Principle III: Persuasion is leading someone else to make a decision, and it happens when the verbal and nonverbal conversations are aligned. This is the essence of leadership communication.
The writing on leadership is vast and endless amounts of ink have been spilled trying to explain what separates a great leader from a poor one. But at heart, it’s really quite simple. Great leaders can persuade others to act on behalf of some larger cause. Great leaders therefore change other people’s minds.
And that’s an act of communication. The ability to communicate persuasively is the first and most important skill a leader must possess, or nothing else will happen. And you can’t communicate persuasively if your content and your body language are not aligned. If you send out mixed messages, your audience will pick up on them unconsciously and resist you because you don’t appear honest to them.
With alignment comes authenticity, and that is the essential for leaders today. We have been spun, lied to, sold, and manipulated for so long that we long for straight talk and honesty. If you’re authentic with us – more specifically, if you have an authentic persona – then we’ll listen. If not, we’ve already moved on.
And that is one basic reason why Martha Coakley lost the special election for Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts yesterday. Politics aside, Martha’s persona did not appear authentic at this very basic level. I’m not talking about her real personality when she’s among friends. I’m talking about the way
the majority of voters interacted with her – in news clips on TV, in TV ads, perhaps on the Internet. In that kabuki play, her smile rarely reached her eyes, her body language was stiff and closed in a myriad of subtle ways, and her overall demeanor was not open to the voters even while she asked for their votes.
That very basic lack of alignment between content and body language does not inspire trust and does not get read as authenticity. The first step in creating a connection with an audience is to be open, and Coakley never appeared open. As I talk about in Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, if you can’t appear open, the rest of communication never happens. The door to your audience is closed.
These 3 articles are first rate, Nick! I’m a singer/actress/public speaker, and I loved reading about the importance of open body language. One of the things I teach is the importance of good posture — because it makes the speaker feel better, because it improves breathing, which improves the voice, and because it shows the speaker cares enough to put energy into the way he/she stands. Great stuff!
Thanks, Heather. I agree completely about posture — I talk in the book about the 3 basic postures and how each one affects the speaker and the audience. Posture sends out strong messages to the audience about the speaker’s intent, and those messages become self-reinforcing.
i love it!
claire 5th grade
(for a report)