How to Communicate Power When You Walk into the Room

How to Communicate Power When You Walk into the RoomHow to Communicate Power When You Walk into the RoomHow to Communicate Power When You Walk into the Room Morgan, author of Power Cues The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact (2014, Harvard Business Review Press)You can win over or lose your colleagues in the first thirty seconds of meeting them with your body language and specifically your posture. Really.How do you accomplish this feat or avoid this disaster?Communicate Power through PostureYouve seen people who bound into the room with lots of energy and no doubt seen people who do the opposite creep into the room with low energy and lots weighing them down. Which did you look forward to more?So its important to smile, move quickly (but bedrngnis so quickly as to fall or injure yourself), and look as eager as you can. But theres more to it than that. The real secret lies in your power cues posture.There are three ways to stand (and a fourth thats a combination of one and two), and only one of them is effective.Think of how you look from the side, as if a straight line were being drawn through your head down to your toes. If youve got good posture, the one your mother used to tell you to have, then the balls of your feet, your pelvis, and your shoulders and head all will line up on that vertical slice.Some people, however, project their heads forward. Most people who spend a lot of time at the computer do this the computer work rounds their shoulders and pushes their heads forward.I call this the head posture, sensibly enough. It signals subservience, humility, and deference to the people around you. Great for the Dalai Lama, but not so good for the rest of us who dont need (or want) to be as professionally humble.Others project their pelvis forward. (Imagine yourself playing air guitar without the air guitar.) This posture, which is highly sexualized, is typical of teenagers and pop stars. Again, not so good for grownup businesspeople.The third possible posture is the straight-up, lead-with the-heart posture. Imagine a soldier, seen from the side, but relaxed across the shoulders rather than rigid. Thats the heart posture, and it radiates trust, authority, and confidence all the attributes you as a businessperson want to project.(The fourth is a combination of head and pelvis, a kind of question mark. Most typical, again, of teenagers, who are both self-conscious and sexualized. Or intellectual rockers. Not good for businesspeople.)So bound into the room and look happy. But more importantly, watch your posture. It will signal to your colleagues who you are, whether you intend it to or not.During the Meeting Occupy the Right SpaceOnce youve set the right tone with your posture, its time to think about your body language in relation to the others. Lets talk about zones. Not getting in the zone. No, I mean the distances between people.We each have four zones of space that we maintain between us. The first zone is the public zone, and its twelve feet or more. We tend not to take personally the stuff that happens in that zone thus its not very interesting to us. Between twelve feet and four feet is the social zone.From four feet to one-and-a-half feet is personal space. Heres where it gets interesting.As soon as youre in my personal space, Im paying close attention. You might be dangerous, so Ill keep a close eye on you.From one-and-a-half feet to zero feet is intimate space. In this zone, were both committed. For business meetings any public occasion, really dont go here. Both parties will feel very uncomfortable. Its why Americans and English travelers feel so awkward in Asia and some parts of the Mediterranean.Back to meetings. So you need to get in their personal space if youre really going to grab them (intellectually). Not their intimate space, their personal space.Use the four zones, but especially the personal one, for persuading your colleagues.During the Meeting Make Effective Eye ContactWhy would you imagine you could get away with not looking at your colleagues? Thats just common sense.Theres research that suggests that we tend to trust people who look at us and distrust people who dont because we think theyre lying. And were right. It is a sign of lying, though a not very reliable one.But is there anything more to it than that? There are some important subtleties.The first sophisticated rule of eye contact then is that if youre going to make eye contact, you have to do it with your eyes wide open.The second sophisticated rule of eye contact is that you actually have to make eye contact. With individuals. For up to thirty seconds. You cant look over the heads of the group, and you cant dart your eyes around nervously like a lizards tongue.The third sophisticated rule of eye contact is that you should be monitoring the extent to which your colleagues are making eye contact with you. Its a simple way to gauge their interest in w hat youre saying. If 80 percent of them are focused on you, youre OK.If 80 percent (or even 40 percent) are focused elsewhere, youre in trouble.Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from Power Cues The Subtle Science of Persuading Others, and Maximizing your Personal Impact. Copyright 2014. Nicholas H. Morgan. All Rights Reserved.Author BioNick Morgan, founder of Public Words Inc., is one of Americas top communication and speech coaches. He is a former Fellow at Harvards Kennedy School of Government, where he was affiliated with the schools Center for Public Leadership. From 1998 to 2003, he served as editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter. He is the author of the acclaimed book, Working the Room, reprinted in paperback as Give Your Speech, Change the World.