ISOC resources
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 confi...
When entrepreneurs and leaders polish their communication skills in public speaking and media training, they focus on two success factors: preparation and performance. Rightly so. There’s no substitute for mastering the foundations of structure, messaging, framing, storytelling, body language, energy, voice and interaction.
But there’s a powerful moment that can fall through the gap between preparation and performance. I’m talking about the art of arriving: how to make the most of those precious seconds just before you open your mouth to begin.
We remember it from schooldays: that one teacher who could silence a riot, without words, just by standing in front of the class.
We notice it still at work: that colleague whose weight of presence is enough to hush the chatter and start the meeting.
It’s a kind of magic, when you think about it. It looks like charisma. It feels like confidence. It’s a form of influence – but it happens in a moment, and without a word.
What’s really going o...
Exceptional leaders have “own-the-room” qualities we call “executive presence”. These traits are prized because they inspire trust, confer power and get things done. One reason this flavour of authority is rare is that the psychology and physiology of this generation of high performers is under the influence of prescription medication.
Think of the people around you at work – reports, colleagues, superiors, leadership. Next to their toothbrush, I’ll bet almost everyone has at least one pill bottle (and maybe a dozen). Statins for cholesterol, sleeping pills for after a stressful day, Ozempic for weight loss, beta-blockers for anxiety, SSRIs for depression, stimulants for ADHD.
The executive generation is medicated. Half of UK adults in their 40s and 50s take at least one regular prescription medication. Drugs are prescribed for good reasons, but many fix one problem at the expense of another. Executive presence side-effects are not listed on the label – they should include: “may caus...
It’s no secret how much body language matters for public speaking and leadership. The real secret is this: leaders who want executive presence (and the people who coach them) have been working on the wrong problem. Here’s how fixing the right problem helped one CEO land a $6.3 billion deal.
When professionals stand up to speak and the stakes are high, they want to appear confident and authoritative. They want to project “leader energy” and so they focus on what they do with their bodies in the moment – gesture, movement, eye contact, posture vocal projection and so on.
But teaching your body to stand or move or speak in certain ways won’t help you come across as a leader. You can’t convincingly perform leadership traits like confidence or authenticity – you have to embody them. What your audience sees and hears is an expression of the underlying state of your nervous system. Regulate that, and your body language will take care of itself. Don’t treat the symptom – treat the deeper cau...
Most people are well aware of the importance of body language in public speaking and media interviews, but in practice it is challenging and often counter-productive to try actively to hold ourselves in a way that our bodies don’t find natural. Experienced actors know how to use their bodies to send signals of confidence and presence, but most of us don’t have a lifetime of experience managing the subtleties of posture and gesture. Making a conscious effort to hold ourselves in a particular way consumes precious attention, can make us feel self-conscious, and at worst can end up looking affected and inauthentic.
In public speaking and media training at ISOC we go about things a different way: we use the concept of physical priming. Forget about power poses and rehearsed gestures. Almost everything that you can do in practice to improve your physical presence happens in advance. Just before you need to perform, follow a ritual of movement to warm up and prime your body, and then when t...
When you’re preparing to speak in public, whether for a speech, presentation or media interview, it can be very useful to run through some of the same vocal warm-up drills that singers and stage actors use to maximise vocal projection. If you prime your voice in this way, you will sound better without even having to think about it.
Jaw and cheek muscle release
- Find your Masseter (upper jaw) muscles, which hang from the back of your cheekbones in a notch about one inch in front of each ear.
- Find a point where firm pressure feels good. Push in and up with a finger or thumb.
- Press steadily for three slow breaths. Repeat three times.
- Open your mouth wide as if in shock or surprise. Hold for 10. Repeat three times.
(Based on therapeutic techniques for facial muscles and joints).
Lip buzz / "kazoo"
Inhale deeply, then exhale with your lips together but relaxed, so that they flap and buzz. (You can’t make the noise if your face is tense!)
- “Whisper” the buzz without engaging yo ...
In Zen Buddhism there’s a useful word meaning “neither yes nor no”. When an acolyte asked a foolish question, the Master could reply “mu”, meaning “I say ‘yes’ but I mean ‘no’ and the actual answer is: unask the question.”
If only we could say “mu” in modern life! Sadly, it only works on Buddhist monks, and not on children asking if Santa Claus is real. Happily, there exists a large toolbox of practical techniques for answering difficult questions when they come your way. We teach them in in media training and also in public speaking training, for Q&A sessions. These strategies are versatile enough for you to use with bosses, clients, investors, customers – or anyone else in that category of people whose questions you might prefer not to answer directly.
Best practice has changed fundamentally from the bad old days of spin doctoring. Not long ago, it was common for politicians, spokespeople and executives to use clumsy “blocking and bridging” techniques when hit with an unwanted ques...
Imagine you need to get your head around a difficult new topic – quantum theory, for example, or genetic engineering. Would you be better off talking to a Nobel Prize-winning genius, or a young scientist working in their lab? You might get lucky, if the wise professor is also a great communicator, but surprisingly often you’d learn more from the lowly assistant.
The reason is a cognitive bias that psychologists call the Curse of Knowledge. It’s a software glitch that causes our brains to overestimate how much other people understand. When we master an idea, we delete the memory of how it felt not to understand it. We have a blind spot when it comes to empathising with people who don’t know what we know. The Curse of Knowledge causes experts to speak over the heads of non-experts: the wiser they get, the less effective they become at explaining themselves.
Understanding and compensating for the Curse of Knowledge is a powerful way for all of us to become better communicators in all ki...
