If only professional communication were more like a public speaking contest.
In junior high, I discovered I had a talent for public speaking, and to my surprise, I won the competition for my school district—despite ferociously chomping on my nails while I waited onstage for my turn at the podium.
Apparently, my display of nerves didn’t affect the judges, who confined their evaluation of my abilities to the duration of my speech. But outside public speaking contests, the audience is not so wilfully blind.
In fact, the way we show up to the podium, the table, or the Zoom room matters as much or more as what we say. Our character is on display all the time, and the way we embody it plays a critical role in persuading others to trust us, whether we’re communicating through speech, writing, or visuals.
You May Think Your Audience is Cerebral, but Think Again
Considering about the nonverbal aspects of communication may sound challenging if, like me, you spend a lot of time living in your head. Those of us who spend our days trying to get buy-in for bold, evidence-backed ideas tend to spend a lot of time thinking about our thinking. We construct logical arguments. We muster compelling data points. We anticipate possible objections and refute them before people can raise them.
The problem, however, is that our audience doesn’t behave like those generous judges who overlooked my nail-biting and focused solely on my ability to deliver my speech. In the real world, the way people respond to our ideas is driven largely by their emotional, and often visceral, response to us as a whole person, not as a mere channeler of information.
This is true even of supposedly hard-headed, analytical types, such as engineers, scientists, and CEOs. Even those of us who pride ourselves on our critical thinking skills, aren’t walking through life as a brain on a stick. We react to the world around us through our senses, which scientists tell us number much more than five (up to 33 according to the latest neuroscience research). The diverse sensory inputs we receive trigger an even wider range of emotions, only some of which we process as conscious thoughts.
You may assume that people are reacting primarily to your concepts and evidence—evaluating them objectively like Dr. Spock—but most behave more like toddlers than adult Vulcans. While we’re listening to a pitch, reading a briefing note, or viewing an infographic, we’re feeling our way through that experience. The way we evaluate the ideas presented to us depends on how much sleep we’ve had, how hungry we are, how bored we are, and many other factors.
Embodied Communication Conveys Strong Leadership
Chief among those nonrational factors is the level of safety we feel. As Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks show in their book Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why, people trust an idea when they trust the person delivering it.
In some situations, you can rely on “hard” qualities to build this trust, such as a high socio-economic position, demonstrated competence, a dominant personality, or physical attractiveness. But in today’s world, many people no longer consider researchers or people with advanced technical knowledge either competent or attractive. Like it or not, your success as a communicator will likely depend on the “soft” qualities you’re able to exhibit, such as warmth, vulnerability, trustworthiness, and charisma.
This is where yoga comes in, along with other mindfulness practices that help us tune into our bodies and develop self-trust. If we want others to trust what we have to say, then we must communicate with genuine confidence not only in our data but also in ourselves. Practices that ground us in our body cultivate a strong sense of integrity that makes us more persuasive communicators and leaders.
Courtney Amo, Julie Beaulac, and Casey Berglund call us to the practice of “embodied leadership.” In The Mind Body Way: The Embodied Leader’s Path to Resilience, Connection, and Purpose, they describe how learning to pay attention to our body’s signals helps us regulate emotion in both ourselves and the people around us. When we’re in sync with what’s happening in our body, we’re not slouched in our seat, biting our nails on the side of the stage. We’re sitting up straight, making eye contact, and exuding an air of confidence that’s contagious.
Embodying Self-Trust Fosters Trust in Your Ideas
The more we cultivate a strong mind-body connection, the better we can display those “soft” qualities communicators need to sway others. We’re able to show up with authenticity, vulnerability, and courage. We influence others not just through what we say (aloud or in print) but also through how we say it.
As part of their research, the authors of The Mind Body Way interviewed a retired executive, Darshan, who summed up the power of embodied leadership like this:
“Embodied Leaders are not acting; they are just being. Only when you develop this inner sense of yourself, of being centered within yourself, can you impart that feeling to other people as well.”
For me, this means considering my regular yoga practice part of the work I do as a knowledge mobilizer. Trust is the foundation of all communication, and I can’t expect others to trust me if I don’t continually work to improve my self-trust.
I’m not saying that doing three sun salutations a day will make you a supercommunicator. I will say, though, that taking time to engage in activities that get you out of your head and into your body will increase your emotional intelligence and build your self-confidence. In a noisy world of fake news and AI slop, you’ll come across as authentic and trustworthy, the kind of messenger people want to listen to and learn from.
Comments