How to Speak Like the 1% Elite

Speaking like the 1% comes down to four skills: vary your pace so people can absorb what you say, listen more than you speak, hold a relaxed and open posture, and deliver your points as stories. Each one shifts how competent and confident you are read to be, often more than the content itself.

I used to work as an international business lawyer on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and I have spent a lot of time learning to speak in a compelling way. It is part of how I got every job I interviewed for, at the salary I asked for.

Here are the four skills that have made the most difference, so that you too can speak like the 1%.

Why does varying your pace make you sound more authoritative?

Because for the brain, slower information is easier to process, and information that is easier to process is judged as more truthful and persuasive. If you speak in a flat, scripted monotone, people drop off quickly, because it is both boring and hard to take in. Slow down, give people time to absorb what you are saying, and they pay far more attention. Varying your pace also activates two regions of the brain, the ones for thinking and for feeling, rather than the single region a monotone reaches, which makes the experience richer for your audience. The clearest place to test whether your delivery holds attention is a work presentation, where you are delivering information both out loud and visually on your slides.

And slides are where most people quietly lose the room, so they are worth being deliberate about.

Body language instinctively overrides spoken language.

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How does listening more than you speak build connection?

At a networking event you want to make as many deep connections as possible, quickly, and the way to do that is not to talk about your achievements, your contacts, or the impressive places you have been. It is to listen and ask questions about what you hear. Research shows that talking about ourselves activates the brain's reward system the way food or money does; in one study, people gave up money just to keep talking about themselves, and the listeners who made that possible were seen as more charismatic and interesting, despite saying almost nothing about themselves. So become that person: meet someone, ask about them with genuine interest, and for every answer, ask a question about that answer.

Two techniques carry you a long way. Mirroring is repeating the last few words someone said, "you organised the whole event," which invites them to continue. Labelling is naming what they have described, "it sounds like you have a lot of experience organising events." Both get people talking about themselves without you revealing anything, and used genuinely they never sound artificial. If you ever run dry, fall back on them to restart the conversation.

Why does a relaxed posture matter when you speak?

Because body language instinctively overrides spoken language and always reveals your true emotional state, and the only state a compelling speaker should convey is confidence. Confidence in the body is, at its core, the absence of fear, of being judged, of being misunderstood, of failing, and it looks like relaxed shoulders, an open chest, a high head, calm breathing, and a deep voice. You can fake it, to others and to yourself, because body and mind are closely linked. Think of something sad and your body tenses; think of someone you love and it eases, almost instantly. The reverse is also true: it is hard to hold thoughts of success while curled into a closed, protective position, and easy when you are open, shoulders down, head high.

How you place your body shapes the thoughts you can have and how easily they flow. Top speakers practise a confidence pose and link it to thoughts of success, and the repetition builds neural pathways until the pose itself becomes an anchor for confidence.

Why should you turn your point into a story?

Compare two deliveries of the same fact. One: "wearing a suit makes people twice as likely to comply with your requests." The other: a man tried to cross at the same pedestrian crossing repeatedly, once in a smart business suit and once in a hoodie and jeans, while hidden observers counted how many drivers stopped. In jeans and a hoodie, about 25% yielded; in the suit, about 50% did. The second version is the one that stays with you, because stories are how humans have passed on information across time. That is also why this began with my own story, my background and what it taught me.

Whenever you communicate, whether sharing a fact with your team or making a sale, ask whether you can tell it as a story. A CEO announcing paid menstrual leave could say, flatly, "good news, we are giving everyone menstrual leave." Or she could lead: "As a woman, I juggle cramps and work every month. I spoke to colleagues who feel the same, and it made me ask how I could best support the women who make this company thrive." Same news, far more authority.