Is yours hurting your business?
The impact that body language has on your business cannot be underestimated. Many women unintentionally engage in diminishing poses ranging from crossing their feet while standing, to tilting their heads, to poor eye contact. This type of body language may give off the wrong image and hurt your business. Power poses, on the other hand, can enhance your business and have other positive effects.
While growing up I was a fan of Wonder Woman who stood straight with her feet apart and hands on her hips. I would stand in the mirror and feel powerful. Little did I know that what I was doing was changing my body chemistry to make me feel more confident.
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School has shown how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain. High power poses include standing with hands on your hips, leaning with straight arms on a table, and sitting open with arms outstretched. High power poses increase testosterone levels and can decrease cortisol, the stress hormone, thereby boosting your confidence. Lower power poses include making yourself small, crossing arms and legs, and even touching your neck.
Sharon Sayler, an executive coach specializing in verbal and nonverbal communication, puts it another way. Businesswomen are not taken seriously if their body language communicates “little girl.” Little-girl poses elevate the stress hormone, cortisol, making a woman feel less confident. However, a power stance like the “Wonder Woman” pose changes body chemistry so that she feels more confident and successful.
According to Sayler, here are five poses that businesswomen should avoid:
1. Crossing your ankles while standing: Women cross their ankles while standing because it is more comfortable, especially if they are wearing high heels. However, it is not a good idea, because it sends the message that you are insignificant.
A confident pose is to stand with your back straight and your ankles uncrossed. If you are unable to stand this way in high heels, wear flats.
2. Fig leaf pose with hands while standing: This pose consists of holding your hands over your groin area as if your hands are a fig leaf. Women and men strike this pose, which gives the impression of unimportance.
The best option is to simply let your arms hang naturally by your sides. Another solution is to bend your elbows and keep your hands parallel to the ground while lightly clasping them together. You can also hold a book or tablet, but not a cellphone, as that suggests you don’t have time.
3. Tilting your head: Many women tilt their heads when listening to someone as an acknowledgement of hearing and understanding the other person, but this gesture may suggest to others that they are confused or agree with what the speaker says, when they may not.
To avoid this gesture, keep your chin parallel to the ground. If you feel the need to acknowledge that you are listening, nod very slightly.
4. Coy eye contact: When a woman drops her chin and looks high up in her eyes or up over her glasses, this is a submissive gesture that spells coy. We tend to drop our chins when we feel insecure, but the more we do that, the more insecure we feel.
Instead, keep your chin parallel to the ground and make good eye contact, which communicates that you are intelligent and sincerely interested in what the other person has to say.
5. Nervous habits: Fidgeting, playing with your jewelry or smartphone or twisting or throwing back your hair are all signs that you are nervous and not confident, and these gestures make it likely you won’t be taken seriously.
Since nervous habits tend to come out when you are breathing rapidly, train yourself to breathe low and comfortably, and your nervous twitches will disappear.
May we all harness our inner “Wonder Woman” and project that confidence in our body language and business!
By Theresa F Weber
