Charismatic body language

Friday, February 22, 2019 11:26 AM

Body language affects us on a visceral, emotional level which

needs to be accessed in order to inspire others to follow, care for
or obey you.
Logic makes people think. Emotion makes people act.

Emotional contagion
It's the process by which emotions expressed by one individual are
‘caught’ by another.
People read your body language, their mirror neurons fire up,
mirroring that state, triggering arousal in others in a chain
reaction.

Conscious mirroring
We mimic the body language of others. (limbo resonance)
Imitating someone's body language is an easy way to establish
trust and rapport. (mirroring or mimicking)
During your next few conversations, try to mirror the other
person's overall posture: the way they hold their head, how they
place their feet, their shifts in their weight. If they move their left
hand, move your right hand. Adapt your voice to theirs in speed,
pitch and intonation.

To increase your subtlety:

• Be selective: Do what feels natural to you e.g. some gestures
may be gender specific.
• Use variations in amplitude. They make a big gesture, make a
small one.
• Use lag time. Let a few seconds elapse before you move into a
mirrored position.
• If they exhibit negative body language, you may want to first
mirror their body language then lead it in a more positive
direction but it depends.
• As you listen, match your body language to theirs. As you
speak gradually shift into a more relaxed, calm and eventually
confident posture. This is good when they need reassurance –
feeling nervous, timid, anxious, awkward, stiff or withdrawn.
Do not influence their body language too forcefully.
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 Do not influence their body language too forcefully.
• Do not mirror them if they are angry or defensive or this
would escalate the tension.
• Try to break them out of their posture by handing them
something – a piece of paper or a pen.
• Then while in the new position, distract them by giving them
new information or changing the subject while mirroring his
new posture to re-establish rapport.

Personal space
Respect the amount of personal space people need to be
comfortable or this could create high levels of discomfort and
those emotions become associated with you.

Practice: Charismatic seating choices

• Avoid a confrontational seating arrangement and sit next to or
90 degrees from them. These are positions in which we feel
most comfortable.
• Start a conversation next to each other.
• After 5 minutes, change position so that you sit across each
other. You'll likely feel a clear difference in comfort level.
• Another 5 minutes, move to a 90-degree angle and feel the
difference.
• Finally, comeback to your original position sitting next to each
other.
• Pay close attention to the rise and fall of feelings of trust and
comfort throughout the exercise.
• To make them feel comfortable, avoid seating them with their
back to an open space. This causes increase in breathing rate,
heart rate and blood pressure, especially near an open door
or window on ground level. And they associate the discomfort
with you.

Eyes, windows to your soul

- Good eye contact is incredibly important. It can communicate
empathy, give an impression of thoughtfulness, wisdom and
intelligence. You make them feel like the most important person
in the room.
- We experience separation distress when we have significant eye
contact and they turn away. Keep eye contact for 3 full seconds at
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contact and they turn away. Keep eye contact for 3 full seconds at
the end of the interaction.
- Delve into sensations to fix lack of eye contact due to shyness or
distraction. Look into their eyes, pay attention to the physical
sensations at that moment. If shy, Dedramatize the discomfort. If
distracted, delve into sensations or look at the different colours
You See in their eyes.
- Charismatic eye contact means switching to a softer focus. It
relaxes our eyes and face and quiets down our stress system.
-To be moved into 'soft focus', close your eyes, focus on the space
around you, the empty space in the room, then focus on the space
filling the universe.

Practice: Charismatic eyes

- Find a room with a mirror where you wouldn't be disturbed for a
few minutes.
- Close your eyes and think of a recent annoyance - some minor
issue that has been bugging you lately or an unpleasant task e.g.
taxes.
- When you feel the irritation take hold, open your eyes and look
closely in the mirror. Note the tension around your eyes, their
narrowness.
- Now close your eyes and think of something that would induce
warm feelings – a recent pleasant experience e.g. time spent with
a good friend.
- When the warmth has risen, open your eyes and look at that
precise kind of relaxation. That’s what warmth looks like.
- Close your eyes once more and think of an exciting time when
you felt full of confidence and on top of the world – receiving a
triumph, an award, some brilliant news.
-When you’ve accessed the feeling of confidence, open your eyes
again and note closely what they look like now. That’s what
confidence looks like.
- The next time you’re in a conversation, regularly check whether
your eyes are feeling tense. If even slightly tense, aim to relax
them. Use a quick visualization (one heart-warming image) or aim
to move into soft focus.

The right posture for non-verbal power

People accept what you project.
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People accept what you project.
Projecting power and confidence is what allows you to emanate
warmth, enthusiasm and excitement without coming across as
overeager or subservient.

Be the big gorilla

Practice getting people to move aside for you in a crowded
environment.
Visualize what a big gorilla would look like charging down the
street.
Adopt the corresponding body language – take as much space as
you can, inflate your chest and charge through the crowd.
Swing your arms as you go to take up more space.
If you bump into someone, imagine having bumped into a good
friend or see them with angel wings.
Avoid constrictive clothing so as to inflate your chest. Shallow
breathing increases / activates the stress response.

Practice: Being the Gorilla

This is a great exercise to use before any interaction so as to feel
and broadcast confidence e.g. before a job interview, before
meeting someone who’s a bit intimidating.

Steps:
• Make sure you can breathe, loosen any clothing if need be.
• Stand up and shake your body.
• Take a wide stance, plant your feet firmly on the ground. A
wide stable stance helps you both feel and project more
confidence.
• Stretch your arms to the ceiling, trying to touch it with your
fingertips.
• Now stretch your arms to the walls on either side of you,
trying to touch them.
• Bring your arms loosely to your sides and roll your shoulders
up and then back.
• INFLATE. Try to take up as much space as possible. Imagine
puffing up like a gorilla, doubling in size.
• Assuming a strong, confident physical posture will make you
feel more confident and powerful.
• As you feel more powerful, your body language adapts
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 • As you feel more powerful, your body language adapts
accordingly, giving you another biochemical boost. With more
practice, confident body language will become second nature.

Regal posture
• James Bond is the quintessential cool, calm and collected
character.
• This kind of high-status, high confidence body language is
characterized by how few movements are made. Avoid
extraneous superfluous gestures e.g. fidgeting with clothes,
hair or faces, incessantly nodding or saying ‘um’ before
sentences.
• These low status signs convey wanting reassurance from
whomever they interact with. This stems from:
• Empathy – wanting to ensure that the other person feels
heard and understood and knows you’re paying attention.
• Insecurity – wanting to please or appease the person you’re
interacting with.
• Powerful, confident, high status people are more contained,
they don’t feel the urge to give so much reassurance because
they are not worried about what their counterpart is thinking.
• Imagine yourself in a royal court. A nervous servant anxiously
bobbing and curtseying vs. the king/queen, powerful and
poised (slow movement) who don’t need to make a move.
• To increase poise:
• Nod once for emphasis or to express agreement is fine and
can be effective. Nodding 3 or 4 times rapidly is wrong.
(Bobble head).
• Restlessness/Fidgeting (tapping your pencil or foot,
rearranging items on the table). Fidgeting decreases presence
and sends distracting signals thus appear odd.
• To break this habits:
• Be aware. See how you appear to others. Videotape yourself
during a meeting or a casual conversation. First forward 10
minutes and you’ll have forgotten about the camera and
you’ll show uninhibited body language.
• Turn the sound off at first and compare your body language
(nodding, gesturing) to the most senior person in the room.
• Watch again with sound and compare your verbal reassurance
level with others. Experience is painful but invaluable.
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 level with others. Experience is painful but invaluable.
Everything you see is what others are seeing. You might as
well be aware of it, too.
• Catch yourself doing this throughout the day displaying high
amounts of verbal and non-verbal reassurance. Then give
yourself a break from time to time to get through this habit.

*Mini Practice
- When you catch yourself nodding or verbally reassuring, try to
replace it with stillness and silence. Aim to get comfortable with
silence, inserting pauses between or within sentences.
- To speed it up ask your friend to tell you whenever you nod or
are reassuring.
Carry one dollar bills and give them one every time you trip.
Broadcasting too much, power appears arrogant or intimidating
for some. Keep your eyes in soft focus to counter this. Bring your
chin down a few degrees like a king bowing his head to a noble
emissary. This avoids the impression of looking down your nose at
someone and simultaneously appear more thoughtful, attentive
and deliberate as your eyes automatically open wider.

Knowing what to do when

Context matters. To make a shy colleague feel comfortable and
open up, punctuate your interaction with non-verbal (nodding)
and verbal (uh-huh).
If they look insecure and need to be reassured, ramp up the
warmth you project and adapt your body language to theirs.
To be seen as confident, focus on poise and containment and limit
your reassurance. Rather than synchronizing your body language
to theirs (unless they are as confident as you want to be), keep to
your own rhythms and maintain your confidence and contain
posture.

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Key Takeaways
Friday, February 22, 2019 11:27 AM

• While our words speak to a person’s logical mind, our non-verbal

communication speaks to a person’s emotional mind.
• Non-verbal communication amplifies verbal communication, when
both are congruent.
• When verbal and non-verbal messages contradict, we tend to trust
what we see in their body language than what we hear them say.
• Through emotional contagion, your emotions conveyed by your
body language, even during brief, casual encounters can have a
ripple effect on your team or even your entire company.
• To communicate warmth, aim to make people feel comfortable:
respect their personal space, mirror their body language and keep
your eyes relaxed.
• When people come to you in need of reassurance, first mirror their
body language, then lead them to more calm, open and confident
positions.
• When people are defensive, break their body language lock by
handing them something to look at or something they will have to
lean forward to take.
• To project power, take up space (be the big gorilla) and be still
(adopt a regal posture).
• Cut out verbal and non-verbal reassurances like head bobbing and
excessive uh-huh-ing.

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