you're gonna double the inhale through the nose long, exhale out through the mouth, and then return to the 4, 2, 6.

Again, you wanna get back in your body. Then if you can drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, and just plant your feet. Just plant your feet wherever you are doing this, whether you're in your car, whether you're in the bathroom, whether you're in your office, with the door closed. Plant your feet, get back in your body, let everything just kind of relax, and then you wanna give yourself a cue, like a little micro smile when maybe you're gonna say the word joy.

Maybe you're gonna say the word epic. Maybe you have a [00:11:00] word that's just gonna bring you into what you want to accomplish in this meeting. Then a reminder that there's data, there's statistics and science. Around five minutes of structured breaths beats white knuckling it every single time. Five minutes of breathing will beat white, knuckling it every time, and you can literally change your state of being, even if you're on a really tight calendar.

Even if you don't think you have time to do this, you can sneak away into any nook or cranny and do this. Really free yourself. Okay. The next thing you're going to do is kind of this belief statement. You know, affirmations are known to be incredibly powerful, so just knowing that you are charged with power and conviction, that you know your stuff, and that your presence is the point.

[00:12:00] You want to be present. You know the information, you know the material. What you want to be able to do is to provide the value, and then in your head, if you could just have a few things that you wanna make sure that you're able to communicate one outcome. So if nothing else, they're going to walk away with.

What is it you want them to walk away with in this meeting, in this room that you are commanding one headline in 10 words. This is about. What is it that this is about, this topic that you are a subject matter expert on, that you are informing other people in your company or your business or your ex area of expertise about.

And then one ask I need a yes on, or alignment on and letting people know right up front what it is that you seek to [00:13:00] accomplish. Once they're aware of that, once they have that cue, they're gonna look for ways to support you. That's just human nature. And then the third part is being present. How can you use your voice and how can you visually indicate that you are present?

So say your first sentence out loud, slowly once this is, remember we are in the prep. You are still in the bathroom, the car, or in the nook or cranny of your office. So say it out loud. I just recently did a speaker training and they gave us a lot of tools to do exactly this. How to warm up your voice, how to warm up your tongue, or some of the exercises that we practice.

Did we all think we looked foolish? Well, yes, but when an entire room of grown adults is doing it, nobody looks foolish because we're all doing it. So they were exercises like literally stick your tongue out. Then [00:14:00] just let it hang there, uh, and then try to talk so that you're warming it up. We literally had drool running down our chins, but we were much more articulate when we were done because all those millions of muscles in our tongue were all warmed up.

So try that. Give it or give it a go. Choose a physical anger. Two fingers on a card, a thumb to index tap, just somewhere to put your body, somewhere to put your hands somewhere you know that you are grounded. And then. Picture, the rooms faces softening. As you begin and imagine people nodding and mirroring back to you that they understand what you're saying, that that visual can be really powerful.

Again, much like when I was playing college sports, we would [00:15:00] visualize. Scoring a goal, visualize carrying the ball down the field. We spent hours doing that. And then lo and behold, as though it was some kind of magic, that exact scenario would play out in that game that weekend. So remember as you're going in, you want to go in with a fully green battery, a clear message.

And strength to communicate that message. And so being able to kind of have that as a mantra. Alright, part three, telling your story as a story. Now we all have data to communicate. We all have business facts to communicate, but when you can tell it in a compelling way that actually. Brings about a movement.

People remember the story. So one of the best [00:16:00] examples that I can think of that anybody who listens to this podcast can relate to is from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. And James Clear opens that book with a story about the British cycling team and how they were. Terrible. They weren't winning.

And then they got a new coach, and the new coach came in and essentially dissected every part of their movement, their sleep, their pedals, the inside of the box truck that moved the bikes, and he was aiming to make a 1% improvement. He wasn't trying to just come in and improve everything all at once, overnight, and at the.

End of the story, he was able to get this team to a national championship and then to multiple gold medals. And the point that James Clear was trying to make [00:17:00] is 1% improvements. Equals a 37% improvement at the end of the year. And so while we sometimes think in our haste to want to make a big splash and a big improvement, and we, we want it done by next month, the real gains come in these micro improvements of 1%.

That end up being 37% in just a short 12 months if we have the patience to execute against them. So imagine you could tell a story like that about your business, about your slide, about the case you are trying to make, and you could tell it in a way that is so compelling. So funny story. I have a very good friend who is A CFO and she and I just recently caught up and she is [00:18:00] taking an improv class in order to.

Become a better storyteller of the numbers. Why? Because numbers and data can be boring. She sometimes stands up there trying to communicate these p and l sheets and people's eyes gloss over and she wants to be able to tell these numbers in a way that actually. Get people engaged and get them to take action on the business.

And so an improv class has helped her to invite some comedy and some lightheartedness. And lo and behold, it's changing how she presents, how she commands the room, and how she's received by her company. So if all else fails, an improv class could be in your future. Okay? Inside the room, you want to be able to command without force.[00:19:00]

You want to be able to be your natural self, so open with the outcome. Our goal for the next however many minutes is let people know what your goal is, own your pace. If you speed up. Start to get nervous and your voice is elevating and you have a high pitch. Just take a pause, take a sip of water, restart with whatever the headline is.

Okay? So we're talking about how to and, and just keep going from there. Do do a hula hoop check in. You know, it's important to finish this thought we're on before we move to another topic. So let's just park that topic that you're bringing up and I'll come back to it. But it's really important to finish this one topic that we're on in the event that somebody really wants to divert the attention and then waste a signal confident presence instead of [00:20:00] fidgeting.

Try to help yourself be still. It's easy to get in front of a room and to sway, plant your feet on the ground. It's easy to have filler words to say like, you know what I mean? Write, use silence. Skip over those words, and then really try to make eye contact. Look at people, engage people. Then language that will really land for you.

Here's the decision that's in front of us. The risk I want to neutralize is what I'm asking for today is if we're aligned, then the next step is, and then we get to the next part, which is part five. After the room, you've left the meeting. You've nailed it. You've done what you needed to do. You left with the outcome, maybe not that you wanted, [00:21:00] maybe that, not that you expected, but you left with a great outcome and now you want to lock in that momentum.

So a 90 second recap email needs to be sent out almost immediately. Do not wait till the next day. Do not wait for two days. Immediately send out a recap email. It should only take 90 seconds. You want a headline, you want the decision, and you want next steps, who the owner is and what the date is, again, 90 seconds.

Then you want a two line self debrief. What charged you? You want to be able to self-reflect, so you know what really charged you and where did you get drained in the process of this presentation. And then you want a celebration. We don't celebrate near enough. We're moving on to the next task. So before you move on to the next task or the next meeting, a micro celebration named one [00:22:00] Win Out Loud.

What one thing, maybe two things came out of this meeting. That was a really big win because Joy compounds when it's witnessed. Shared. So name a win and share it. Share it with the team. Share it with your manager. Share it with your coach. Share it with your sponsor, mentor. Share it. All right, part six, this is our last part.

When you are on red and you want to get to green. There is a rescue that needs to happen, but sometimes you're at 3% and you literally cannot be rescued. You cannot be plugged in. So what do you do? One sip, one breath, one sentence. You need to find some water to drink. Do a single four breaths in. Hold for two, exhale for [00:23:00] six, and then say your headline.

Say, what's the thing that I need to get accomplished in this meeting? Because let's face it, sometimes we are going back to back to back to back meetings, and you're not gonna have a chance to regroup. You're not gonna have a chance to do a pregame. So when those times come up and you are on red, this will help.

The second thing you can do is reduce the scope by 50%. If you have 14 tabs open in your head. Do your best to mentally close at least half of them. And let's just talk about the one essential impact you wanna make in this meeting, and that you will follow up with the details by the end of the day. And then borrow belief.

Sometimes we need to borrow belief and just picture one person who loves you and imagine that they're nodding. [00:24:00] Cheering you on and put them in the room with you and trust that you are being cheered on in this room, in this meeting, even when it feels like it might not be happening. Alright, in closing, to command the room, just really start from the inside.

What needs to change in me today? That's what's inside the hula hoop. So is it your battery? Is it your. Your work? Is it what you're trying to communicate or is it the boundaries you're holding? Pick one and change it before the next meeting. And then you can do a little micro audit. You know, how are you doing with your battery?

Are you on green or are you on red? How are you doing with your brief and the the things you're trying to communicate? Do you know your outcome? Do you know your headline? Do you know what you're asking for going into this meeting? And then. How are your boundaries? [00:25:00] Are you carrying around other people's stuff?

Is there stuff on the inside of your hula hoop that just doesn't belong there? And it certainly doesn't belong there for the purposes of a meeting, not where you need to be the best version of yourself. So if you want to command a room. I suggest that you do the best you can to plug in that battery. It is essential.

We all know that if your phone was on red, you would find a way to get it to a charger, and the same holds true for you. You are no different, and you deserve that little extra boost that is going to get you through and these old thoughts of telling yourself that you can just thug it out. You can just suck it up.

That's really outdated and you deserve better. I'm Lori Pine, the joy CEO, and I'm so glad to be doing it with you. Thanks so much. Have a great day.