With the beginning of fall comes a return to an agenda full of presentations and meetings. How can you make the connection between you and your audience stronger? It turns out that Mom was right: Posture matters. A lot.
Here is advice from noted public speaking consultant Nick Morgan:
“You can increase the connection with people by making eye contact and using facial gestures, most notably raised eyebrows, to ask for a response. You can also signal your intent with your posture. Remember that people are unconsciously sizing you up all the time: reading your intent and figuring out important things like whether you are friend or foe. They derive a huge part of that intent from your posture.
Once again, this is something that I’ve demonstrated many times to audiences in talks on communications. You can try it yourself. Begin by noticing how people stand from the side, as if you were cutting a two-dimensional slice from top to bottom. You’ll see that people stand in one of three ways primarily. There’s a fourth, but it’s rare, and a combination of two of the others. “
Read more about posture mistakes, how simple move to correct them can improve your impact, and the most powerful posture of all.
Nick Morgan’s latest book is Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.
