How to prime your nervous system before you speak

Body language, posture and voice are crucial. But what you need to do to get them right doesn’t happen during the performance – it happens before you start.

It’s no secret how much body language matters for public speaking and executive presence. The real secret is this: leaders who want to build executive presence, and the people who coach them, have been working on the wrong problem.

Stay tuned for a story about how fixing the right problem helped one CEO land a $6.3 billion deal.

But first I’ll explain the new science of performance in leadership communication: “mindbody priming”. What your audience sees and hears through your body language and voice is an expression of the underlying state of your nervous system. Regulate that, and your body language will take care of itself.

Almost everything you can do to project authority in physical presence already happened before you walked through the door.

When people stand up to speak and the stakes are high, they want to appear confident, calm and authoritative. They want their presence to project “leader energy” – and so they focus on what they do with their bodies in the moment – gesture, movement, eye contact and so on.

Here’s how traditional coaching for public speaking works. The client delivers a presentation, recorded on video. The coach gives tips on voice, posture and stance. Performance and feedback – rinse and repeat. By round three, the client is always looking more confident, energised and dynamic.

It looks and feels like the coaching worked, but it didn’t. It’s almost a scam. The main reason they improved is this: delivering the same presentation three times, with friendly encouragement, has regulated their nervous system, relaxed their bodies, and got them into flow. The coach could have said “that’s great – but next time wiggle your toes more” and the client still would have been feeling and performing great by round three.

This matters because training and coaching that directly targets body language doesn’t get lasting results that translate into real-world performance. The fuzzy feeling at the end of a day of body-language coaching won’t be available next time the client steps onto a stage or into a boardroom – with their nervous system starting from cold.

After 20 years of coaching on leadership communication, I spend very little time giving specific advice on body language. I focus on mindbody preparation, and presence.

Focusing a lot on your body language during the performance is often counterproductive. It makes some people self-conscious. It uses up scarce attention that should be on content and persuasion and engagement. It makes it harder to get into a flow state. Worst of all, since you’re not Meryl Streep or Robert De Niro, deliberately trying to act or move in a particular way will often look fake. We’ve all cringed at over-trained speakers with lego-man hand gestures, cabin-crew smiles or creepy fixed eye contact.

Authenticity is everything – and your body already knows how to perform with genuine energy and flow. You do it without thinking when you have an animated conversation with friends and family, when you tell a joke, when you play with children.

Body and voice do merit attention for public speaking because this particular situation puts your neurophysiology in a state of alert. It’s natural, because the stakes are high. Most people don’t enjoy being under the spotlight and so are at least a little worried, anxious, or even anxious about looking anxious.

In this perfectly normal mild state of alert, your body doesn’t have access to the relaxed-but-energised presence that we want to project. Adrenalin and cortisol cause stiff posture, shallow breathing, quiet tense voice, low energy, small gestures and emotional reactivity. Traditional body-language coaching treats only these symptoms. Priming treats the root cause.

Picture this (true story from a client project): a CEO and his team are about to pitch a US$6.3 billion project to a panel of government ministers. They’ve done all the technical preparation and rehearsal perfectly. They’ve been polishing the slide deck for weeks. They’ve rehearsed delivery and Q&A for coaching on performance. We’ve improved the information architecture and narrative for clarity and persuasion.

How should the CEO spend the last 15 minutes before the presentation?

In his younger days, he would have rehearsed one last time and then sat alone at his desk, flipping through the slides, reviewing the speaking notes or script, and memorising the Q&A documents. This time, he does something different.

He primes his body by taking a brisk walk around the building and up two flights of stairs, which helps his cardiovascular system clear the stress hormones. He does three minutes of stretching exercises to relax the front of his body for open and upright posture. He does three minutes of cranial and facial muscle pressure-point drills to prime his expression and open his jaw for voice projection. He puts in his AirPods and follows a three-minute guided breathing meditation, which clears his buzzing mind while also priming his diaphragm, thoracic and abdominal muscles for posture and vocal projection. He sits for 60 seconds in clear-minded meditation.

His autonomic nervous system is regulated. His muscles are loose. His body is ready to perform, relaxed and energised and in flow, without any intentional awareness of body language or voice.

He doesn’t like formal voice drills, so before the clients arrive, he warms up his vocal chords by talking. He tells a joke and chats about football. His professional but relaxed energy is infectious, and sets the tone for them also to perform their best.

During the pitch, nobody even thinks about performance or body language. They’re in flow, and the authenticity shows. They score the deal.

Mindbody work is a true art and science of leadership embodiment.