People are going to decide if you are competent or not in less than a hundred milliseconds, and then it's over. So, I can trace my interest in this topic back to something that happened to me in the 1980s. Before I was an academic, I worked for a short time in public relations.
And, found myself one day in a meeting at 9 o' clock in the morning with a very powerful entertainment industry executive. And he had a little refrigerator at the edge of his desk. While we were meeting, he would open it up.
Bottle of vodka. Drnk vodka straight out of the bottle, and had a bag of raw onions. He was munching on those while this was going on.
And nobody said anything to him about it. We didn't react while it was happening. We didn't talk about it afterwards.
He didn't even offer to share anything with us. It seemed perfectly appropriate to him to behave that way in a meeting with us. Would never have occurred to us to do that in a meeting with him.
I want to talk with you about power, and I want to try to provide a new way of thinking about how to approach situations where you want to have impact. One of the things that I've observed in my work in this area is that, most people, when they are trying to prepare for a situation where they want to have influence, going to a meeting or change somebody's mind, is they tend to think a lot about what they're going to say. That situation.
So, I'm going to suggest that rather than thinking about what you're going to say in situations like this, you need to think about what your body is telling people. When people are forming an impression of you, what you say accounts for only 7% of what they come away with. [MUSIC] What I'd like to do today is to start first by telling you a little bit about the actual mechanics of the body language of power.
What are the cues that we send, and what do they mean? And then I'd like to talk with you about how you can think about using those different cues to address specific challenges in specific situations. There is actually a body language of power.
And we know it, but we know it so well that we don't know that we know it. It, it's something that we've been learning through our socialization since a very, very young age. So, we learn how to tune our bodies to specific situations and specific relationships.
When we need to show someone respect, or be deferential, we know how to use our body in a way that allows us to be effective in that role. And we learn how to take charge with our bodies, and how to make sure other people aren't taking advantage of us. Most of us are socialized, you know, over the course of our lives, based on other people's expectations of where they think we should be within, in a hierarchy.
And so we learn how to do certain aspects of this, sort of performance, very well. And other parts we know less well. And sometimes we find ourselves in situations where the things we do with our bodies that come most naturally don't fit the situation at all.
So, I wanna raise awareness of the ways in which we use our bodies, and the impact that it has on our ability to have power and influence. If you wanna be strategic about acting with power there are two objectives that you have to keep in mind. The first one is that you wanna be able to show up authoritative.
In charge, able to make the decisions, and able to privilege your knowledge and experience over the knowledge and experience of other people. The same time you need to be able to show approachable. Which is, open, empathetic, willing to take others knowledge and experiences into account and be able to relate to people on a human level.
So, let me see if I can start by giving you a framework for thinking about two main objectives for addressing the set of questions about how your body language can be used to change your impact. There are really two things I think you need to be able to do if you wanna have influence. The first is, you need to be able to show up authoritative.
Being authoritative means showing up and letting people know that you're in charge. And what it involves psychologically and from a body language perspective, is that you're going to be closing yourself off a little bit to other people, you're privileging your knowledge and experience. Over and above the knowledge and experience of other people, you're becoming more directive and more concerned with controlling other people's behavior than from taking direction from others.
The second objective, and it's equally important, is that you need to be able to show up approachable. Being approachable means that people feel that they can come to you with whatever is on their mind, and relate to you on a human level. Being approachable is just as important as knowing how to show authoritative.
It's really the basis of your likability. It's the basis of the extent to which other people want to be close to you, and it requires really, a totally opposite orientation from showing up authoritative, it really involves being more open to other people, being prepared psychologically to relate to them on a human level. And if you think about the challenge of showing up authoritative as increasing the psychological distance between yourself and other people, either by raising yourself a little or by lowering others a little.
Being approachable is really about shrinking the psychological distance between you and other people. It's about lowering yourself a little or raising other people up. So, in the framework that I'm introducing to you today, which I call acting with power, the body language associated with showing up authoritative is called playing high and the body language associated with showing up approachable is called playing low.
[MUSIC] The actions associated with playing high come from what we observe whenever we look at animals or human beings in the context of a social hierarchy. When you look at people with, or group members with high rank, what you'll see is a general body language that reflects a state of relaxation. And openness, because at the top of hierarchy you have nothing to worry about.
Everybody beneath you is gonna make sure that nothing bad ever happens. So, playing high, in a very general sense, will look like a very open, expansive, relaxed body. When walking, you assume others will move out of your path, taking up maximum space, and allowing your body and your gestures to flow into the space of other people.
Other actions associated with playing high include keeping your head perfectly still while talking. And speaking in complete sentences. So it's not important when you're playing high to have long sentences, in fact, they can be very short but they'll have a clear beginning and a clear end point.
You'll also see people, when playing high, holding eye contact a little longer than normal when addressing someone else. It's actually an interesting relationship. I think the idea that staring someone down is associated with playing high is something most people know, but actually it's a little more subtle than that.
So, when you're playing high, you stare someone down when you're addressing them. You don't let them out from under you gaze. They know you're serious.
But when they're addressing you, you're free to look around, you got other things on your mind, other people you need to talk to, right? So when you're being addressed by other people, you're free to look away. You don't check other people's eyes for any reaction to what you've said, and you have no visual reaction to what other people say either.
And you can interrupt before you know what you're gonna say. It's important to recognize that playing high is a source of dominance. Other people, in many situations, are simply more likely to defer just based on how you use your body.
It's also important to recognize that playing high can be really dangerous, one of the easiest ways to get in trouble in a group is to play higher than your actual rank. So, the most general advice I can give about when to play high is that you play high to reinforce your actual rank, or in a competitive situation when status is up for grabs. [MUSIC] Let's talk about what it looks like to play low.
When you observe natural hierarchies in groups what you'll see is that lower ranking members have a body language that is exactly the opposite of what playing high looks like. Low ranking members hold their bodies very close and tight, they try to make themselves as small as they can, minimize their footprint, and do, sort of prepare themselves to hide from other people or kind of fend off a blow, so you'll see a much more an attempt to shrink a little bit and and hide. So when someone's playing low, you'll see them leaning forward and sometimes point their toes inward, it's all different ways of making your footprint a little bit smaller.
You'll see people speak in incomplete sentences. And when someone's playing low, you get a lot of fleeting and jerking movements. Talking with your hands near your face, and instead of looking directly at someone, a lot more glancing around and looking away.
They'll talk to to you and just glance over to make sure that it's going okay, but there's no actual eye contact. When a high status person is addressing a lower status person that's when the low status person's eyes are riveted. So, one of the other really interesting differences between people who are higher ranking and lower ranking in groups, is that you see a lot more smiling from the low ranking members and it's not because things are better at the bottom.
Right? People in the lower ranks are smiling because it's their job to make sure that the people above them are never uncomfortable. So they're not genuine smiles.
You get this kind of a fake, apologetic smile. It's a badge of appeasement. A way of making sure that people above them are feeling okay.
Playing low is also really important. It's the basis of building rapport. For a low ranking person, it's really important that the people above you know that you understand their position and respect theirs.
Playing low for a high status person actually makes you more approachable. You can gain status as a high status person by playing low. So, you're most likely to be effective when playing low if you do it to reinforce your actual rank or when you wanna lift someone else up.
[MUSIC] So, the next important question is, how should you think about using this? And I can tell you that I use it in two different ways. To make myself more comfortable in situations where I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to show up the way I want to, and I also use my body language to help other people feel more comfortable in situations where I'm worried about that.
You can think about using your body language not to change the way you show up, every day in every situation. But, as a way of meeting specific kinds of challenges. When you walk into a situation and something unexpected happens, people aren't as receptive as you expected them to be.
You find that you're being attacked or you can't get someone who you thought was gonna be open to open up and tell you what you need to know. You can think about how to adjust your body language to try to shift the dynamic in the relationship. [MUSIC] So, when you look at men and women in leadership roles, what you find is that men and women don't actually behave differently in these roles, they're perceived entirely differently doing exactly the same things.
So, let me talk to you for a minute about women in power. And what that means is that, we're socialized to use the body language that's associated with having a lower rank. This is not necessarily a problem, it just means that many of us are better versed in that body language than we are in the body language of playing high.
And the socialization has implications for how women are viewed in different types of roles. Let me tell you about a study that was conducted by one of my colleagues at Stanford. He was teaching a case in his MBA class about an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley named Heidi Roizen.
And she was very successful, and he used the case to illustrate how effectively people can use social networks as a way of really building a business and building a reputation. When his students read this case, they were very negative about her, and he was kind of surprised by that. So, he thought that it might have something to do with her gender.
So, my colleague took the case about Heidi Roizen and he changed the name of the protagonist to Howard Roizen, and left all the other details the same. He gave half his students the case about Heidi. He gave the other half of his students the case about Howard.
Before they came into class they rated Heidi or Howard on a bunch of different dimensions. First they were asked how humble and genuine and likeable was this person. And Howard was the winner of that contest.
The second set of questions they were asked had to do with how self-interested and power hungry the protagonist was. And it might not surprise you to know that Heidi won that contest. The female actor was judged much more harshly for exactly the same behaviors as her male counterpart.
Heidi and Howard where judged as equally competent, but when asked who they preferred to work with and who they'd rather hire, the students preferred Howard. So, the reason I talk about this case in my executive education class is because I think it illustrates a problem that a lot of women face. We're being held to these dual expectations.
The expectation associated with our gender roles require us to behave in the ways that are associated with playing low. It's expected of us, and it's a way that we can navigate situations where people want us to make them feel good, because that's what's expected of women. We're also expected, in our organizational roles, to behave in ways that are authoritative, so we have to have those tools available to us, and we have to be able to give ourselves permission to use them, when the situation requires.
But I think one of the interesting possibilities for women to think about other ways of combining those two different ways of behaving that allow us to meet both sets of expectations. Not necessarily in the same moment, but over the course of our day, over the course of our careers. A couple of my colleagues at Harvard and Columbia did a study.
They looked at whether putting people into different body positions would affect their psychology and the way they responded to different types of situations. So they took the participants and physically posed them either in expansive postures with their arm across the back of a chair or their feet up on the desk or they pose them into more constrictive postures where their knees were touching or elbows were held close to the side and they had their hands like they were sitting with their hands between their knees. So, after two minutes in these postures, my colleagues measured a number of different things.
One the things they were interested in was in hormone levels. They looked at two hormones in particular. Measurements were taken before the participants were posed in the posture, to get a kind of a natural, or baseline, level.
And then measurements were taken after two minutes in the posture. They looked at testosterone levels. Testosterone's the hormone that's associated with aggression and dominance.
And they looked at cortisol levels. Cortisol is the hormone that's associated with stress and responses to threat, and its responsible for a lot of the stress related illnesses. After two minutes in the posture, participants who were posed expansively, had significant increases in their testosterone levels.
And participants who were posed submissively, or in a more constrictive way, had significant increases in their cortisol levels. And you can think about using your body language to intervene in your own state of mind. [MUSIC] >> I've had about six months in my new role and a key component of this job is to give presentations to fairly sizable groups of women.
When I walk into these rooms I know that I have to be very centered, take up a lot of space, use my voice and project it but stay very stable. And every time I do this it becomes more natural. >> So I'm trying to figure out how to find that balance between friendliness, which comes naturally to me, and this display of confidence which I feel like I have and I should show.
>> After taking Professor Greenfeld's class it really opened my eyes as to when I walk into a room I need to look around and assess and think, do I want to play high or do I want to play low? When I'm listening it's really important to me to seem approachable and open. And when I'm presenting I want to seem authoritative.
>> The majority of my communication with clients takes place over the telephone. Including the all important client pitch, and so although they can't see me I completely understand how important it is for me to convey this strong presence. So I'll do three things.
First is I, I make sure I'm standing up. I walk around the room. So, I'm not constricted in my movements.
I use my body language, my gestures and the third thing is that I make sure that I project my voice. >> Often, I'll talk to junior women about managing perceptions. Things as simple as how you're sitting in your chair.
Are you sitting with your head tilted to the side and making yourself small or are you occupying your space and making yourself square and big? What about your voice? Are you going off at the end of every sentence?
Or are you speaking in a calm controlled manner? Are you making eye contact? These things are all evolutionary cues that help humans determine one another's status and it's really important to be in control of how you're perceived.
>> I've been a professional for 25 years. It's taken the entire 25 years for me to learn that, to go from authoritative to being approachable, can still produce results, and I think I'm still learning. >> Being successful in an organizational role is not just about being able to play high, it's not just about being able to play low, it's about being able to recognize what situations require.
And to be able to adapt to the situations. What I"m talking about is making really subtle kinds of changes. This is not about a major overhaul of your behavior.
Sometimes it is just about backing off things that you use in a kind of impulsive or knee jerk way to make really slight adjustments that you'll find can have a huge impact in terms of how other people see you and in terms of how you behave and how you feel. It's important for women to recognize that there are dual challenges that we face. One is to meet the expectations associated with high level organizational roles and the other is to meet the expectations associated with our gender roles.
It's the balance between playing high and playing low that I think makes most manager effective. And this may be especially important for women. I just want to encourage you to give yourselves permission to try something new.
The next time you feel challenged, you go into a situation where it's important to you to be seen in a certain way where you want to have a particular type of impact. Think about how you're standing when you walk into the room. Think about how you sit down.
Think about what you're doing with your head and your eyes when you're speaking and how you look when you're listening and see what happens. [MUSIC] Everything we need is already there. Everything we need is already in us, it's just a question of giving yourself permission to find it and use it.
