Over the years I have built a ‘bank’ of physical tips which can help you influence others to get your message across. Here I am bringing them together in summary, and these tips will generally apply to any situation whether when networking, in a 121, in a meeting with peers internally or indeed in an external or Board meeting, - with some exceptions.
Gravitas is a really challenging one. As with many things, we often assume you either have it or you don’t. However, we humans can train ourselves to learn almost anything, with the right attitude, and support, and it’s being able to envision success and then practicing again and again that will get you there. My top tips in terms of developing gravitas: don’t talk too much; listen hard; make eye contact when you do speak, with everyone in the room; avoid allowing your voice to rise too much in pitch, and keep your speech relatively slow and steady, avoiding ‘ums’ and other distractors like ‘kind ofs’ and ‘sort ofs’; use eye contact to facilitate joining a conversation when networking; avoid using ‘buts’ when responding to a point made by another; dial your assertiveness down one notch, per Chris Heimann the acting coach I refer to in my strategic insights podcast series, when responding to someone, to keep it just under their level of assertiveness; state your USP, your unique selling point, i.e. what makes you unique, and what you really believe in, when the opportunity arises; pause your gestures (i.e. don’t make too many – think ‘statesman-like’); and use silence when you can.
If you are chair of a meeting, or feel a need to be able to ‘control’ the room or at least be aware of everything going on in it, don’t position yourself the classic way, i.e. in the middle of the U-shape. From there it’s like watching a tennis match as your head goes from side to side while others take turns in speaking. You’ll also probably miss picking up when a quieter person would like to speak. Instead, position yourself at one end of an arm of the U. From there you can see all that’s going on. I remember being told this by a coach at one point in my Unilever career, and I thought about it and realised that a consultant we were using always took that position of control in our steering group meetings. Next meeting I got there early and took the recommended position. When the consultant arrived it was fascinating watching them – they were totally thrown, pacing up and down a few times, then trying to see if they could squeeze in above me, right at the end of one of the arms of the U, which they couldn’t. I had a naughty little giggle to myself. He of course had learnt the same as me, most likely from his consulting firm.
Once in position, wherever you are in the room, the way you sit is really important, and you ideally should get both feet on the floor and sit straight without slouching – though there are exceptions. It can be a challenge for women and smaller people, so you might have to sit near the edge of the chair. If you’re presenting, again, standing straight and grounding yourself gives a better impression – clench your leg and buttock muscles and avoid leaning on alternate legs. If you want to move around the room, that’s great – referencing the screen from the back of the room, looking at it with your audience, can work very well. But don’t speak while walking. Walk to your next position and stop, before resuming what you’re saying. This uses silence and creates anticipation if you time it right, gives a sense of gravitas, and avoids words being lost along the way.
If we’re going into a 121 meeting which we think will be challenging, there’s a particular technique called Baseball, which is something I learnt from my coach Janet Jones. Janet has used the technique to identify why her 4-year-old nephew would never flush the toilet, but it works very well, for instance, when holding a difficult performance review or speaking to a subordinate about an issue of performance. I talk about it in more detail in my podcast on challenging conversations (https://www.treasurers.org/strategic-insights-podcasts) but the main premise is around listening and repeating what you’ve heard. So, before you start to say what you think, you ask the other party what they think, or why they chose to do or not do something you felt they should have. When or as they tell you their view of the world, you repeat back to them pretty much verbatim what they said to you. This technique has the effect of both the other person feeling really listened to, and you actually really taking in what they have to say. It’s a technique which really grounds you in the present.
You can of course apply it in any situation – repeating exactly what someone else has said, acknowledging in this way, demonstrates you are a listener, and you show respect. Funnily enough, the other person doesn’t seem to notice that you repeated things verbatim, they just feel listened to.
When I was at Unilever in Rotterdam I was lucky enough to be one of the first six women to be put through a senior women’s leadership programme trial, run by a coach and trainer called Jessie Gordon, who still works out of Amsterdam. A lot of the focus of the programme was on presentation skills and how we ‘present’ – by that I mean how we come across to others. Jessie got us to practice using our voices in different ways (I remember reading a speech out in the style of Adolph Hitler at one point), of thinking of our mood and communication style in terms of colours (all 6 of us will still comment to each other when we message whether it’s in a red, blue or yellow tone), and what I think happened was that Jessie stretched us outside of our comfort zones, and by giving each other honest and caring feedback, we knew that things were not always the way we perceive them about ourselves. As Herminia Ibarra points out, identity, who you are, is not just about the past, but also about the possibilities you envision for yourself in the future – and Jessie taught us all to see possibilities in our modes of communication and presentation that we had never been able to see before. Pretty uncomfortable, but, what am I going to say, yet again? It’s just about practice, and pushing aside the fear that we all have, that we might find out that we’re not good enough.
All six of us on the course had a promotion of some form within the following year, and have successively been promoted in our careers since.
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Author: Caroline Stockmann, former Chief Executive, ACT. Article adapted from the strategic insights podcast