Posture and Leadership

Prof. Amy Cuddy

I've been thinking a lot about posture recently. Those of you who know me well know that I often think a lot about posture, but I have run across a few things recently that have helped pique my interest. It started with an excellent TED talk by Amy Cuddy about the effect of posture on our hormone levels. Professor Cuddy is a psychologist who teaches in the Harvard Business School. One of her research findings has been that sitting or standing in a confident, assertive posture for two minutes significantly lowered a person's cortisol levels while raising their testosterone levels. Research participants who did this were shown to be more confident, more relaxed, respond more positively to stress and to come across as more “genuine” in follow-up interviews. Sitting in a withdrawn posture had an opposite effect.

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“Ourbodies change our minds, & our minds can change our behavior, & our behavior can change our outcomes” -Amy Cuddy via @JonathanPoppele

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Professor Cuddy's research points to an important and easily overlooked element of our posture. How we sit and stand affects our mental and emotional balance as well as our physical balance. It also affects how others see us, how we experiences ourselves, and how we interpret events around us. In the Embodied Leadership workshop series, we regularly explore posture as a foundation for our presence in the world. Our last workshop finished up with short exercise on the effect of natural posture on others' perceptions of us. Facing a partner, we practiced sitting in a slumped posture, a tense posture, and a natural posture. In each posture, we introduced ourselves to our partner as a leader in our field. I would say “Hello, I am Jonathan Poppele, the founder of the Embodied Leadership training program.” Afterward, we shared our experiences from these three introductions. The differences were striking.

Participants commented that when their partner was sitting in a natural posture, he or she came across as more genuine, more credible, more approachable, and more competent. My partner for the exercise was the executive director of a rapidly growing national non-profit. When she introduced herself in a collapsed posture, she came across to me as unprofessional and unimportant. When she introduced herself in a tense posture, she came across to me as pretentious and self-promoting. In both cases, I found myself feeling dismissive toward her and her credentials. It wasn't that I wanted to write her off—that was just the first feeling that showed up. When she introduced herself in a natural posture, she came across to me as engaging, passionate and caring. I found myself wanting to learn more about her and her work.

The day after the Embodied Leadership workshop, I attended an all day training on teaching techniques. This training was led by three career academics. All three had Ph.D.s and decades of experience teaching in their fields. At the start of the training, all three introduced themselves. As they listed their impressive credentials, I found myself feeling turned off. Why were they tooting their own horns like this? It seemed unnecessary, pretentious, and self-promoting. Then I remembered my experience with my partner in the Embodied Leadership workshop and realized they were just tense! I was left wondered how many times I have turned people off because I had a tense posture. I promised myself to practice even more sincerely.

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A natural posture creates a solid foundation for leadership. @JonathanPoppele

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How about you? What have you noticed about the effect of your posture on your attitude, and on other people's attitudes toward you? How do you react to other people's posture? I look forward to hearing from you.

Deep Listening, Part 2

Exploring Deep Listening at a recent Lunch & Learn

In my last blog post, I discussed the kinds of activities that most of us engage in when other people are talking to us. I pointed out that these activities, such as categorizing, planning, evaluating, and relating, are distinct from listening. All of them involve some kind of filtering. When we filter, we miss out on much of what our conversation partner is sharing with us. We limit ourselves to partial or intermittent listening and squander an opportunity for real communication.

To move from intermittent listening to deep listening, we first need to explore what makes up a communication. It is useful to think of a communication as being made up of three distinct elements of it: words, feelings, and values.*

Words: The first element of a communication is what a person is saying. Listening to a person's words means letting in exactly what she is saying, exactly the way she is saying it. Often, in our efforts to categorize, evaluate or relate to what another person is saying, we focus on the “gist” of their communication, and not the words they actually said. Unfortunately, that “gist” is a filtered understanding—not the communication that was actually delivered.

When I was being trained to listen to another person's words, I was asked by my teachers to mirror back to practice partners what they were saying. Often, I would get it wrong. I would choose words that captured my interpenetration of what they said. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even realize I was doing that. I actually thought I was repeating back the same words my partner had said. Over time, however, I got better and better at listening to what another said without adding, subtracting or changing anything.

Feelings: When we act or speak, our action or speech is colored by our emotions. If I say something while I am upset or disappointed, it is different than if I say something while I am happy or excited. Even if I use exactly the same words, the communication is distinct. To understand what another person is communicating, we also need to understand the experience or feeling that the person is having while they are talking.

Fortunately, human beings are naturally empathetic. When we give someone our attention, it is natural for us to feel what they are feeling. It can take a while to learn to open up to what others are feeling and distinguish it from what we are feeling ourselves. With practice, however, we can become quite skilled at listening to other people's experiences and feelings.

Values: Every communication begins with a spark of motivation. There is a reason why a person chooses to open her mouth and express something. To understand what another person is communicating, we need to understand what motivated the communication.

A good place to begin practicing this is with ourselves. The more familiar you are with what motivates your own communications, the easier it is to understand what motivates others. We are more alike than different in that way.

In a future blog post, I will share more about listening for feelings and values, and how connecting with nature can teach us to do that.

* I was first exposed to these three elements of communication through Harvel Hendrix and Helen Hunt's excellent book "Getting the Love You Want." Years later, I had the opportunity to get extensive training in a similar model through Landmark. Since my training at Landmark, I have also encountered these three elements of communication in the work of The Art of Hosting, and Non-Violent Communication.