Every presentation is two conversations, and I find it ironic that speakers spend a great deal of time thinking about their content – the first conversation – and hardly any time at all thinking about their body language – the second conversation.  And yet the communications research has shown for a long time that if the two conversations are not aligned, people believe the second conversation every time.  That’s gambling against the house, and against long odds. 

Another way to put this is that the second conversation trumps the first when the two are not consistent.  That suggests that it is incumbent upon the speaker to make sure that the two conversations are aligned, or suffer the consequences.

Take a simple example.  A CEO is giving a speech to employees about alarming trends in the marketplace.  He arrives at the end of his prepared remarks, and then says to the audience, ‘I’d be pleased to take any questions you have.’  At the moment he says these words, he steps back a pace and folds his arms.

There are no questions.

What’s happened?  The audience has unconsciously read the CEO’s body language instead of believing the words, and correctly determined that he was hoping there would be no questions.

Too obvious, you say?  I’ve seen this precise scenario at least half a dozen times.  And I’ve seen all the hard work of a reassuring speech undone by unconvincing Q 'n A.  All because of body language.

You need to put the same effort into choreographing your body language as you do preparing your content.  If you’re not doing that, you’re only an amateur.  You might be a lucky amateur, but you’re taking your chances on hitting an inside straight every time.

When you’re standing up in front of a group of people ready to give a modern business presentation, your ancient instincts take over.  Honed over a million years of evolution, your body says to itself I’m in danger!  I must be prepared! thanks to your ancestors’ battles of survival of the fittest from the cave person era.

Here’s what happens, thanks to evolution.  Your muscles tighten, your brain starts working faster, your breathing becomes shallow, your hands get clammy with heat and perspiration – adrenaline is coursing through your system, readying you for a battle that will never come.

And that’s the problem.  Your body language signals to the audience in front of you (the audience dressed in modern business clothes, not the cave people) that you’re defensive, ready to fight.  Because of the mirror neurons we all have in our brains, the audience mirrors your emotions.  It responds with defensiveness of its own.  Both sides of this modern attempt to communicate are being hampered by ancient instincts to fight or flee.

The possibility of open, honest communication breaks down, probably for the duration of the talk, and you haven’t even started yet.  All of this happens in the blink of an eye, unconsciously, before you even have the chance to think about it.  It’s just the bodies in the room communicating with one another.

Another modern business presentation tanks.

In my next blog:  What you can do about it. 

We live in an era of flattened hierarchies, informality, and collegial behavior.  And so naturally enough, many clients ask me if they can present sitting down.  It's an inevitable question -- it feels more collegial, and less exposed, to sit down around the table like everyone else.  Let’s face it; it’s easier.  And isn't it a good thing to be collegial?  Doesn't it send out a nice message about what kind of person you are?

The answer is, unfortunately, not always.  Standing up while others are sitting automatically bestows some authority on the standee.  And there are times when it's important to claim that authority, just as there are times when it's OK to be collegial. 

Just be aware that when you sit down, you are first and foremost signaling, 'I'm one of you.'  Don't 'say' it unless you mean it. 

Of course we don't like arrogant, pushy people who claim authority that's not their own.  But we also don't like people who pretend to be humble folks when in fact they're running the show.  Both are annoying, and poor leadership.

Stand when you are leading a charge.  If you are addressing the troops in order to present a new plan or direction, the decision has already been made, and you want to bring the people along with you, then stand.  Sitting in that sort of situation is a form of non-verbal lying.  Sitting is for discussion. 

Stand when you are announcing a decision (after hearing a variety of opinions).  Let's say you've listened to your team discuss some options and you've arrived at a decision.  That's a good time to stand, to show that discussion is over and action is at hand. 

Stand when your expertise is called upon.  If you're the expert in the room, then you should stand to deliver your expertise.  Sit down when you're done, and the others can have their day too. 

Know when to sit, and when to stand.  It does make a difference.  We all give provisional respect to those who stand up to make their points; after that it's up to you to earn continuing respect with the quality of the decision, the announcement, or the expertise. 

A few years back I did a version of these.  Today, I was inspired to update them. 

 

I.  Thou shall speak authentically, from the heart.

 

II.  Thou shall focus on the audience.

 

III. Thou shall not use Power Point as speaker notes.

 

IV.  Thou shall not begin thy speech with a joke*. 

 

V.  Thou shall speak with all appropriate passion, and not be boring.

 

VI.  Thou shall tell stories and not kill thine audience with endless data.

 

VII.  Thou shall not make a sales pitch for thy company or thy services.

 

VIII.  Thou shall not begin with talk of thyself.

 

IX.  Thou shall not speak through thy nose, or at the floor, or while advancing thy slides.   

 

X.  Thou shall not exceed thine allotted time.

 

 

(*unless thou is really, really funny.)

 

When you stand up to speak in front of others, you're risking a great deal.  You can fail to engage the crowd, you can make a fool of yourself, you can attempt too little or too much and miss the mark.  And while the risk is almost always greater in your own mind that it is in reality, it is a real risk nonetheless.

Knowledge of that risk is what causes people to play it safe when they’re preparing their presentations.  Ironically, that’s the most dangerous tack to take.  Playing safe means you go for the dull rather than the emotional, the read rather than the conversational, and the preachy rather than the interactive.  All of those choices feel safer and are in fact liable to produce a much worse presentation.  They are choices that close you off to your potential audiences rather than opening you up to them. 

Then, when you get up to speak, you’re thinking to yourself, "Why did I agree to do this?  It could all go horribly wrong!  People are going to think I'm an idiot!" or something along those lines.

The result of that emotional self-talk is a series of behaviors that, alas, tends to increase the likelihood that precisely the feared result will occur.  People who fear failure in speaking are defensive, and that defensiveness shows up in a variety of ways, all bad. 

They may pace nervously -- the familiar 'happy feet' of some speakers.  They may clutch and un-clutch their hands in front of their stomachs.  They may cross their arms, hide their hands behind their backs, or keep their arms firmly fixed to their sides, only waving their forearms, in a characteristic gesture of many business speakers that I call the 'Penguin flap'. 

All of these gestures, and others besides, signal nervousness to the audience.  But more than that, they signal that the speaker is trying to protect himself.  The speaker, in fact, is shutting off part of herself from the audience. 

The result is that the audience begins to feel the same way.  That’s because we have these neurons in our brain called mirror neurons that copy the emotions of the people around us.  When we’re focused on a speaker, and that speaker is behaving as if it’s important to protect himself, we feel danger and want to protect ourselves too. 

The result?  Everyone closes down when it’s most important to be open. 

And it gets worse.  If the audience sense that the speaker is holding back, it will not connect with the speaker – in fact, it will fail to trust him (or her).  The work of shutting down and closing off will wrap up with everyone the opposite of where they should be. 

That's not of course what the speaker intends, but that's the tough luck of public speaking. 

If you're preparing a presentation, then, go for openness. Risk big, rather than playing it safe.  Then, when you’re actually delivering, try to begin right away avoiding self-protection.  Get over yourself and your nerves.  Put your focus on the audience.  Be open to the audience.  If you can manage that, they will carry you and give you back far more energy that you put out. 

The irony is that the best way to protect yourself in public speaking is to give up any thought of self-protection at all. 

There are many ways to say the words “I love you,” but the way that counts is said without words.  The body language of love begins, of course, with flirting:  fleeting eye contact, longer eye contact, smiling, grooming, drawing nearer to each other, accidental touching, and finally close one-to-one communion that shuts out the rest of the world. 

Once two people are acknowledged lovers, something quite wonderful happens.  Watch their body language in a restaurant, or strolling down the street, or at a party, and you’ll see something the non-verbal experts call synchronicity.  That’s a mouthful that simply means that the two move together, gesture together, and react together, anticipating each other’s thoughts, intents, and desires.  To experience that kind of harmony with another human being is the cure for loneliness, the antidote for despair, and the hope of the planet.  We humans are hard-wired for empathy, and love is its culmination.  On Valentine’s Day I wish you the happiness of another human being to dance with in perfect harmony, beyond words, and as close as the beating of your own heart. 

For my final blog in this series on body language “quick takes,” I’m going to answer the question I get asked most often by interviewers, audiences, and fellow speaking coaches:  how do you show up with authenticity?  And what about the irony of practicing that authenticity?  Doesn’t that mean that any such ‘authenticity’ will be fake? 

Thinking about authenticity in this way mistakes what it is and how it is projected.  Authenticity is genuineness.  The shortcut we use to determine authenticity in the people around us is consistency in message and body language – does this person appear to mean what she says?

And so the irony is that the more you practice being consistent, the more likely you are to show up that way.  When people don’t rehearse, they send out unconscious messages with their bodies that this is the first time I’m doing this.  And the body language cues of first-timers overlap with the cues of people who don’t fully mean what they say.   Both groups tend to engage in self-protective behavior, because they feel exposed.  Both groups telegraph nervousness through agitated body language.  And both groups often restrict their own motion and movement by hiding behind a podium, or finding a safe corner of the stage and getting stuck there.  The result signals to the audience (unconsciously) that the speaker is not relaxed, fluid, and at ease. 

So the way to look authentic is to practice.  Your body must get the muscle memory of standing, walking, and talking in the ways that it will during the real event or occasion.  If it does, then it can show up with some authority and presence, and the audience will interpret that as authenticity, if the (more comfortable) body language does in fact match the message.  And that is the kind of important question that gets answered by rehearsal. 

If you rehearse, you and your body can focus on the moment when you’re actually delivering your message.  And that greatly increases the chances that you’ll show up as authentic. 

Charisma is not what you think it is.  It’s not a God-given gift that you either have or you don’t.  It’s rather something you can learn, something you can turn on or off at will once you understand how it works. 

Charisma is focused emotion.  Most of us go through our days unfocused and distracted, thinking about all sorts of things, a little upset, or perhaps in a good mood, chuckling at something that happens, or a funny cartoon that someone sends us, worrying about an upcoming meeting, trying to remember something on the to-do list, vexed at the guy in the next cubicle who’s talking too loudly on the phone again, trying to figure out what to have for dinner, and on and on.  That mix of attitude is deeply uncharismatic.

Here’s why.  We humans have evolved to read each other’s emotions quickly and unconsciously, for basic questions like safe or unsafe, friend or foe, fighting or fleeing.  When we see the average mixed-emotion medium-temperature human walk by, we get a quick read and move on, because there’s nothing exciting there. 

On the other hand, when someone comes in the room with focused emotion – excitement, passion, energy, anger, joy – you name it – we instantly start paying attention.  The emotion draws us, unconsciously at first, and then consciously as we try to figure out what’s going on.  It’s a survival thing.   

The way to turn on your charisma is to focus your emotion, before you go into a meeting, or get up to give a speech, or even have an important conversation.  Make it a real emotion relevant to the situation.  Focusing takes some practice; you begin by remembering a time when you naturally felt that way, and recalling that experience as completely, using all 5 senses, as you can.  With that practice you’ll get better and better at turning it on and off.  And with that will come charisma. 

Grown ups learn to conceal their emotions, in the workplace, in social settings, and at home.  There are all sorts of reasons to do so, some good, some bad, but it’s useful to be able to detect concealed emotions underneath a bland exterior whether it’s your boss holding back on a job performance issue or a family member avoiding a fight.  So how do you do it?

Paul Ekman made his life’s work the effort to be able to spot concealed emotions.  His book Telling Lies is a classic in the field.  It turns out to be very difficult to detect lies reliably, but Paul did improve the odds a little with training that he developed for the CIA and the FBI.  And along the way, he discovered something fascinating:  when we’re concealing a strong emotion, we almost always let it out in “micro-expressions,” sudden leakages of the emotion that are expressed in our faces, unbeknownst to ourselves – and mostly to the people around us, for very brief flashes of time – as little as a 24th of a second. 

The good news is that you can train yourself to spot these micro-expressions.  Ekman himself offers training from his website, or you can train yourself by studying facial expressions and identifying the basic ones using simple pictures which you look at for shorter and shorter periods of time. 

With a few weeks of work, you can train yourself to notice the flashes of anger, or disgust, or surprise, or happiness – whatever the emotion is.  We’re unconsciously aware of micro-expressions anyway; the practice allows you to become consciously aware of them.

And here’s another way to get to the same end result – reading concealed emotions.  Practice asking your unconscious what it’s seeing.  That may sound complicated, but it’s not.  Simply pose the question to yourself, when you’re in someone’s company and you want to know how he or she is feeling.  Make it a positive statement: i. e. something like “Is this person angry?” or “Is this person happy?” and then wait for your “gut” to give you the answer.  If you practice waiting for your unconscious to speak to you, it will.  Your unconscious already knows the answer; it’s just a matter of tapping into it.  Most humans are incredibly quick and able when it comes to reading other people’s emotions – but only at the unconscious level.  At the conscious level, all kinds of other thoughts get in the way.  It takes practice, and a quiet conscious mind, to hear your unconscious.  But the effort will repay you with enormously increased emotional intelligence.  

Respect is a hot-button issue, especially for people who feel threatened or not well-established in the social hierarchy.  If your autonomy is under siege, respect will often be a big issue for you.  So how do you spot respectful body language – or its opposite?

People will unconsciously try to dominate someone that they perceive to be socially, financially, or hierarchically lower than themselves.  That dominance often expresses itself in terms of relative height.  Watch an executive team – or any business team – sitting around a table.  The dominant players will keep their heads higher than the others. 

So the first way to show respect is to lower yourself physically to the other person’s level or below it.  We see this behavior when an adult tries to treat a younger person like an equal.  Often the adult will lower herself so that her head is at the same height as the child’s.  That’s a form of respect, and it usually gets good results in terms of opening the child up and making him comfortable – if it’s not done clumsily.

Respect is also signaled by the way we position our heads in others’ company.  If we raise our chins above the neutral horizontal level, we can be signaling an aggressive move to take charge – or to show disrespect to the other people.  Similarly, if you want to avoid threatening someone else, keep your eyes lowered and your head down.  The opposite move conveys a threat or an attempt at dominance. 

Dominant people tend to take up more space in the room, by splaying out their legs and feet, slouching in a chair to occupy more space in the room, and by using their arms and hands to take up more space horizontally.  Prime Minister Winston Churchill, a short man, often stood with his elbows angled out – the short person’s way of taking up more space (when the vertical is not an option).  The attempt to dominate a room in this way can be taken as an act of disrespect, depending on the players involved, or more positively as a way of demanding respect from others.  And once again, its opposite (taking up less space) can be a sign of respect. 

One of the universally understood facial gestures is disgust, involving a downturn of the mouth.  That can signal disrespect, as can the sneer, when one side of the mouth is pulled up.  Eye contact that goes on too long, finally, can be a sign of disrespect, and submissive eyes, that don’t maintain eye contact for long, a sign of respect. 

We humans retain cues from our animal past in the ways we dole out respect or disrespect, and most of the cues involve manipulating the physical space we’re in, or signaling attitude with the face. 

What does interest look like?  It helps to know the person a little bit, so you can factor out the idiosyncrasies.  But interest typically begins with eye contact.  Mostly, we look at what we’re interested in. 

There are, of course, exceptions.  When people flirt, they play an age-old game of looking away and looking back, giving fleeting glances, making a game of their attention.  The purpose is to heighten the excitement of actual eye contact. 

Raised eyebrows also show interest, as well as open pupils.  When we’re interested, we turn our entire bodies toward the interesting object or person, and we draw closer. 

Then there are people who fake interest.  Look for too rigid eye contact, or eyes that are looking your way, but not focused, to spot the fakers.  But once again it helps to know the person involved, in order to spot the tell-tale signs of interest or disinterest.

So if someone has his eyes focused on you, then check for other signs from the rest of the body.  Is she tapping her fingers?  Are his arms crossed?  Is she turning away?  The body can often be a more reliable sign of genuine interest – or its opposite – than the eyes.  Adults learn to control their faces, feigning interest in order to be polite.  But it exceeds the mental capacity of most people to fake the rest of the body – and indeed, most people don’t know what to do to convey something specific beyond the face. 

If you want to demonstrate interest, first focus your torso on the object of desire, and then your face and eyes.  Do it that way, or you’re liable to forget the body, as most people do. 

As a former academic, I had lots of practice determining the interest levels of 18-21 year olds.  Most students are sleep-deprived, so if you’re not interesting, they’ll quickly demonstrate the ultimate sign of disinterest by falling asleep.  The signs of that are unmistakable. 

What are the body language signs of passion?  You’re thinking, this is a joke, right?  No, I’m not going to talk about sex.  I’ll leave that to the experts and the Internet.  What I’m talking about are the signs that a co-worker or friend or family member is about to erupt in rage, or frustration, or pique, or excitement, or even hilarity. 

We put such a premium in most workplaces -- and social situations -- on staying calm and not showing emotions, that we are often unprepared for it when it shows up unexpectedly.  Indeed, passion can be used in a calculated way to intimidate, to railroad, or to push a point of view.  So it helps to spot the warning signs in order to prepare yourself for the explosion. 

What do you look for?  You'll often spot agitation first in the face, seeing a rapid movement of the eyes, or clenching of the jaw and neck muscles, or a suddenly furrowed brow.  But it usually starts in the gut.  Genuine passion, as the Chinese will tell you, comes from the stomach, not the head.  Breathing rate will suddenly increase, and become more shallow.  The stomach muscles, and the whole torso, will tighten, and prepare for the outburst.  It’s the natural way we have of increasing our adrenaline, and allowing that chemical to assist us in flight or fight mode. 

Often it’s literally true that our bodies know that we’re about to explode before we know it consciously, so watching others’ body language carefully can keep you one step ahead of the riot.  Look for tension in the hands, arms and legs, the shoulders, and finally the face.  He may start to tap his fingers, or his feet.  Her hands may clench before her jaw does.  Muscle tension is the primary signal.  With a little practice, you can even learn to detect what kind of explosion is about to happen by studying the individual and her particular habits of body.  And you can react to a blow before the other person knows he is going to punch by watching it start in the tension of the shoulder. 

Because our bodies decide before our conscious minds, we can’t explode without signaling it first with our bodies.  Thus passion is physical before it’s mental, and body language provides the clues for what’s going to happen.  Study the cues well and you’ll never be caught off guard again.     

We’re living through a disconnected era in our nanosecond-based, 24/7, ADD, mostly virtual world.  Our colleagues and fellow workers nod and smile a lot to show that they’re listening, but it’s not really happening.  Real connection is rare.    Their internal monologues are too intense, too scared, and too far down Maslow’s hierarchy – will I still have my job?  How can I pay my mortgage?  Are my kids staying out of trouble?  -- for us to compete in the attention stakes. 

In short, we have an epidemic of fake listening.  It’s the kind of listening that really means the other parties are just thinking up what they’re going to say next, if they’re on the same conversational planet at all.

What are the body language signs of fake listening?  The eye contact is too fixed, and too still.  He holds his head very still, as if to show that he’s really focused on you.  Or she smiles too brightly, holding the smile too long.  But a real conversation, as I talked about in the last blog, is full of anticipatory nods and hand-offs of eye contact in order to allow smooth conversational Ping-pong.  It’s relaxed and synchronized.  Fake listening feels very different from that.  It’s tense rather than fluid, abrupt rather than smooth, hyped rather than natural. 

And that’s just the face.  Watch the rest of the body.  Is it turning away from you?  Is he tapping his fingers?  Is she pointing her feet toward the door?  Is the other party in constant motion, in fact, never quite coming to rest during the conversation?  These are all signs of Connection Deficit Syndrome.  

When Malcolm Gladwell published Blink, the book gave many people an apparently great excuse not to listen.  You can learn all you want to learn with a quick gut read – why pay attention?  It didn’t matter that Gladwell was wrong in the way he conflated deep-seated expert judgment with uninformed gut reaction.  The damage was done.  We now had a bestselling reason not to connect.  “Just nutshell it for me,” people started to say.  

Let’s start a counter-trend.  Take the time to connect with other people by being truly present.  Let your own mind go quiet, and instead of chattering away to yourself – or planning your escape – focus on the other person with the intent to connect.  You’ll be amazed at what you can learn.  When everyone else is moving at 100 miles per hour, start your own Slow Connection Movement.  It’s time to get back to doing what we humans do best:  use our empathy to form bonds with our fellow human beings. 

How do you tell – in body language terms – when you’re connected with someone?  A conversation between two connected people – lovers, friends, colleagues – who are in sync is a beautiful thing to behold.  If you’re one of the parties involved, it may spoil the connection to take time out to notice it, so be careful.  But the basic body language of connection is mirroring, anticipation and handoffs. 

People who are connected have many of the signs of openness I described in the first blog in this series, with the added layer of moving in sync with one another.  So they mirror each other’s behavior effortless and unconsciously.  They’ll face the same way, sit the same way, gesture the same way, and so on.  In fact, it’s a good test of how connected you are with someone else:  watch what happens when you move.  Does the other person move with you?  If so, it’s a good sign that you’re connected.  If not, not so much.

New research out of Princeton University shows that, if one of the parties is telling the other a story, the listener’s brain anticipates the way the story goes.  They’re telling the story to themselves faster than the teller can.  That’s connection.  I’ve seen it in audiences, too, when a speaker and the audience is connected.  The audience will anticipate where the speaker is headed.  Part of the pleasure of a good story, or a good joke, or a good speech, is fulfillment of expectation. 

In addition, there is a whole language of nods, head moves, eyebrow motion, and hand gestures that regulate connected conversation.  We use these gestures to signal that we’re almost done speaking to the other person, so that they can easily and smoothly take over the conversation.  It’s like an elegant game of Ping-pong.  These handoffs help ensure that both parties get their say, and there isn’t too much interrupting going on.

When the situation is reversed, and there’s a good deal of interruption, we find the conversation tiring, or aggravating, partially because our gestures as well as our words are out of sync.  That means that we gesture more, and change direction and meaning of our gestures more, and that’s tiring.

We humans desire connection and find its absence unpleasant.  By paying attention to the signs of connection, you can send the right signals to the other people in your life and increase your connectedness. 

How do you tell – in terms of body language – when someone is closing off to you?  Most of the clues are easily spotted as the opposite of openness. 

Once again, start with the face.  There’s a lack of eye contact, and when she does make eye contact, her eyes may be narrowed, and her eyebrows lowered.  Her pupils may be shutting – but don’t endanger yourself or others by peering too closely to be sure. 

Frowning and shaking the head “no” are two unmistakable signs of closing down, but many people are too polite to use such obvious gestures.  And certain cultures avoid the signs of “no”; instead saying, “yes,” while meaning its opposite.  In that case, you want to watch for the position of his head.  If he is moving his head and body away from you, even slightly, that may be a sign that he is closing down. 

I once saw two experienced politicians evade the question that the reporters were asking again and again in different words – did you come to a deal – when the relative positions of their heads to one another every time the question was asked gave the game away.  The two both tipped their heads back slightly away from one another:  there was no deal. 

Similarly, if she is moving her torso away from you, or pointing it away from you, that may be a sign of closing down.  The big sign that someone is “done” – in a variety of ways – is when she has been leaning toward you, and she shifts her whole position to leaning back.  That’s an unequivocal sign that it’s time to move on, whether literally or figuratively. 

His hands will sometimes signal closing down, if they become a barrier – clasped in front of his stomach between the two of you, or crossed.  And watch his feet and legs:  if they move away or are pointed away from you, that may be a sign of closing down. 

How can you signal this behavior yourself?  The easiest way is to subtly move away from the other person in some fashion, either with the head, the torso, or the whole body.  The other behaviors are of course very familiar to us all, and not difficult to employ, from shaking your head to frowning and the rest.  But if you’re aiming to be diplomatic, then go for the subtle rather than the obvious. 

What does closed body language mean?  The question is, does it mean that the conversation is done, and the other person is ready to move on, or does it mean, “No, I don’t want you/your product/your ideas/your entire zeitgeist”?  For the distinction, you must look to context – and your own optimism and ideas for the future.  Does “No” mean “Never” or “Not Now”?  It can be difficult to get a clear answer out of people who are uncomfortable with saying no in general, and of course attitudes may change.  Generally, if the words are saying “Yes,” but the body language is saying “No,” don’t push it.  The brain research shows that our bodies often know our decisions before our conscious minds do – even up to 10 seconds before.  Trust the body language!

I’m going to do a series of blogs on body language – quick takes.  Here’s a way to spot certain attitudes – or ‘tells’ – in body language, and how to employ those attitudes yourself. 

My first attitude is openness.  What does it look like, how do you adopt it, and what does it mean?

Openness begins with the face.  The person’s eyes are open wide, and focused on you; her eyebrows may be raised; her face is turned toward you.  The person may be smiling, nodding, or otherwise signaling positive attitudes.  The pupils of her eyes are large rather than small – but don’t do yourself or others injury by trying to see them close up.

Next, his torso is turned toward you rather than away.  His hands are open, his palms are open and turned toward you, and his torso is exposed rather than protected by his hands or arms. 

Finally, look at the person’s legs and feet.  They can be open or crossed, and her feet can be pointed toward you or away from you.  The former in both cases is open, the latter is more likely to be closed. 

Overall, open people tend to move toward you, closed people away.  The adjustments in space can be quite small, so observe closely. 

How do you adopt open body language yourself?  You can try to monitor all the behavior described above, but it can be quite difficult to keep track of all that from moment to moment and remember not to drool or forget what you’re saying – let alone listen to the other person attentively.  So I recommend instead creating in yourself the intent to be open.  That is, when you’re going into a meeting or conversation – or getting ready to give a presentation – and you want to come across as open, spend a minute or two imagining that you’re about to talk to your favorite person, someone with whom you’re completely comfortable.  With a little practice, you’ll find that if you adopt a strong enough intent, the body language takes care of itself. 

What does open body language mean?  Openness means just that, being open to the other person, or people.  Receptiveness, alignment, and a positive attitude are all more likely when someone is open to you – and you’re open to them.  Openness is a good thing – almost always.   

But of course, all of this has to be taken with a bit of salt.  People vary in their natural set points of openness, so get to know someone before placing a big bet on what their body language is telling you at any given moment. 

Body language -- good or bad -- can make or break a meeting, a conversation, a presentation.  Here's how to use it to connect powerfully with other people.  The podcast is just under 7 minutes and it's based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  Enjoy!

I'm taking a few days off to work on a new book, but I'll be back with more podcasts next week. 

 

 

Trust Me Podcast 7

 

This is the 5th podcast in the Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma series - why you need to be open, and how to do it.  Especially as our lives get more and more virtual, it's useful to recall the basics of openness -- and here I do so in about 4.5 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 5

This is the 4th podcast in my series based on Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  In this podcast I discuss open content -- the rhetorical rules for an open communication.  In looking at these essential conditions for successful communication, I discuss why the debt limit talks are failing as currently undertaken.  The podcast is just under 6 minutes - enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 4

 

 

In this, the 3rd podcast in the series from Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I focus on the 4 steps of the title -- how to align your body language and content for effective communication.  The podcast lasts about 5 minutes.  Enjoy!

Trust Me Podcast 3

 

 

In this second podcast in the series based on my book Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, I talk about what has changed so that we demand authenticity and charisma from our leaders, where those two qualities come from, and how to achieve them.  The podcast lasts just over 2 1/2 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Trust Me Podcast 2

This is the first of a series of podcasts based on my book, Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.  The podcast discusses the difference between what the conscious mind and the unconscious mind do for us when we communicate, and why that's important.  It's about 2 1/2 minutes.  Enjoy! 

 

 

Trust Me Podcast 1

 

I'm beginning a series of podcasts briefly summarizing the ideas in my first two books -- Give Your Speech, Change the World, and Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma -- as a way of celebrating beginning work on my third book.  Also, I've had repeated requests for audio versions of the two books, and the publishers have so far refused to oblige.  This podcast series, then, is by way of two free audio books for you and a review of the ideas for me as I begin the next book.  Enjoy!  The podcasts will each be a few minutes in length; this one is about 4 minutes. 

Podcast GYS-STW-1

For my blog today, I'm connecting to a podcast I did with Connie Dieken on her Influential Leaders blog.  Connie is super smart and does her homework and we had a great conversation about leadership and why leaders today need authenticity above any other quality.  The link will take you to Connie's blog, and links to both the podcast and a pdf of the transcript are right there.  Enjoy, and thanks, Connie!

 

Here's the beginning of a speech I gave last year on the new brain research.  The opening story will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, but the talk on insights into communication should be worthwhile.  Enjoy!  The excerpt lasts about 10 minutes. 

 

 

Here's a brief video excerpt from a speech I gave last year about how to connect with an audience by using the physical space between speaker and audience.  Enjoy!

 

 

What do I do with my hands? is a question I get asked all the time.  Here's the answer, along with some additional information about the space between people and how to use it, in a quick, 2-minute video from a speech I gave last year.  Enjoy!

 

 

Forty years ago communications expert Albert Mehrabian did a little study that got an outsized reputation -- and is often misunderstood.  Here's what he actually found, and what it means, in a short video from a speech last year.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

For my blog today, I'm posting a brief excerpt from a speech I gave last year on communications.  The clip explains mirror neurons and why they're important to understand.  Enjoy!

 

 

For my blog today, I'm pointing to a piece I just posted on HBR.org, on how to save a doomed meeting.  Enjoy!  http://bit.ly/gHCqG2

I’ve talked about how to scan other people’s body language efficiently, and how to begin to get a handle on your own by focusing on a specific emotion.  Both those activities will take some practice, but the rewards will come, and they will be huge.  Your awareness of what other people are intending will become razor-sharp and your own body language will become much more expressive, and therefore charismatic.  So keep practicing.

The final step in this process of putting your unconscious mind to work for you in a conscious way is to manage the flow of communication between you and your audience, or in that meeting, or that conversation.  By taking charge of the communication flow, you will be able to persuade others more easily and to take charge of many of the human interactions that take place throughout our day.

At the moment, your unconscious mind, and the unconscious minds of those around you are doing most of the work.  We signal that we’re about to start or stop talking, for example, with blinks of the eye, movements of the head, and changes in body position.  Because all of that is unconscious for most people, it’s easily controlled by becoming conscious about it yourself. 

If you’ve practiced reading other people’s body language, and managing your own, you’ll be able to dedicate a small part of your conscious mind to managing the communication flow.

Here’s how you do it.  Begin by mirroring the people in the room, or the folks that you’re chatting with, to make them comfortable.  I’ve blogged about this technique before, and written about it in Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, if you’re not familiar with it.  Once you’ve established trust with mirroring, you’ll be able to begin to lead the conversation by leaning slightly forward, for example, when you want the other person to stop talking because you have something to day.  Or use a hand gesture to take the ‘public space’ between you – the gestural equivalent of standing up in a classroom to lead the group.   The exact retinue of gestures that you use is up to you.  Study other people to see how they do it (unconsciously) for ideas if your own natural repertoire is small.  

This conscious managing of the conversation will take some practice, because you have to be very sure of your own body language, and that of others, before you will have the conscious ability to do this.  But the payoffs in terms of persuasiveness, charisma, and leadership will be well worth it. 

I began this series on body language by urging you to turn over body language chores to the most powerful part of your mind – your unconscious. I outlined a 3-step process for doing that in order to decode other people’s body language. It remains to talk about how to control your own.

People ask me all the time, “What do I do with my hands?” The real conundrum behind that question is that monitoring your own body language is extremely difficult for the conscious mind and it easily gets overwhelmed. The hands are simply the easiest and least distracting parts of your body to watch while still walking, talking, and chewing gum at the same time.

But here’s the problem. If you think consciously about moving your hands in a certain way as a speaker, or in a meeting, in order to emphasize a point, your gesture will come too late, and you’ll look awkward, bizarre, or fake. That’s because the natural sequence of events, according to recent brain research, is intent – gesture – thought – speech. The gesture actually comes before conscious thought. So if you try to think consciously about a gesture, you’ll start it too late, and it will come out of sequence with your words. You’ll look like one of those coached politicians who gesture awkwardly a split second after they talk, undercutting any belief in what they’re saying.

It simply doesn’t work very well – without hours of practice, at least – to try to reverse this sequence consciously, speeding up your gestures and slowing down your speech. The better way to get this done is to focus on something else – your intent – and let the gestures take care of themselves. Strong intent, or emotion, drives gesture when you’re not thinking about it, so it’s by far the better way to go.

The difficult part is in focusing your emotions consistently and clearly so that your gestures are equally clear and strong. To do that, you have to know what you want and how you feel about it during each meeting, presentation, or interview where you want to show up with effective, persuasive body language. And you have to keep the focus on that emotion – or those emotions – and not get distracted.

Most people go through their days telegraphing their state of mind, and it’s typically distracted. In other words, they’re not clear or focused; instead, they’re thinking about the to-do list, what to get for dinner, remembering to pay their taxes, getting a birthday present for a sister, and so on. When you walk into a meeting with that kind of attitude, you will have no charisma or persuasive force.

The first step to managing your own body language, then, is to forget about your body language and focus on your intent. What do you want to happen? What’s your emotional investment? Are you angry, happy, sad, delighted, excited – figure that out, focus on that, and your body language will line up behind that emotion and start expressing it clearly and powerfully.

Next time I’ll talk about step 2 – what to do after you’ve got your focus.

In the first blog in this series I recommended turning over your body language chores – monitoring your own body language and others’ – to your unconscious mind.  Here are 3 easy steps to accomplishing the second half of that – monitoring others’ body language.  I’ll cover how to handle your own body language in subsequent blogs.  

1.  Decide what you want to know.   This step is critical, because it’s the way you get started tapping into your unconscious expertise.  What is it that you want to understand about someone else’s body language?  Is she lying?  Is she the real decision maker?  Is he going to offer you the job?  Is he a threat to your career?  Formulate the question in a simple yes-or-no format, a choice between 2 poles.  Lying or not?  In charge or not?  And so on. 

Figure this out before you go into the meeting, or the interview, or whatever the situation is, because you’re under too much pressure to pay attention and take part once you’re actually in the moment.   This little step – of thinking ahead, figuring out how the meeting will go, and deciding the question you want to answer – will pay huge dividends in awareness as you get the hang of it over time. 

2.  Pose the question to your unconscious.   Once you’ve figured out what you want to know, then sit still for a moment and pose the question to your unconscious mind.  Say something like, “In this interview, I want to know is Jane going to offer me the job?”  Focus your mind on that, and push out other concerns, nerves, and distractions. 

3.  As the meeting takes place, wait for your unconscious to let you know what the answer is.   At first, your unconscious will only whisper its information to you, and it will do that slowly.  You'll be uncertain about what it's telling you.  But as you practice it, the answers will come faster and more clearly.  People who say they have a strong “gut instinct” or “good intuition” are already listening to the messages that their unconscious minds are sending them.  The point is that anyone can learn to develop this sense, just like a muscle.  It takes practice, and you must go through each of the three steps. 

With time, you’ll develop this ability to pose questions to your unconscious mind and get the answers back more and more clearly and quickly.  Until you have the expertise, don’t bet on an inside straight. 

Next time I’ll talk about how to manage your own body language, a trickier chore. 

“Is body language really necessary?” A frustrated executive asked me that once.  He had his hands full with learning his talk, coping with the technology, and, well, picking out his tie.  His question was really, “Do I have to think consciously about my audience’s body language – and my own – with everything else I have to do to deliver a great speech to that audience?  It’s just too much to worry about!”

My counter-intuitive answer is no.  Let me explain.  You shouldn’t think consciously about other people’s body language or your own, under most circumstances – it’s a very inefficient way to use your conscious mind.  You should think unconsciously about body language, however – in fact, you can’t help it.  Your mind will do that anyway.  You might as well make use of it.

The conscious mind can handle something like 40 bits of information a second.  That’s tiny.  Your unconscious mind, which is far bigger, handles something like 11 million bits of information per second.  That’s more like it.   That’s enough to monitor yourself and your surroundings, check the body language of everyone else in the room, and still keep an eye out for the errant shoe that might be flying in your direction. 

All those books on body language that tell you to steeple your hands together because it’s intimidating, or (men) to hook your thumbs in your belt because it’s irresistible to women, or to point your feet toward someone you like are missing the point, for several reasons.  First of all, we pick up on inconsistent body language with those powerful unconscious brains.  So, if you’re steepling your hands, but the rest of your body is saying, “I’m a schmuck!” guess what message will come through to everyone else’s unconscious mind? 

Second, body language is multi-determined.  That means there can be many reasons for a gesture or a stance.  Adopting a particular one risks signaling a meaning different from the one you mean, especially if you’re thinking unconsciously about something else. 

And finally, thinking consciously about your body language will slow you down, causing your body language to look fake or insincere to your audience’s unconscious mind, which is faster to pick up information than the conscious mind.   

And, of course, because the conscious mind is so limited in its capacity, trying to drive body language with it will cause it to overload quickly, like my executive did.  So instead turn over your body language chores – monitoring your own and everyone else’s -- to your unconscious mind, which is up to the task.  In following blogs, I’ll discuss exactly how to do that.      
 

For my holiday blog, I'm giving you the first section of my most recent book, Trust Me, free. Enjoy and happy holidays!

Trust Me:  Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma

Introduction

Every communication is two conversations: the verbal one — the content — and the nonverbal one — the body language.  If the two are aligned, you can be a persuasive, authentic communicator. You may even come across as charismatic.

If the two are not aligned, people believe the nonverbal communication every time — and you will not seem authentic, even if you’re just authentically nervous! People will believe that you’re faking, or hiding something, or not completely present.

Most of us tend to think of the first conversation, the content, as the important one. We worry a lot about what to say when we’re preparing for an important meeting, giving a big speech, or proposing marriage. And yet we rarely give as much thought to the second conversation: the body language.  Then when the communication doesn’t go well, we’re surprised and don’t understand why.

The reason is usually that our two conversations have been in conflict with one another. Our words were confident perhaps, but our body language — the second conversation —was nervous. And as research into how the brain works grows in depth and sophistication, we’re coming to understand that what I’m calling the second conversation is actually more important in some ways than the first one.

We’re still learning about the brain, but it is clear that our normal, everyday working model of it is a little outmoded. Most of us think that we’re relatively rational beings. We get a thought, we decide to act on it, we instruct our bodies to move, and they do. So, for example, we wake up in the morning and think, “I need a cup of coffee.”  Our brain then instructs our body to go to the kitchen, prepare the coffee, get the mug out of the kitchen cabinet, and drink ourselves into wakefulness.

But it doesn’t actually work that way much of the time.  We get nonverbal impulses for a lot of the important things that drive us: relationships, safety, emotional needs, fears, desires, meeting new people, seeing old friends, and so on.  Our bodies immediately start to act on these impulses, and then, a bit later, we form a conscious thought about what we’re doing.  It’s as though our rational minds are explaining to ourselves after the fact why we’re doing something.

That intent comes from somewhere deep in the brain, beneath where conscious thought originates. And that intent, coming perhaps from what some call the limbic brain, governs a good deal of our supposedly rational lives.

We are all unconscious experts in each other’s body language

We are all unconscious experts at reading other people’s body language. We learned this from a very early age, back when our lives depended on getting food, love, shelter, and dry diapers.

Nevertheless, few of us are good at reading body language consciously. Instead, we get impressions and ascribe intent to the other person. We think to ourselves, He doesn’t like me very much, or, She’s trying to cut me out, or, They really think I’m funny.  And it’s at this level of intent that most of our own body language begins.

If you put together this primacy of body language in many important areas of human concern, with our unconscious expertise at reading it, you get a paradox when you star to think about improving your abilities as a communicator.  Here’s the rub. If you start to think hard about your body language because you want to control it and make it align with your content so that you’re persuasive, authentic, and even charismatic, you run into a problem: you’re thinking consciously about an unconscious (preconscious thought) activity, which slows your body language down and makes it happen just a bit late.

The people around you, those unconscious experts, sense that something is wrong, but they can’t put their fingers on the problem precisely. They’ll think something like, He didn’t seem real, or, She looked fake — scripted or something.  They won’t tell you the real problem — that your gestures and content are out of sync — because they’re not consciously aware of what’s going on.

It needs to go like this: intent gesture thought words.  If you try to control your body language at the level of conscious thought, it will come out like this: thought words gesture.  And it will look all wrong.

That’s a problem for any leader who knows that she has to communicate effectively on good days and bad, nervous or not, and prepared or not, and can’t afford to show up looking inauthentic because she’s thinking too hard about trying to appear real.

The problem comes when you make the unconscious conscious

The leader’s behavior is also a problem for coaches, like me, who are expert at watching body language and want to advise you, “Don’t cross your arms at that point in your presentation, because it will look defensive at a moment when you’re talking about being open.”  If we coach you at the level of specific gestures, you’ll make them conscious, they’ll happen too slowly and out of sync with your thoughts, and you’ll look fake.

As I’ve coached people over the years, my clients and I have wrestled with this problem. The solution has been to practice over and over again until the coordination of word and gesture becomes second nature, or almost.  But thanks to recent brain research and my own continuing efforts to make teaching the two conversations as simple as possible, we can now resolve the paradox with another one.

This change will greatly speed up the work of turning you into a powerful, persuasive, authentic, charismatic communicator, whether you’re having a one-on-one meeting, engaging in a board-level discussion, or giving a speech to a thousand employees.

We are going to accomplish all this by having you work at the level of intent.  The paradox is that you’re going to be thinking both hard and consciously, but you’ll resolve the problem by learning how to keep the work at an emotional level, like actors preparing for a role. This way, you’ll be as close to the unconscious mind as possible, even though you are consciously thinking about your communication issues.

I have developed four steps, from simple to more complex, that you can take in order to learn to communicate authentically and charismatically.  If you practice these four steps as intuitively as possible, without being too conscious about what you are doing, you’ll find yourself easily resolving communications issues that may have bedeviled you for years.

In addition, for those who want more detailed instruction, I lay out a series of principles of persuasive communication for both the content conversation and the gesture conversation.  Take these as guidelines to use as they are appropriate.  Different ones apply more powerfully at different times, and you can practice one and then another as you progress to become a more effective communicator.

Over and over again as I have worked with clients while developing this method, I have seen profound transformations happen quickly, even in a couple of hours. Introverted, ineffective communicators have learned to open up and take the stage with confidence and enthusiasm. It’s exciting to watch and will work for you too.

The key is not to intellectualize too much the work you’re going to do. Once you get the hang of it, it will seem easy.  So take a deep breath, and jump in.  Authenticity and charisma await you.

Anyone who is interested in communications and the brain should spend a little time with Heribert Watzke, food scientist and researcher into what he calls the little or lower brain.  It turns out that you’ve got 100 million neurons – 20 different varieties  -- in your gut, connected to the emotional centers in your bigger or upper brain, the one in your head.  Those neurons are mostly concerned with keeping you alive and fed, but they are also responsible for your ‘gut feel’ – that sense you have in your stomach when things are right or wrong. 

So you literally do think with your gut – and paying attention to that busy little brain down there is a good first step to being able to think with your whole brain.  If you can think with your whole brain, you can communicate with your whole brain, and greatly increase your presence and awareness with everyone and everything around you. 

The explosion of brain research in the last decade or so is revealing two extraordinary things about our huge, powerful, and largely unconscious minds.  First is that neurons are incredibly specialized.  Second is that they are surprisingly plastic.  That is, they can learn to do new things when the old roles are no longer useful. 

That means that we can almost certainly improve upon our current rather limited abilities to communicate with each other.  Increased awareness of our non-verbal signals in communications, to take only one example, brings with it a huge increase in our ability to read others. 

We are just beginning to understand the role that our brains play in communications, not to mention the rest of our bodies.  Watzke’s research is a step toward a greater understanding.  Watzke has an accent, and it takes a little patience to follow him, but the result is well worth the effort. 

 

 

For the fifth podcast in this series, I talk about how you can become more charismatic.  The excerpt lasts about 7 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

 

Nick Morgan Interview-5- Oct 2010

 

In this, the 4th in the podcast series, I talk about the 4 steps to becoming your most authentic and charismatic self.  The excerpt lasts about 10 minutes, and it's based on my book Trust Me.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

Nick Morgan Interview-4-Oct 2010

 

This podcast excerpt is the third in the series.  It's all about how to read other people's body language.  It lasts about 3 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

 

Nick Morgan Interview-3- Oct 2010

 

Second in a series of podcasts on communication subjects.  This one is all about the latest brain research and what it tells us about how people communicate.  The segment lasts about 5 minutes.  Enjoy!

 

Nick Morgan Interview -2-Oct 2010