Lately I've been thinking a lot about body language and posture. I facilitate a Lean In Circle at my coworking space (The Wave here in Salt Lake - BEAUTIFUL location!) and we talked about posture for our first meeting this month. It's helping me revisit some important lessons from a hugely popular TED talk from several years ago.
Amy Cuddy is a business school professor who talks about presence (she literally wrote the book on it) and her TED talk on posture is my favorite starting point when I work with clients to improve confidence and help them build their executive presence. Her research has been covered by a lot of different news outlets, but I'll send you to this article from Bustle.
Cuddy discusses some power poses you can practice before going into high pressure situations, e.g. the Wonder Woman with hands on hips, the V (which I call the rock star) with arms in the air, the CEO with hands on the table staring down, and the president with feet casually on the table like s/he owns the whole room. I'm NOT saying you should do these in your next big meeting with your boss's boss, but I am suggesting you might practice them before going into work the day of that meeting (or, you know, in the bathroom stall ten minutes before the meeting starts). It's a great hack when you need to give yourself a pep talk.
Cuddy also talks about micro-behaviors and the impact they have on your body and mind, so in that vein, I'll point out something all her power poses have in common: your shoulders. If all you do is focus on that one part of your body, you're already one step ahead. It's easy to pull your shoulders back when you're sitting at a table being interviewed, or when you're standing at a podium delivering a speech. It's also massively simple, non-threatening, and impactful.
So if you don't have time to channel your inner Wonder Woman, just channel the 80s and 90s and think of shoulder pads. :)
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