Walking 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?

Clothes Make the Man - at Least on TV

If the undulations of your paisley tie on screen make your viewers go cross-eyed, they won’t hear a word you say. So men, when dressing for television, keep it simple:

• No geometric patterns, closely-spaced stripes, checks, or herringbone. Like paisley, they can create a dizzying moiré pattern on the screen, or “swim” effect.
• For most skin types, contrast is best: maybe a light blue shirt with a matching striped or large-pattern tie underneath a solid color suit in dark blue or charcoal. Also, dress the part – keep it fairly conservative if you’re a banker; if you’re a musician or a creative director you can get away with the black shirt under the black suit jacket.
• Avoid button-down collars - a straight color gives a more polished look.
• White shirts used to be a no-no, but most modern cameras can handle them now. Just be sure to wear them under a jacket for contrast.
• Skip flashy jewelry, which can also reflect light.
• Be sure to wear knee length socks – we don’t want to see your bare calves in the wide shot.
• If your suit fits well, button it. If it doesn’t, you don’t want it billowing forth.
• If you need glasses and can't wear contacts, get a pair with non-reflective lenses to reduce the glare.

Finally, it never hurts to check with the producer in advance about the setup and color scheme of the set. You don't want to blend in. Will you be sitting or standing? Give your outfit a dry run in front of a friend's iPhone or video camera — sitting, standing, with legs crossed, from near and afar. And remember, if your target audience misses you on TV, they're going to head to You Tube, so best to see how you look on the tiniest of screens as well as the big one.

Next time: Clothes Make The Woman

Rand Paul: Know Your Audience

Tea Party favorite Sen. Rand Paul paid a visit this week to what is probably America’s best-known historically black college, Howard University in Washington, D.C. – and it didn’t go so well.

Along with the rest of the Republican Party, Paul is trying to win more African-American votes.  So he gave a speech at Howard arguing that smaller government and other Republican values should appeal to the black community. But he got himself in trouble when he clumsily tried to bluff his way through making a point without realizing that the audience knew more than he did.

He said Republicans had always supported civil rights, and to prove it, he pointed out that one of the first African-American U.S. Senators was a Republican. Too bad he couldn’t remember the Senator’s name.

“Uh, I’m blanking on his name,” he said, “from Massachusetts.”

A number of students in the audience quickly said “Edward Brooke!” and proceed to laugh when Paul then “repeated” the name, misstating it as “Edwin Brooks.”

It got worse when Paul then asked the audience if they realized that the founders of the NAACP were all Republicans.  Several people said “yes,” and one woman said “of course.” To which Paul said “I don’t know what you know.”

But he should have known, and that’s the point. Know your audience: it’s one of the cardinal rules of media training. As a high-profile U.S. Senator, Paul certainly has the resources to do some basic research on the knowledge level of his audience. Did he really think that a roomful of African-American college kids wouldn’t know that the founders of the NAACP were Republicans? Come on.

Not knowing that made him look clueless and condescending at the same time. And I’m guessing he didn’t score a lot of points for his team.