What other ways are there to make the connection between people stronger? 

You can increase the connection with people by making eye contact and using facial gestures, most notably raised eyebrows, to ask for a response.  You can also signal your intent with your posture. Remember that people are unconsciously sizing you up all the time: reading your intent and figuring out important things like whether you are friend or foe. They derive a huge part of that intent from your posture.

Once again, this is something that I’ve demonstrated many times to audiences in talks on communications. You can try it yourself. Begin by noticing how people stand from the side, as if you were cutting a two-dimensional slice from top to bottom. You’ll see that people stand in one of three ways primarily. There’s a fourth, but it’s rare, and a combination of two of the others.

First, some people stand with their head leading, keeping it forward from the perpendicular. We read this posture as submissive, intellectual, uncertain, or deferential. Try it yourself by standing up straight, at attention, like a soldier.  Imagine that a string tied to the top of your head is pulling it up as high and straight as it will go. Then pitch your head forward and round your shoulders as you do so. That’s the head posture. You will notice that you begin to feel submissive, deferential, and uncertain if you adopt this posture near someone else.  It’s ingrained and affects your thinking inevitably and the thinking of everyone around you.

The second posture leads with the pelvis. Rock stars and teenagers adopt this posture all the time. Begin in the upright posture again, and then pitch your pelvis forward (it may help to play a little air guitar at the same time). This posture is highly sexual and will provoke a sexual reaction in the people you communicate with in this way.

I once worked with a high-powered consultant who had recently been promoted within her firm to take on the most important clients. She had a series of boardroom meetings with big companies, and they did not go well.  I was called in to advise her, and we role-played the meetings. It became instantly clear why she was not commanding the respect of the boards she was dealing with: she was standing in a highly pelvic posture. The result was that the board was seeing her as a sexual object, not a high-powered consultant. Interestingly, she was completely unaware of her posture. I videotaped her performance, and she could instantly see what was wrong.  She changed her posture, and her consulting work improved immediately. Sometimes solutions are simple.

The third, and best, posture if you’re trying to communicate authentically with people and build their trust is the heart posture. Adopting the upright posture again, with your head held high (imagining the string once more). Now throw your shoulders back even a little more, but try not to make them tense with the effort and don’t raise them up. Relax your shoulders down and back, and keep your head and neck high. Roll the small of your back forward, and tuck your stomach in.

That’s the heart posture, and it is the one that trustworthy people adopt unconsciously and the one that other people trust. If you use this posture, people more easily connect with you. They will be inclined to open up to you and let you in.

That’s how you make connection possible with audiences.  Posture and nearness.

I talk much more about connecting with your audience in my new book:  Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. 

(The fourth posture is a combination of the first two:  a pushed forward head and pelvis. It’s the posture of a self-conscious, sexualized teenager or an intellectual rocker. Don’t try it at home or anywhere else.)