People judge you really quickly, at first just on your facial features. There are two dimensions - warmth and competence. You can think of them as trustworthiness and strength. They're first judging you on warmth; evaluating whether or not you are trustworthy. That's much more important to them than whether or not you're competent.
Trust is the conduit for influence; it's the medium through which ideas travel.
Although our body language governs the way other people perceive us, our body language also governs how we perceive ourselves and how those perceptions become reinforced through our own behavior, our interactions, and even our physiology.
Authenticity doesn't just mean you're not filtering what you're saying, it's about being able to know and access the best parts of yourself and bring them forward.
I'm good enough; I'm smart enough. Self-affirmation is where people list their core values. These are things that really make them who they are.
A mountain of evidence shows that our bodies are pushing, shaping, even leading our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. That the body affects the mind is, it's fair to say, incontestable. And it's doing so in ways that either facilitate or impede our ability to bring our authentic best selves to our biggest challenges.
The mind shapes the body, and the body shapes the mind.
Practice smiling by holding a pencil between your teeth for twenty minutes.
Technology is transforming how we hold ourselves, contorting our bodies into what the New Zealand physiotherapist Steve August calls the 'iHunch.' I've also heard people call it 'text neck,' and in my work, I sometimes refer to it as 'iPosture.'
Trust comes before strength, and it becomes a conduit of influence. Your strength is a little bit threatening before people trust you.
I sometimes work with a communications and media training firm called KNP Communications. It's nice to bring the research to the practitioners; I learn a lot watching how they put it into practice, and I know they like to be on top of what's happening on the research front.
There is no one who is present all the time, but you work on becoming present when you are interacting with people who are working for you, being able to hear them without a sense of threat, to go into those meetings with confidence and not arrogance.
What I most want you to understand is that your body is continuously and convincingly sending messages to your brain, and you get to control the content of those messages.
A lot of politicians, not surprisingly, hire consultants to help them with their nonverbals, presence, generally how they come across.
Too many of us suffer from pervasive feelings of personal powerlessness. We have a terrible habit of obstructing our own paths forward, especially at the worst possible moments.
There are plenty of reasons to put our cellphones down now and then, not least the fact that incessantly checking them takes us out of the present moment and disrupts family dinners around the globe.
It's not uncommon for people to overvalue the importance of demonstrating their competence and power, often at the expense of demonstrating their warmth.
Politicians are very experienced - maybe too experienced - at using body language to signal power and competence. But what these politicians are much more likely to struggle with, or just neglect to do altogether, is communicate warmth and trustworthiness.
Being a comfortable public speaker, which involves easily being able to go off-script, strongly signals competence.
People want to feel understood by their leaders.
