298. Quick Thinks: How to Look Confident, Composed, and Credible

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Your presence at times can speak louder than your words. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I'd like to walk you through best practices for helping you to make sure you convey confidence and authenticity in your communication. The goal here is not to make everyone communicate the same way, but rather to introduce you to fundamental best practices based on academic research that can inform what you do with your body and your voice.

[00:00:37] The very first thing people see about you is how you hold your body. Three rules to follow. You want to make sure that you are big, balanced, and still. What I mean by that is you want to pull your shoulder blades back so that you extend your chest. We're not pulling our elbows back. We're not puffing out our chest, but we pull our elbows down and shoulders down. Allow your hands to drop down by your side. This way, you look very big. Now, we want to make sure our head is straight as well. Many of us tilt our head or we lean when we communicate. We want to be still and balanced. To make sure we're still, we have to think about our feet. Many of us, when we stand, we stand with our feet facing out to a forty-five degree angle, like a penguin or a duck. This actually opens up our hips.

[00:01:31] If you've done any dance, yoga, or martial arts, you know that having your feet out like this makes it easy and flexible for you to move. The problem is, when you're standing up and speaking, we don't want to be swaying from side to side. It can be very distracting. For my Stanford MBA students, when they have to do a big assignment, we'll digitally record them and I make them watch the recording without sound on two X speed, and they see themselves swaying in the wind. How do we fix this? We take our feet and we make sure they're parallel underneath our shoulders. We put one foot slightly in front of the other and maybe even come up on our tiptoes and settle down. That pulls the weight forward.

[00:02:16] So with our shoulders pulled down, our arms by our side, our head straight, and our feet parallel with our weight forward, we are in the starting position for communication when you're standing. Any sport you have ever played has an initial starting stance. This is the starting stance for public speaking. If you're being introduced, if you're speaking with a team and you're standing while someone else is speaking, this is how you hold your body. Now, of course, you'll move around if you're standing. I recommend stepping in towards the beginning of a communication. So step towards your audience with a broad gesture. That makes you look very confident and welcoming. If somebody has a question or some feedback, step towards them in an open, neutral way, again, making you look confident.

[00:03:07] And when you transition from one idea to the next, physically move your body a few steps and land back into this ready position. Now, often when you communicate, you're not standing, you're seated. Same things apply. Pull your shoulder blades down. Make sure your head is straight. Keep your feet flat on the ground. A lot of us when we sit, we flex our legs a lot and bounce around. You can see that reflected in your shirt. And have your forearms on the table. We like to see people's hands. Speaking of hands, what do we do with these things? It's the number one question I get asked when I teach people nonverbal presence. I've already shared one place for them, and that's down by your side. It took me a long time, years, to be comfortable talking with my hands down by my side.

[00:03:53] For many of us, it's much more comfortable when we stand to put our hands right at our belly button. We wanna avoid being too low. This looks a little defensive, if you get what I mean. And we wanna avoid our hands being up too high. This makes us look like we're praying not to get hurt. So placing your hands right at your belly button, palm on palm, interlacing the fingers, or even lightly steepling are nice places to rest your hands. We want to avoid doing anything that's distracting or tentative with our hands. We don't want to just hold a finger. We don't wanna crack our knuckles. We want to avoid playing with rings, and we don't wanna do the heartbeat. Nice and neutral. So hands are either down by our side or right at our abdomen.

[00:04:38] When you gesture, I have just one rule, go beyond your shoulders. Many of us when we're nervous, we gesture in tight between our shoulders. How does it look if I say, "Here at our company we have a very open and embracing culture"? Really? Instead, I should say, "Here at our company we have an open and embracing culture." Just going a little bit beyond your shoulders makes you look open. I like to tell people, think of your chest as a basketball key. If you know the rules of basketball, you can be in the key for three seconds without getting a penalty. So I might say, "This is really important to all of you and me." And then I return to my neutral place. If I'm seated, I simply have my forearms on the table, and when I gesture, I gesture beyond my shoulders and my arms come back.

[00:05:27] The final thing we need to talk about is what do we do with our eye contact. We need to make sure that when we communicate, we look at the audience that we're speaking to. I am always asked, "How long should I look at somebody?" And I wish I had a good answer. Long enough, but not too long. Some people will say one idea per person. I struggle with that just because one idea might be longer for one person than another. I recommend spreading your eye contact around, but not in a patterned way. How would it look if I just kept looking across the audience like this? A little strange. So if you have a large enough audience, let's say eight or more, create quadrants of the area you're speaking in.

[00:06:12] Maybe I look in the back corner, then I'm here in the front, and then maybe over here. If it's a smaller group, certainly try to look at each person. Many of us, when we're trying to think about what comes next, we will often look up, because looking at people's faces is one of the most drawn things that we do. We're so motivated to learn about what's on people's faces. It's really hard to think and take in all that information, so it's very tempting to look up and away. Unfortunately, when I look up and away, people see me as being distant, maybe nervous, not wanting to be there. It is better to look down than look up. When I look down, I look thoughtful and pensive.

[00:06:57] When I look up, I look confused. So train yourself, if you have to take a moment, to look down, and then start again. A great way to do this is to move. Often, when we need to think about what we want to say next is during points of transition in our content. And as I mentioned earlier, a great thing to do when you're transitioning ideas is to move laterally side to side. So as I move, I might look down and walk. It's very normal to look down as you walk, so it looks completely natural. So taken together, when we work on our presence, just our physicality, what we do with our body, we can actually have a big impact on how people perceive us. Again, we want to be big, balanced, and still.

[00:07:44] Pull the shoulder blades down, have the arms to the side. Head is straight, and our feet are parallel. When we gesture, we gesture beyond our shoulders, and we come to a neutral resting place, either right in front of our abdomen or down by our side. And when we make eye contact, we look around in a non-patterned way. Taken together, these skills will help you look confident and be composed while you're communicating. The single best tool to help you with this is to digitally record yourself practicing. And when you watch, turn the volume down so you can see how you actually look and how others will perceive you. In so doing, you will begin to improve your presence.

[00:08:30] Thank you for joining us for this Quick Thinks episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about presence, please listen to episode 12 with Deb Gruenfeld and episode 137 with Dana Carney. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive learning videos, education in English learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our Premium offering for extended Deep Thinks, AMAs, and much more at fastersmarter.io/premium. You'll also find value by joining our Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community at fastersmarter.io/learning. You'll find video lessons, learning quests, discussion boards, and my AI coach, along with book club opportunities. Again, that's fastersmarter.io/learning to become part of our Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community.