How are you showing up?  Is your non-verbal 'conversation' helping or hurting your career?  My partner and I worked with an executive of a major financial institution who had fought his way up from the streets to a top position. When we were brought in to work with him, he had been promoted to a board–level role, and that required that he act in a statesmanlike manner, and as a mentor to others.

He had no idea how to behave in this way. All of his experience had taught him that he had to fight to keep his position and that colleagues were competition. So when he went into a meeting with the board, he behaved the way he always had.

He was close to being fired.

Why?  We quickly discovered what it was that so turned off the board when we had him role-play his executive meetings. He would go into an ever-so-slight defensive crouch, tensing himself, lowering his brows in a suspicious stare that had successfully intimidated many rivals in his earlier days.

He was completely unaware of this closed behavior.  The 360-degree review he had received just after taking the new position had shocked him. He had no idea that people saw him as a nasty guy.

But now he realized that he had to learn a different way to relate to his colleagues. The board had no wish to spar continuously with a defensive, hostile executive; they wanted a colleague.

He had to change.

When we showed him the videotape of his role-play, the moment was transformational. He had had no idea that his body language was signaling defensiveness. His reaction was, “Oh, my god, I look like a punk!”  He knew that he couldn’t look like a punk and continue as a C–suite executive.

That ten-minute video review probably saved his career. 

It gave him the motivation to change, and he slowly but surely learned to open up and become more of a colleague. He adopted a new posture and began to sit up straighter. Gradually he was able to open up his hands and arms. All of this took time and conscious effort before the new behavior became as comfortable and automatic as the old.  But eventually he began to be perceived as the executive and colleague he wanted to be. 

How are you showing up?  Check your non-verbal communication before it undercuts your best conscious efforts to succeed.