By: Bella Miranda
The power of body language is absolutely incredible. A shift in posture, the right tilt of one’s head, or a small gesture can often say more than words alone ever could. Pioneering psychological researcher Albert Mehrabian discovered that 55% of personal communication is body language, 38% is tone of voice and only 7% comes from words themselves.
How you carry yourself could be holding you back, preventing you from communicating the right message and reaching your goals. But if you can control it, you may be able to open doors and unleash your unlimited potential.
What your body says
Some individuals are very attuned to what they’re communicating to the world around them through body language. They know posture is a message so they project the confidence that gives the best impression in important situations.
Others aren’t as conscious of their body language, especially when feeling strong emotions. They may project professional body language most of the time but when they get excited, nervous, sad, or stressed, their posture may show it.
These individuals are allowing their internal emotions to display externally for the whole world to see, often without realizing it. Regardless of how self-assured and secure you claim to be, others will definitely notice if you have slumped shoulders, your arms tightly crossed over your chest, or continuously downcast eyes.
Is the power of body language working against you?
I was working with a client who needed a boost in his posture and body language.
He had a fantastic career but was struggling with an important series of pitch meetings for a project that would take him to a whole new level.
The pitch was something he’d been building towards since the beginning of his career, from day one. This was years in the making. He had done the work. He was diligent, determined and organized. But after every meeting, things were at a standstill and he couldn’t close the deal, despite wanting it more than anything. He had it all practiced and lined up perfectly so he didn’t understand why he was so stuck.
The situation made him nervous, uncomfortable, and less-than-confident. He kept picturing the fallout if the project failed to go ahead and this made him more anxious than ever to see it go through. He was normally self-assured but at these meetings, he lacked strong leadership body language. His gestures and posture betrayed his increasingly shaky confidence, planting small seeds of doubt in those he was pitching to.
Developing leadership body language
Most of us could benefit from a bit of confidence building. Even people functioning at a high frequency and those who are generally self-assured might need it. If you’re confident most of the time but aren’t at a very important moment, it can be extremely alarming because you’re not used to it. That’s what happened to the individual I was working with.
If you consciously harness the power of body language in high-pressure situations you can change your entire experience.
The method I used to help my client may work for you. He visualized himself doing something he has done before successfully, an activity he was very confident with, something where a successful outcome again was easily expected. He would have confident body language in this scenario because his victory was almost assured, thanks to his mastery. Then we flipped the script and applied this same kind of assuredness to his upcoming pitch meeting.
It worked! After we did several exercises on this theme, he must have displayed excellent leadership body language in the next meeting. He reported feeling great walking into the meeting—better than ever—and he felt absolutely smashing walking out. The project went ahead!
Creating confident body language for yourself
Of course, that individual’s assured and professional body language wasn’t solely responsible for his success. He wouldn’t have even been in those meetings if it wasn’t for all of his earlier hard work! But harnessing the power of body language gave everyone in the room a final burst of confidence in him and his leadership ability. That pushed everything through.
A first step for you to get more confident body language is to start being aware of the message your body is putting out. Try to be more aware of your posture during the day and check in with yourself periodically. Look in the mirror and ask yourself what message you see.
If the message isn’t one you want to put out, change it. Put your chin up, push your chest out, pull back your shoulders, and smile. Make eye contact with that smart, happy, confident person in the mirror. What is the message you get now?
And yes, calling up times where you are always assured does a lot for confidence building. Conjuring your most poised and masterful memories is a solid step toward controlling the messages your body broadcasts.