When delivering a presentation, you don’t want to move too little or too much. Standing frozen in one spot or shifting from one foot to another when you're addressing a crowd looks tentative and unpolished. It’s much better to use the stage like an actor and fill the space. Start by standing tall, with your weight distributed equally across both feet. Don’t shift or rock back and forth and don’t favor one foot over the other. Then, move forward deliberately, as though you’re going somewhere. Take a few steps to the right, stop, and deliver a point. Then do the same, to the left. Move closer to the audience when you are making a particularly important point. Then, to get back to where you started, don’t back up or turn your back to the audience; instead, walk from side to side on a barely perceptible angle backward. If you do this, you’ll look “bigger,” more commanding, and even more trustworthy.
Prepare for Impact
Delivering an effective message requires preparation - even when you're a big Hollywood star. Evidence of this was rampant at the Oscars Sunday night as usual, with plenty of breathless and inane "off-the-cuff" speeches. But a few of the winners got it right. Best Supporting Actress winner Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave) nailed it with a simple statement. And Best Supporting Actor winner Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) did well too, according to Jeff Nussbaum, a partner in DC's West Wing Writers speech writing firm. Check out his take on the talk at the awards at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/wp/2014/03/03/jared-letos-oscar-speech-drive-by-politics/?tid=pm_lifestyle_popWalking Tall
The power suit might help you look the part, but research by Amy Cuddy of The Harvard Business School suggests that the power pose will help you feel that way.
Cuddy says we've always known that mood influences body language. For example, if you're nervous, you may tend to cross your arms, fiddle with your fingers, put your hand on your face - all of which make you look "smaller." But if you feel powerful, you may sit up straight with your arms open, or you stand with arms akimbo in what she calls the "Wonder Woman" pose, making you look "big."
So Cuddy conducted a series of tests to determine whether body language affects mood, in the reverse of the way that mood affects body language. And she found that volunteers who were told to force themselves into a "power pose" for two minutes ended up feeling more self-confident.
So the next time you sit for a TV interview, give a speech or presentation, or even attend an office powwow, go to a private spot (the restroom works) and hold a power pose for two minutes straight. Stand with arms akimbo, or with your fists raised high over your head. Even if you're not feeling all that powerful or confident beforehand, Cuddy says you can "fake it until you become it." Try it and you'll see what we mean.
by Cynthia Hacinli
Keep Calm and Carry On? Another Perspective
For years the conventional wisdom about how to banish nerves before a speech or TV interview has been to calm down. Deep breathing, visualization, and meditating are all tools to get to a place where public speaking is a little less scary — and your knees less shaky. But Harvard Business School researcher Alison Wood Brooks has thrown a monkey wrench into this notion of calming down and carrying on. In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (www.apa.org/pubs/journals/relases/xge-a0035325.pdf), Brooks suggests that turning nervousness into excitement may be the wiser course. Brooks found that study participants who reframed anxious feelings as excitement performed better while speaking (she had similar results with karaoke singers and students attacking math problems). Rather than calming down, individuals who pumped up their enthusiasm with phrases like "I am excited" improved their performance by changing from a negative to positive mindset, or in psychological parlance a "threat mindset" to an "opportunity mindset." Brooks believes that the effects are cumulative and that repetition, i.e. the more times individuals channel their anxiety into excitement, the more confident and successful they will be in the future.
I'm curious to hear what our readers think about this. Which approach calms your nerves more effectively: chilling out or getting pumped up? Let us know.
Clothes Make The Woman - At Least on TV
You want them to remember your message, not how you looked. This is true for women and men, as we discussed in our last blog post.
But it's a fact of life that women are judged more critically on their appearance (think of the obsession with Michelle Obama's hair and fashion sense). And the particulars of female dress are more complex than those of men. The two together make dressing for TV even trickier if you're female. So to ace that on-air appearance, here are some additional dos and don'ts.
First the don'ts:
- In keeping with Coco Chanel's take-off-one-piece-of-jewelry-before-you-leave-the-house philosophy, don't overdo the accessories. Jangly bracelets, a ring on every finger, and chandelier earrings (or anything that swings from your ears) are distracting. Keep it to a single bracelet, one ring per hand, and post or drop earrings.
- Plunging necklines and short skirts are no-nos for the same reason. Ditto for anything too tight or too big.
- And ditch the wetlook lip gloss, especially eye-catching since viewers often focus on your face. Overt sex appeal overwhelms the message.
At the same time, you don't want to look unpolished. And we're not just talking about fingernails, which, by the way, should be shortish, filed, and a neutral color — save the Vamp for the weekend. A certain sense of style is expected these days. So by all means dress well and with at least a nod toward the fashion of the moment.
- Muted sets, which predominate, give you much more leeway colorwise beyond the no black, red, or white rule.
- Brightly colored sets mean you have to go bright so you don't disappear — blue, purple, or green read best on TV.
- Counter the TV-makes-you-gain 10 pounds rule with a defined waist. If you're wearing a suit, a jacket that nips in a bit will give you a slimmer, more defined silhouette. So does a sheath with a belt.
It'll help to remember that since TV is a visual medium, you want to convey everything about what you are in the way you dress. Give your planned outfit a dry run. Sit, cross your legs, and have a friend get it all on video. Most people have a "good" side, so do a little advance research about the set. Wave your hands, practice your smile, laugh. And then take a good long look at the results to make sure that all is as it should be. Are you listening to that person on screen or are you looking at her leopard print pumps?