Although my example may seem extreme, it’s important to recognize that in the busyness between meetings, if we’re not doing discovery well, not paying attention to the verbal and nonverbal cues of the people we’re with, not making time for “space in the middle,” not rerouting our agenda at the first sign of any red flag, our vocal tone and/or body language can have an impact far from the positive one we intended.
Is There a Gravitas Voice?
There’s speculation that former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher took voice lessons, with videos and studies of her supposed “before” and “after” voice. Why would she do this? There is much research to suggest that success in business and politics is associated with a deeper voice. One study of 792 male public-company CEOs, conducted by researchers from Duke University and the University of California at San Diego, found that CEOs with deeper voices managed larger companies, made more money, and that they had longer tenures.9 It appears the possible preference for lower voices when it comes to leadership holds beyond the boardroom and men. Studies led by Casey Klofstad at the University of Miami suggest that both men and women select male and female leaders with lower voices.10 However, Klofstad found an exception to the lower-voice preference: when facing female opponents, candidates with higher voices, particularly male candidates, were more successful.11 So while success and leadership are often associated with a lower voice, the correlation is not universal. There is no one-pitch-fits-all approach we need to land on. Style, like the content of our speech, requires being intentional and versatile. And while there is a physiological basis for the pitch of our own unique voice, each of us has a range at our disposal. Perhaps it’s useful to revisit the eager and vigilant nonverbal styles. The higher end of our own natural range may be more appropriate to apply when choosing the eager communication style, for a positive audience, and the lower end of our range might be more appropriate for the vigilant style, when working with people in challenging situations. You do not have the right or the wrong voice for authentic gravitas. You have the choice to be intentional in using the full range of your voice, adapting it for the situation and goal at hand, to minimize the gap between your intention and impact.
Although you should adapt your tone depending on your circumstances, one thing that never needs to be part of your repertoire is distracting body language. One interviewee, an executive at a global branding company, highlighted the need for feedback to develop gravitas: “Can it be learned? Yes. But probably only if someone calls you out on it—how you engage, how you show up, particularly when it comes to body language.” Let’s take a look at some of the most common unintentional distracting body language habits and what to do about them.
The Waltz
My husband and I practiced our first dance over and over again in the weeks leading up to our wedding. I would like to say that our first dance as a married couple at our reception was perfect. I try to remember it that way, but there’s a little part of me that thinks we probably looked quite silly. But we had fun and my husband kindly reminds me that’s what matters.
Moving around the dance floor, whether we are natural movers-and-shakers or the awkward people bopping around, is part of the fun of a celebration. But meeting rooms are not the forum for any kind of dancer. I often catch clients doing a subconscious “waltz.” Shifting from one foot to the other, taking little steps side to side, or swinging from their back leg to their front leg and front leg to back . . . over and over again. These slight movements suggest nervousness—they are the body language equivalent of the powerless language we looked at earlier. That’s not to say you can’t move. There’s just one rule: move . . . or don’t. By that I mean stand still and hold your ground, with your body centered and your weight spread evenly, or take intentional steps around the space you have, moving toward different people in your audience. Don’t float around. Not because it’s “wrong,” but because it’s distracting. It takes attention away from your message and thereby reduces your likelihood of impacting your audience in the way you intend. This can seem like a trivial point, but when facilitating peer practice presentation sessions with professionals at all organizational levels, there is always at least one “dancer,” and the feedback is universally, “It was distracting.” Typically, the person doing it was in no way aware that they were shifting their weight or taking little steps.
Move. Or don’t. It’s your choice. If space allows, a mix of the two is usually best: move part of the time and don’t during other parts. But no floating. Save the waltz for the dance floor.
Don’t Add. Subtract.
Jean-Luc had come from France to join us in Switzerland for a leadership program organized by his global media company. He was friendly, articulate, and interested. My team and I were spending three days with Jean-Luc and his peers from across Europe to train them on increasing their influence and gravitas. One part of the program required participants to take turns practicing presenting and chairing meetings. When Jean-Luc spoke, he was funny and thought-provoking. Many of his peers in this proactive group raised their hands at the end, wanting to offer him constructive feedback. “It was good, but you did this with your hand the whole time,” one colleague said as he circled his wrist over and over again to mimic Jean-Luc’s gesture. “Yes, that’s what I was going to say,” said another. Sure enough, all the feedback was about Jean-Luc’s circling hand.
Many people ask, “What should I do with my hands?” The question for most people isn’t about what to start doing, but what to stop doing. As you manage to reduce nervousness (more on this to come), your hands will naturally start to reflect your words. What you need to stop doing is making distracting gestures, which you might not even be aware you’re making. You don’t realize the impact it’s having. You may have prepared an interesting and engaging message, but if you don’t take away your distracting hand gestures, your audience will not be able to focus on the message as well and you won’t have as great an impact. Worry less about what to do with your hands and more about what not to do with them.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Suzanne was ready. She had all the findings of the latest industry report graphed and documented beautifully in her slide deck. She’d been practicing her talk and was hoping to make a strong impression on her company’s management team. This was an important opportunity for her, and although she felt somewhat nervous, she was confident her slides were just what they were after. Her boss even looked over them and said he thought they were “spot on.” As she got up from her chair when it was her turn to share, Suzanne picked up the clicker and smiled at the audience. As she started her opening, she turned away from the management team seated at the large oval table in front of her and glanced at the screen, as if to show them where to look so they could go through the deck together. And that was the moment. The action in that moment meant she stood—and stayed—facing sideways, the left side of her body toward the management team and her right side toward the screen. She was essentially facing the window. Sure, she looked at the audience sometimes, but she looked at the slides just as much. She was confident about the slides, more confident than she was about herself. But her subconscious desire that her audience look at the slides instead of her led to a silent but clear instruction: “Focus on the slides, not me.”
But your slides are not the message. You have the message—your slides are just there to support you. That’s why in the IMPACT model, you don’t design your slides until the end, once you’ve already decided on your key messages and content. Standing in a way that naturally focuses your attention on your slides rather than on the audience sends a message that you are just the delivery person chosen to read the slides and pass on the slides’ great messages.
It sounds silly, but many professionals fail to deliver with gravitas because they unknowingly “hide” behind the slides. The same can be true of a flip chart. Have you ever seen someone so close to it, facing it rather than you? Or someone lookin
g down at a report being discussed far more than necessary? It can be our way of self-protecting. Perhaps they no longer need to self-protect, but the slides, flip chart, or report made them more comfortable when they first started their careers, and they established unintentional habits that still make it look like they believe the audience should value the visuals more than their own personal contribution.
Face Freeze
Rishad’s senior partner handed the meeting over to him. The clients had promised to make their final decision within a week of this meeting. Usually engaging and approachable, Rishad was conscious of saying all the right things, but wasn’t conscious of the fact that his face appeared stiff. He barely changed his expression throughout the meeting. His face seemed frozen. Rishad was unknowingly engaging in another form of self-protection common in important meetings: reducing the use of his facial muscles and keeping still. In psychology, we refer to it as restricted affect—a reduction in the extent to which outer emotional expressions match how we feel on the inside. This is different from apathy (a lack of emotion). It can be partnered with a monotonous tone. Rarely is it intentional. The restricted affect (or “face freeze”) can occur naturally as a self-preservation mechanism when we experience pressure.
Months later, Rishad asked for coaching because he was about to present at an industry conference. This was an important moment in his career. After discovering his goals and needs, I invited a friend of mine to join us. She is an Olivier Award–winning West End and Broadway musical theater star. We were grateful to have her input. We rented out a West End theater in London so Rishad could practice presenting in a large space to re-create the upcoming conference experience. When Rishad started speaking, my friend spotted his face freeze right away. She offered advice that he would have laughed at had it come from me. “Put your hands into fists,” said this enchanting, celebrated performer, “and roll your knuckles in circles around and around in your cheeks. It loosens your face and you become more conscious of your facial muscles, enabling you to feel the tension in them and make the choice to relax them.” The three of us stood in that empty theater, rolling our fists around our cheeks, and to Rishad’s and my surprise, we could feel the difference. Now, you obviously can’t do this while sitting in the front row of an auditorium waiting to be invited up, or in a meeting room waiting for a customer to join you! But you can do this in a bathroom stall before you go to your meeting or presentation. It enables you to be intentional with what I believe to be the most important part of body language—your facial expression. And with that you can choose to align your nonverbal communication with your verbal communication and minimize your intention-impact gap.
Positive Vibes
We can hide with our eyes as well. In a large auditorium, we naturally look to the front of the room. But hiding with our eyes happens in small meetings, too. Time and time again in meeting role-plays, I’ll see a speaker give substantially more attention to one or two people at the table than the others. Directing their eyes at a select few sends the message, “I value you more.” The ones who don’t get eye contact later reveal, to the speaker’s surprise, “I felt like you cared more about what he/she thought than what I thought.” It could be that the speaker is paying more attention to the decision-makers or key influencers in the room, whether consciously or subconsciously. While that might seem like a sensible decision (and you certainly don’t want to ignore those people), leaders often make judgments about someone not just based on how that person treats them personally, but on the level of respect he or she shows to their colleagues and the more junior members of the team, too.
Another reason we might look at some people and not others is positive validation. In a presentation, we look mainly at the people in the front row, not merely because they’re closer (and we can often see them more clearly than those in the back), but also because the people at the front are likely to be more positive or engaged than the ones who came in late or chose to sit way back. I’ve seen countless times that those audience members who are given more eye contact are those who are smiling or conveying positive affect in their facial expression. Naturally focusing on those who send positive vibes is not surprising. We seek positive affirmation—not just because we want to feel good about ourselves, but because we want to have authentic gravitas and make a positive, meaningful impact on the people around us. We want to add value. And when others give us positive affirmation—not just verbally but also nonverbally, with engaged body language and focused eye contact—we receive a signal that we are achieving our goal. And that feels good.
The problem is that we inadvertently make others feel bad or annoyed. Don’t they deserve our attention? Likely unaware of their negative or neutral nonverbal messages, we can make the experience less positive and impactful for them.
GRACE FOR THEIR GAP
We need to be gracious and remember that others have an intention-impact gap, too. We have to intentionally create alignment between the messages we want to send and the messages we actually send through our body language and facial expression. But often people don’t give thought to this. They may be positive and interested, but their face is simply not showing it. People talk about reading the body language of the audience, and yes—if you see a big yawn or people looking away, it is certainly time to shake things up if you’re the speaker! But if they just look serious, sometimes it might be worthwhile to ignore their silent signals. My husband is a pilot and recently took on a new role. The day before he went for an important line check (a flight assessment) he was warned by a colleague, “The instructor you have looks very serious, but actually he’s a really nice guy.” I was so thankful his colleague shared this. Had he not, under pressure my husband would have been more likely to interpret a serious disposition as concern regarding his performance, which in turn could have had a negative impact on his actual performance. Going in with a belief that the instructor was well-regarded by colleagues and friendly—regardless of his facial messages—my husband was better able to be his natural best self.
So don’t hide from people who don’t give you positive nonverbal affirmation. Choose to give everyone equal energy and attention. While our responsibility is to intentionally minimize our own intention-impact gap, we need to have grace for others—remembering that they have a gap, too.
The easiest way to do this in a large audience is to look at a back corner of the room and slowly use your eyes to follow an “S” pattern down through the crowd to the front row. After a minute, go back up to the opposite corner and wind down again, following an inverted “S.” In a small meeting, be mindful from the outset of your decision to give everyone eye contact. And whether sitting or standing, center yourself from the beginning so your eyes naturally fall to the middle of the room, making it easy to follow through on your intention of attending to all.
Out of the Shadows
Many people don’t like to be the center of attention, but hiding—whether it’s with our body language, eyes, or face freeze—is dangerous. There are two unintended consequences. The first is that people remember the messages of the slides and the content of the speech—but not the messenger. The second is that if they do notice behavior used as a defense mechanism, they may interpret it as you being uncertain about your message. They may then begin to question whether they should trust your message. With unintentional powerless language (verbal and nonverbal), we can undermine all the good work we’ve done in developing impactful messages.
SILENT GRAVITAS: THE MESSAGES WE SEND WITHOUT SAYING A WORD
People can hide in plain sight. In meetings, most notably, people hide in their chairs. Whenever Rose is in a meeting with senior colleagues or clients, she positions herself in the corner of her chair. She’s ever so slightly hunched over, her arms are tucked tightly in at her sides, and her hands are typically together on her lap. This is a habit she unintentionally developed over time. Without realizing it, she is trying to hide in plain sight. Although
it might feel bold and unnerving, you need to “come to the table.” Center yourself in your chair, pull it in close, and move your upper body inward toward the table. Choose to be present in your body language. Not everyone with gravitas is leaning in at the table. Some of the most powerful contributors in meetings will lean back, look away, or even walk around while they’re talking, certain they have others’ attention. If you’re comfortable with this, it’s appropriate for the context, and others remain focused on your contribution, these behaviors can be impactful. But that’s only while you’re talking. You may not be one of the most senior people at the table. Without much to contribute, it can be difficult to come across with gravitas. Can you add value without saying a lot? Yes. For starters, you can choose to “come to the table” and sit centered, facing your audience—courageously demonstrating participation rather than sending the silent message, “I shouldn’t be here.” If you make this choice rather than giving in to the common desire to hide, then without even saying much, you can have a more positive, lasting impact on those around you.
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