Working with an executive recently on body language, charisma, and presence, I noticed something odd about the way he was standing as we worked on a mock interview.  I was playing a high-status person, because one of the issues the executive wanted to work on was showing up well with his peers – other executives, similar-status colleagues, and so on.  What the executive was doing was essentially freezing in place. 

That reminded me of studies of conversations between different status people.  One finding is that when a lower status person is talking with a ‘superior’, he or she tends to freeze in place. 

So I halted the role-play and asked the executive what he was thinking about.  He reported that he was working very hard on thinking about what he was going to say next. Was it that the mental effort required was causing him to freeze up, or was it his feelings of lower status? 

Either way, the unconscious effect on me was to elevate my status and to signal to me that this client was low on the totem pole. 

The important point is that it didn’t matter what the executive was consciously thinking about; what mattered was the way he showed up.  To anyone else in the room, he looked like a peon, not a player. 

So we worked on loosening up this executive’s body language and getting him to think like a Jedi master.  As I’ve said before, you can either work from the inside out, on your emotional intent, or you can work from the outside in, on freeing up your body to look and feel like a top dog.

Either way works; if you can do both at once, you’ll get there even faster.  What happens if you start with the body is that you get a good feedback loop going – your mind says, “I must be a player because I’m standing like one.”  If you start with the mind, it signals to the body what to do.  Our unconscious minds dominate our behavior, but you can inject a new idea into the unconscious mind either way.  The results are well worth it.  If you want to become a top dog, you have to first act like one.