Chest out like a boxer
They say that body language is more important than words.
Note that when a herd or tribe leader confronted another leader, they presented their bodies, tried to appear taller and stronger. They looked at each other. Today we have boxing rings – before the fight takes place, there is a staring contest. Competitors look hard at each other to prove which one is more important. Such duels are also present in courtrooms, in politics, during important negotiations. We need to prepare the body so that it serves us and not interferes. And we women have a lot of work to do in this field.
Why women in particular?
Because when it comes to confrontation, women most often look down. This is our habit of modesty, this is our upbringing. And we lose. Because whoever looks down first is considered to be weaker. We are not prepared to confront and prove our strength. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Often, successful women, tough, determined, have trained themselves these skills. Therefore, I advise you – exercise the power of gaze.
A bold look may be useful not only in negotiations.
It is useful every day. It makes a girl or a woman perceived as resolute and self-confident, not passive. It is easier for her to convince others and achieve her goal. We can also quickly and effectively show our disapproval with our look. Imagine someone in the company, often a man, telling an unrefined joke. You squint your eyes, furrow your eyebrows, or raise them. One moment is enough for everyone to understand that you do not approve of such jokes. This is a signal emitted by the body much faster than any verbal communication.
Only our gaze is weaker?
Not only. Compared to men, we are usually shorter and smaller. Men – wider in the shoulders, taller – simply have a spatial advantage. Rarely will women withstand it. What do you think we do?
Do we cower?
Yes. And for a man, this is information: she is afraid, she is probably unprepared, she is weaker, worse. That is why we should work on straightening up, consciously organising the space around us. A strong woman is upright. I’m not a big believer in confrontation, it’s better to try to get along, but we should work on the body language to help ourselves. There are situations, often business ones, where confrontation is necessary and sometimes even heals relationships.
But after all, many of us were brought up to be sympathetic and with our eyes lowered.
Women often maintain some childhood behaviour. For example, those with large breasts that started to mature early on had trouble accepting themselves. They looked different than their peers, they did not want to stand out, so they slumped, huddled, hid their breasts. The habit often remains and is unconscious in adulthood. Seven out of ten of my clients have this posture. Here is an appeal to parents! Tell your girls to walk straight, be proud, that everything is all right and there’s no reason to be ashamed. In general, building a strong woman begins at home in early childhood and then into adolescence.
Can I help my daughter understand the body better?
You can and should work on making her feel confident. Then this confidence will be visible in her upright posture, raised head, and self-assured look. Let her sing, take part in competitions, let her be successful. And even if there is no success, it is your role to turn failure into achievement. When your daughter is worried that she has made a mistake in a poem, she should hear: “You were fantastic, the bravest in our family. Your dad and I are very proud of you”. Let the girl never hear: “You can’t do it”, “you failed again”. When all she hears is: “You are brave”, “you are courageous”, “it’s worth a try”, it will resound for a lifetime. It will give her confidence and self-satisfaction that will radiate onto her relationships with peers, inter-gender relations, study and work.
Ten minutes is enough for me to identify in a group of ten adult women those who have heard from childhood: “you are great”. And those whose wings were clipped.
Are we aware of how important the body is?
I have the impression that many people still underestimate body language, although training courses are organised and more and more is being said about it. Fortunately, because this is the most universal communication that has been with us since the dawn of time. First there was the posture, then the voice, the word. That is why success depends not only on what we say, but also what our body says – during a presentation, a job interview, or meetings with friends. Gesture language, facial expressions, voice timbre – it all affects how we are perceived. Ancient rhetoric created a whole catalogue of signs that help us successfully attract attention and perform effectively in front of the audience.
Haven’t these signs gotten old?
No, not at all. Keep an open posture, address people, make eye contact. This is all topical and very important.
It’s easy for you to say that. But how do you put it into practice?
We need to be aware of how our body works – what gestures we make, how we stand or sit, with what gestures we support what we say. It is also important whether the body harmonises with the content of our words. It is very important because then we are credible.
It’s really worth taking the time to see ourselves from the side, how we behave and how our body behaves. We may discover reactions that we wouldn’t expect from ourselves.
Like what, for example?
Many of us don’t know that we can’t keep eye contact. Often, my clients only notice on the recording that they are looking stubbornly at the ceiling or the floor instead of at those they are talking to. Or that they make nervous movements – manipulating an object in their hand, e.g. a pen. Or they shake their heads nervously. Sometimes they hunch and cower. Sometimes they fidget. Or when seated, everything looks fine at first glance. Only that one leg is swinging somehow nervously.
Let it swing. Let the speaker look at the ceiling. What’s wrong about it?
Nothing. But they have to take into account the fact that they will not do well during the presentation, that they will not attract attention, their speech will not be interesting, they will not convince anyone. With nervous movements, they can even distract attention or misdirect it. First of all, this behaviour says: I am unsure of what I am saying and doing. The way we behave may determine whether we get someone else’s support, sell a product, or get a job. Sometimes someone is a great specialist, sells an excellent product, and yet the customer chooses a worse product, the employer decides to hire a less competent employee. And behind these choices is not only the quality or substantive competence, but the way in which they were presented.
Once I know what mistakes I make, what will you advise me?
Self-observation provides valuable tips on what to work on. The second step should be working on yourself. Each of us has a mirror at home. You have to stand in front of it and watch yourself in action. And then try to correct yourself or ask a specialist for help. There is nothing strange or abnormal about us making mistakes. I can count on my fingers the number of people whom I have met in over twenty years of my professional career who were absolutely ready to speak in public. Such people take to public presentations like a duck to water because they have natural abilities and certain personality traits. They are born speakers. However, others can learn certain rules and tame public appearances that are stressful for most of us. Already the ancients knew it. Two thousand years ago, Cicero said: “You are born a poet, you become a speaker”.
So uneducable people do not exist, do they?
I have met many times people who said that public speaking was not for them. After a while, they turned out great because they worked hard for this success. I never promise to make Marek Kondrat or Danuta Stenka out of everyone, but thanks to work you can achieve a lot. People often unexpectedly face the challenge of representing the company, team, speaking on behalf of the president or management board of the company. Sometimes you need to be interviewed. For one person it takes several weeks to prepare, because they are gifted and determined. They get some tips, learn a few rules, and you can see progress very quickly. And sometimes working with your own body, voice, way of communication, and language takes years. However, it is worth the effort. We take communication skills with us to every job we undertake, not to mention increasing social attractiveness.
Theory is one thing, but when stress comes, you lose your tongue. Not to mention getting hold of your feet and not slouching.
It often happens that my client says: I know exactly what I want to say and how. And when I ask them to do it, they start to stutter, lack words, lack fluency. During this workshop conversation, we comfortably sit over coffee and have “no stress” at all, and even so, the situation triggers a certain tension in the speaker related to my assessment and, more importantly, listening to themselves.
It also happens that someone is well prepared in terms of content, knows their professional field very well, but is not ready to speak to the audience. They begin to make nervous gestures, have no control over their voice, forget synonyms, lose their sense of humour, and sometimes lose their train of thought. Unfortunately, there are times when stress wins. First, it attacks the body, we feel discomfort, our voice trembles, and our intellectual performance decreases. There are different ways to deal with stage fright. Systemically, the risks associated with public speaking must be eliminated.
Where should we start?
It helps to be convinced that we are well prepared. We also tame our speech if we know exactly what we are going to say and to whom. However, it is worth remembering that even if we memorised the text, our memory may fail in times of stress. A crib sheet will be useful, and the pattern of the speech, called a structure, in the head.
You must practice beforehand. Your own room may serve as a rehearsal space, a speech in front of your loved ones. The awareness that I know the material, that I have two flash drives just in case, should the first one fail, boosts confidence. Sometimes during a rehearsal, it is worth dressing up in the outfit in which we will perform. I have already had situations when a client suddenly decided to move a button on a jacket or another one said that the shoes absolutely did not match the shade of the rest of her outfit and ended up buying a new pair of high heels. That is why I especially encourage women to try out the outfit, because it may turn out that the clothes are uncomfortable, we don’t feel well in a skirt that is too short or too tight. After all, during the speech you need to breathe, and for this you need the diaphragm.
I also heartily recommend one more method of mine. Before an important presentation, focus on successes, not failures. Instead of tormenting yourself with a memory: “I got stuck at this presentation in Białystok, and it was terrible”, it’s better to recall memories like: “In Paris, I spoke perfectly”. The memory of success improves your well-being.
And you know what’s the coolest? That we might like speeches. As stressful as they are, they become addictive over time. Often, from the dramatic first meetings, when a person stuttered, sweated and did not know what to do with their hands, we come to speeches during which a calm speaker progresses the tension, and the body and voice help them, and not disturb them. I have worked with an outstanding doctor who has presentations all over the world. If he were to write a lecture, it would be perfect. But when he spoke, he stuttered, used redundant sounds, forgot what he was saying. I am glad that this doctor, lawyer, economist and president are making great progress.
Is body language often depriving someone of an important opportunity?
We very often pass judgements on the basis of a single signal. After all, body language is a language, a set of signals bound by some rules. We should not focus on one signal, but we often do. And it turns out that someone stressed out does not look us in the eye, so we consider that someone untrustworthy. Or they are sitting cross-legged, so we estimate that they will certainly not be able to cooperate, although they are great specialists.
This is where the age-old question arises – what is more important, the content or the packaging.
The packaging, i.e. how we present ourselves, and the content, i.e. competence, experience, knowledge. We are champions when it comes to packaging in socialising. The same principle applies to business. It is worth preparing the packaging adequately to the circumstances. If I run into a board meeting wearing a beach dress, I might feel worse than if I was dressed appropriately. Appropriateness adds confidence. In certain business circumstances, even a watch strap, belt and shoes should go together, and the heel height of a woman’s shoe must be strictly defined. Of course, the content is crucial, but it needs to be well packaged to be appreciated. And then we have a sense of having an impact on reality. Isn’t that what communication is all about?
The pandemic is not helping.
The effects of the isolation will be visible in the coming years. We will have more and more fears in social contacts and problems in interpersonal relationships. When we are together, we learn about each other, we tame each other. And now we are fenced off by a glass pane. We get used to life online, we start to like it over time because it seems comfortable. But we receive fewer signals, we do not hear nuances in our voices. Body language is poorer, we build sentences differently. They are getting shorter and shorter, limited to the transmission of information. We do not talk. At an online meeting, you do not see, for example, that your colleague, irritated, is moving his leg, because that leg is under the table, and you only see his face and the act on that face.
Or a black rectangle.
The world is becoming less and less real, which is artificial and harmful. There is no specific energy generated, as when the body resonates with the other body, we can touch each other, feel the warmth of someone’s hand. It comes to a situation where everyone is an independent atom. We atomise our interpersonal relationships. Isolation deepens. Sometimes a hug is enough when someone is sad. Try to give one online! We lack touch, we lose the freedom of observation. We will have a lot of work to do. I hope we will be able to catch up.