One question I often get asked by clients when we start to work on the secrets of body language is, “Isn’t this going to make me fake, or manipulative?  I need to be authentically me.”  

This concern came up recently with a client who was working on executive presence.  He was showing up as a gentle, quiet, laid back sort of person, and didn’t want to lose his personality.  He was afraid I was going to turn him into a loud, outgoing, ham-fisted executive.  

He quickly relaxed once he realized we were focusing rather on elements of his body language that were causing him to appear not gentle, but timid.  Not quiet, but nervous.  Not laid back, but afraid to commit.  

He was delighted to begin to shed this self-defeating body language.  He saw that by opening up his physical presence he became more fully himself, not less.  We got 100 percent of his personality, rather than the 75 percent we had been getting before.  

Learning to master your body language doesn’t create a fake person.  It allows you to become more fully yourself.  It allows the authentic ‘you’ to show up to the world.  And that’s a force to be reckoned with.