CHAPTER 2
Your Actions Are Speaking
So Loudly I Can Hardly Hear
What You’re Saying
This chapter’s title comes from an adage I read on a sign that a friend of mine used to keep on his desk. I always thought it was spot on. Our actions speak volumes, yet we spend scant time actually observing them. We’re experts at reading other people’s actions, and other people certainly know how to read ours. But how well can we read our own actions?
In the last chapter you learned how to set intentions for your presence. Now we’ll cover how to ensure that your intention will be received with crystal-like clarity.
Our actions prove (or disprove) what we say about ourselves. They are signals for receivers to decode so that they can learn what we’re all about. Actions can either underline or undermine our executive presence.
If you want to be seen as trusted and credible, then your actions must be in alignment with your intentions, both stated and unstated. It’s the only way to be received with clarity.
Actions underline or undermine our executive presence.
All too often, we are unconscious of our own actions. This confuses our message; it can even make us seem as though we are misrepresenting ourselves. Especially in the workplace, when there is confusion, impressions quickly go to the negative. Have you ever known a colleague who promises to do something but fails to deliver? I bet it didn’t take long to decide he was at best a B-player.
This chapter discusses how to understand your own actions and their impact on your presence. In terms of how people perceive and interpret you, two types of action are of equal importance:
— Micro-Actions (your body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice)
— Macro-Actions (how you spend your time, what you do, and your consistency)
Authenticity plays a key role here. My goal is not to make you an automaton with perfect body language and a personal schedule that is dictated by your presence objectives. My aim is to help you develop consistency and alignment. I want to make you aware of how to use your actions—your physical tools—to enhance the presence you feel at your core and want to convey to other people.
You have your intention. Consider your actions a megaphone. Make sure it’s pointed in the right direction.
Body Language Is Important, but It Doesn’t Buy Lunch
Everyone who has ever taken a course in public speaking knows that body language is key to effective communication in our personal and professional lives. And it is important. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the whole story.
In my work I’ve seen so much attention paid to the mechanics of body language that I’ve come to believe that it overshadows many other essential elements of communication. Everyone is looking for that power posture or commanding tone that will ensure success. I am routinely asked for the Right Way to stand, talk, gesture, or present. In fact, there is no Right Way. How you should stand, talk, gesture, or present depends on what you want to communicate. Anything else erodes authenticity—and for many people, confidence as well.
Because body language is a vehicle to get your message across, it should be in alignment with your message. If you want to convey openness, then clearly your body language can’t suggest that you’re closed off.
People have an intuitive sense about body language. In situations where we are comfortable, aligning body language with intention comes easily. The best way to improve your body language is to focus on your intention and make sure your body carries that message as well. (How you dress also counts as a form of nonverbal communication, with a similar need for alignment. See the sidebar for tips on how dress, as physical expression, can strengthen your presence.)
One of the reasons body language gets so much attention may be a misunderstanding about some significant research. Many readers of this book—especially anyone who has gone through corporate presentation training—may be aware of the relatively famous 55/38/7 rule. As it’s usually discussed in popular culture, this rule says that when we communicate, 55 percent of our message is communicated through facial expressions, 38 percent through tone of voice, and only 7 percent through words. These statistics, explained in this way, have been used to scare the bejesus out of many, many people! “What if I don’t have perfect body language,” you may be asking. “Will I totally bomb?” It’s anxiety-inducing, to say the least.
And if you think about it a bit, it doesn’t make sense. If I ask my husband to take out the garbage, he’s not carefully reading my body language to determine what I really mean. Turns out, the statistics have been misapplied and distorted. They were originated by Albert Mehrabian, a professor of psychology at UCLA, and published in his book Silent Messages in 1981.1 Mehrabian has tried on his own website to clear up the misinterpretation. He issues this delineation on his site about his omnipresent findings: “Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about … feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.”2 When we are trying to determine our feelings about someone, we rely on Mehrabian’s filter. That’s when body language plays a much greater role. It doesn’t apply to all communications.
So words do matter, and perhaps nonverbal communication isn’t a complete make-or-break factor. Take a deep breath on that one. There is an important learning here: In areas of persuasion, where we are trying to figure out if we trust someone, the importance of body language and tone plays a serious role. Take, for example, when a leader gets in front of the company to announce a new initiative. There’s no doubt that how that leader carries herself during that message influences the group’s buy-in. If her eye contact is sketchy and her tone of voice sounds shaky, the audience won’t feel very sure, either.
Nonverbal communication is important, but it isn’t always the make-or-break factor it’s made out to be.
I bring up these points to further debunk the myth that your body language must be perfect. No one achieves that, and if you did, you wouldn’t look genuine. Again, it’s not about perfection, but about alignment.
Dress as Physical Expression: Is Your
Self-Presentation Causing Dissonance?
There’s a link between attire and presence, because how a person dresses is both a physical expression and a nonverbal communication. Dress is a factor in forming other people’s impressions of us, and in this way, it impacts our presence directly. We may want to believe that corporate dress is about personal style only and shouldn’t be a factor. When you consider the proliferation of makeover shows for men and women, you can see the power that clothing has over the way we view one another. (I once saw an episode of one such program where a tenured professor of nonverbal communication was made over. Her epiphany was that she’d been undermining her own credibility by not considering her self-presentation as a form of nonverbal expression. You can’t make this stuff up. Our desire to believe dress doesn’t matter is that strong.)
As a coach, I hear feedback that my client isn’t polished, doesn’t look CEO-like, or fails to exemplify a corporate officer. Many times, supervisors are delighted to share this feedback with a coach (especially one who specializes in presence) because they would never tell their colleagues themselves. Telling other people that they are inappropriately dressed is way too personal (not to mention it’s potentially over the human resources line, especially when giving feedback to women). Attire has a real impact on careers. It’s also one of the first aspects we notice about someone. It’s a form of communication.
Yet, for many professionals, attire is fairly unintentional. The guidelines we use for selecting our clothes may be different from anything else in our professional lives. We may choose comfort over impression, for example, which would strike us as career-killing if we were talking about body language. Or we might not update our corporate wardrobe for years when we’d never let our functional skills atrophy for one month.
I’m not advocating for a right way to dress, just that it be in alignment with your personal presence brand. If you want to be creative and innovative, dressing like an Internet entrepreneur in funky suits and laid-back attire might be the way to go. If you are climbing the ladder at a Fortune 50 healthcare company and your intention is to be credible, you are better off dressing like the CEO, regardless of the corporate policy. Otherwise, you are creating some serious presence dissonance.
How you dress is just one of many aspects of your presence, but it’s worth considering, especially if it doesn’t cross your mind very often. Over the years I’ve seen, and heard, a lot of commentary around executive attire—most of it behind people’s backs. Here are my best tips for dressing to strengthen presence, not detract from it:
• The adage to “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” always applies. Check out what the most senior executives wear for guidelines. Whenever you get promoted, your attire should be promoted as well—no exceptions.
• Keep your wardrobe updated. Styles change (yes, even men’s suits), as do waistlines. At least once a year, add new pieces to your professional wardrobe.
• Make sure your clothes are properly fitted. It makes a tremendous difference. Department stores offer free personal shoppers (they even work during big store sales) who will find the right clothes for you and have them tailored on site. If you buy clothes online, factor in a trip to your local tailor before wearing.
• Don’t dress for comfort; dress for presence. Casual Friday, or casual every day, does not mean sloppy. You can still look professional. There’s a difference between dress jeans and washed-out jeans.
• Wear a jacket. A blazer goes a long way toward looking professional. It also allows you to dress up or down as needed during the day. (You can always keep one at work, too.)
• For women, never, ever wear revealing clothes at work. Even if you look fantastic in them, you won’t be taken seriously.
• In general, the younger you are, the more conservatively you should dress. As you get more established in your career, you can add a bit more flair to your wardrobe because you have more gravitas. In your early years, you want to be taken seriously, and you don’t have a lot of experience to back you up yet. Keep your wardrobe professionally nondescript.
• Anything connected to work counts as work. I’m talking about plane rides for business, retreats, even office happy hours or parties. The workplace rules still apply.
• Finally, think about your situational intention. What do you want your audience to think about you? Different audiences may require different attire. Dress like the group in front of you. If you don’t know them well, dress more formally.
The discussion of attire is often avoided—yet never overlooked. Dress matters. I’m covering it because even if it isn’t relevant to you, it may be to someone who works for you. Think of it this way: Dress is one aspect of your presence that you have complete control over, ahead of time. Dressing in a polished way, a bit above the mean, creates a positive impression and gets you noticed. So why not take advantage of it? And when all else fails, remember the words of Coco Chanel: “Dress shabbily, they notice the dress. Dress impeccably, they notice the woman.” (This advice applies to non-dress-wearers too.)
Present yourself in a way that underscores your intention. Take away some learning from the research. But the next time you hear it in a seminar, don’t treat it as gospel. Remember that example of Steve Jobs from Chapter 1? Go on Apple’s site and watch videos of his speeches. Jobs makes many body language “mistakes,” if you believe what you read in books on public speaking. He paces. He tends to hold his arms too close to his body. He plays with things in his hands. But still he conveys the excitement and confidence that customers and shareholders adore. And the sum of his presence is legendary.
When You’re Out of Alignment Your Body Knows It
In his book Language and the Pursuit of Happiness, author and executive coach Chalmers Brothers discusses the power of our internal thoughts and how they manifest themselves in our body language.3 This is why having a positive intention has such an impact on how you embody your outward message. Brothers outlines an interesting exercise to show how your mind actually recognizes when your intention and your body language are out of alignment. I like to use it in this way: Sit in your chair with your worst body language on display. Sit slumped over, head down, frown on your face. Now, say something that you feel genuinely positive about in an upbeat voice, like, “I can’t wait for my vacation to Italy.” Notice what happens. Your body almost fights against the position. It feels wrong somehow and so inauthentic you may break out laughing. It’s almost impossible to believe your own message! Your body language negates your words, and vice versa. (You can also do the reverse. Say something negative while sitting with great posture and a smile on your face.)
When you pay attention, you can sense your body language striving for alignment.
When you pay attention, you can feel your body language striving for alignment. When you are relaxed, it flows. Unfortunately, in high-stress situations, you are anything but relaxed. I speak to large groups as part of my job, and still I have moments when I’m at a conference, ready to speak, and suddenly my heart starts racing. I’ve learned this about myself, so I make it a habit to practice my speeches out loud and with my full body. I want my muscle memory to kick in, so I can go back to my intention and my body language will follow. A first step to better body language: Know what you want it to look like so you can self-observe and self-correct as needed.
Become a Body Language Researcher
1. Refer back to Chapter 1, to either the personal presence brand or a situational intention you wanted to set for your presence. Now think of a place in your life where this intention naturally occurs. For example, if your intention was “confidence,” think about a time or place in your life—inside or outside of work—where you are comfortable and assured.
2. The next time you’re in that situation, self-observe your body language in three areas: your face, gestures, and posture. (Think of it as a top-to-bottom, full-body scan.)
• Face: Are you smiling? Are you making eye contact?
• Gestures: Are your arms open or closed? Are your gestures large and wide or small and narrow? Where do your arms fall naturally?
• Posture: Is your back straight or do you slouch? What is your stance? Do you walk, shift, or stay still?
3. Next, observe someone you admire in a similar situation. Consider those same aspects of body language—face, gestures, posture. How does the other person’s body language measure against yours? What best practices can you create for yourself?
The Science Behind Turning Your Frown Upside Down
When I was a freshman at Virginia Tech, walking across a crowded section of the campus between classes, I thought I was anonymous—just one in a sea of thousands of faces. Yet, on several occasions, guys would call to me: “Smile!” or “Lighten up!” or “Can it really be that bad?” Now given it was college, these guys didn’t yet have fully developed social filters. They said whatever they felt. And their comments caught me off guard. For one thing, I wasn’t unhappy in the slightest. I was just lost in my own thoughts about class, homework, or weekend plans. I had no idea I was frowning, let alone looking sullen enough to elicit a response.
Years later, when I was in the workforce and heard similar comments (only delivered more tactfully), I took the feedback to heart and literally looked in the mirror. I realized that my most relaxed expression is a frown. In other words, if I’m doing nothing I’m frowning. Not at all the presence I want to convey! So I worked hard to adjust my neutral expression to be upturned, or a slight smile. Now that expression feels natural to me. And thankfully, I no longer get cries to “lighten up.”
This is a perfect example of consciously using body language to be more authentic. I’m not angry or frustrated. Most of the time, I’m grateful and happy. Now I make sure my true feelings are more visible.
When clients see themselves on videotape, 99 percent say they need to smile more.
I’m not alone in this example. I’ve talked to many clients and colleagues over the years who have had similar experiences of regularly being asked, out of the blue, “What’s the matter?” or being told they come across as intimidating. When I videotape clients and then show them their own presence, 99 percent of them say that they need to smile more.
There are two reasons that smiling warrants further discussion. First, we like when people appear happy. Smiles comfort us, elicit trust, and, frankly, just make us want to be around the person.
Of course, no one can smile all the time, and smiling can be inappropriate if it’s out of alignment with your words. George W. Bush’s ill-timed smirks earned him a spot in parodies for eight years. But in general, if you want to build a stronger presence, you have to be aware of how readily you smile.
The second reason is the circular effect of smiling. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell mentions a research psychologist by the name of Paul Ekman, who is renowned for identifying and meticulously cataloguing thousands of human facial expressions. To undertake this enormous study, Ekman’s team of researchers watched many hours of videotape that captured people’s facial expressions and then imitated them to re-create specific muscular variations. During the study, an interesting side issue cropped up. Ekman found that when he and his team were making negative impressions, they tended to get depressed. So, like any good researcher, he tested his theory and found that in fact it was true. Expression by itself can make real changes in the autonomic nervous system. When we make negative facial expressions, we feel negative. And the reverse is true. We feel better when we smile. Gladwell explains Ekman’s extensive research this way: “The face isn’t a secondary billboard for internal feelings but an equal partner in the emotional process.”4
Intrigued by Ekman’s work, I interviewed him for my monthly leadership column at Entrepreneur.com.5 He reiterated his findings about facial expressions and feelings. And he stressed that it is extremely hard to fake our facial expressions successfully. Ekman has identified micro-expressions that we all transmit but are so slight that they fly under our radar, so we are not even conscious of them. We can’t fake them even if we try. (Professional poker players know this and compensate by wearing dark sunglasses.) That’s why it’s critical for people to be in touch with what they are trying to communicate, and to buy into it in a way that feels authentic to them.
So what does all this mean for your presence? First, smiling is one of the simplest micro-actions that builds an approachable and trustful presence. Unless you are delivering bad news, smiling is good. Second, smiling lifts your spirits in general, and feeling positive can only help you in your quest to build a stronger presence. Good feelings fuel confidence, which in turn fuels more good feelings. And finally, identifying, buying into, and keeping your intentions top of mind will help align your body language. When you are thinking “patience and positivity,” those qualities are more likely to show up as such on your face—whether consciously or unconsciously.
Is Your Body Language Contagious?
Over the past decade, there has been a bevy of research on the subject of communication mirroring. Neuroscientists have discovered that our brains light up similarly to those with whom we’re empathizing.6 Some researchers also believe that our body language mirrors others naturally in trust situations. If you sit forward, I sit forward. If you frown, I frown. That’s simply how we communicate empathy, and it’s effortless. Body language is, in effect, contagious.
Consequently, like any good research, there’s been a spate of ideas for how to apply it. For example, if mirroring works in close relationships, how do we use it to form close relationships? You can find many articles written about how to use mirroring purposefully to make other people more comfortable around us. I even attended sales training years ago that advocated sitting exactly the same way your clients do at the table and adopting their slang.
I don’t know about you, but while an automatic brain function is one thing, strategic mirroring feels the opposite of authentic to me. I’m not going to advocate that you start mirroring everywhere you go. Instead, try the exercise in the sidebar titled “Become a Body Language Researcher” and once again recall your own natural body language in comfortable settings that reflected your intention. It’s authentic to you and doesn’t require the use of tricks to convince people that you feel empathy for them.
Your Red Blinking Light: Macro-Actions
Now that we’ve talked about how intentions play into body language, and vice versa, let’s segue into your macro-actions, or how you spend your time. This includes where you show up or don’t, what you produce or deliver, how consistent you are, and whether you keep your promises.
I regularly talk to CEO groups such as Vistage International, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and The Founder Institute. And I sit on the board of one called Mindshare. I love these groups because they are filled with ambitious, energetic entrepreneurs who care about their businesses. They are also frequently overextended from keeping a million balls in the air. They want to be better leaders, but they don’t know how to focus their already-limited time. When I address these top executives, I introduce the concept of the red blinking light. When a leader walks into a room, it’s as though a red blinking light is flashing a message: “This is important!” When the CEO goes into a meeting, the importance of that meeting rises. If he decides to skip a meeting, its importance is reduced. Leaders have to be keenly aware of not confusing their message by paying attention to where they spend their time. Because if the company message is, for example, “Sales is the top priority,” and the CEO skips the big sales strategy session, it makes the message far less believable.
Confusing urgency with importance is another common and damaging problem for many leaders. If a leader tries to be everywhere all the time, then everything begins to look like a crisis, and nothing is deemed important. You can’t be everywhere. So where should your red blinking light be today? This month? This year?
It’s not just the CEO who has the red blinking light. Have you ever been at a company where a new initiative is announced? What does everyone do? They wait to see if there is any real movement by others in the company before they commit their own time and energy to the new idea. Until then, it’s just words on a page.
The fact is that everyone carries around the red blinking light. All eyes go to our actions because they are the backbone of presence. We trust actions more than anything. Think about when we’re first hired. People wait to see if we do what we promised in the interview. The first few months are critical because that’s when everyone gets to see what we’re made of. Even before that, recruiters make decisions partly on how candidates manage the interview process. Do they excel under pressure? Do they practice good follow-up? Are they meticulous with their preparation? And for those folks angling for a promotion, the top precursor by far is consistent performance over time.
When a leader walks into a room, it’s as though a red blinking light is flashing a message: “This is important!”
Since we were kids, we’ve all heard that actions speak louder than words, right? It should be a moot point. But what happens is that real life steps in and we get busy. And that leads to a lot of unintentional actions. We take shortcuts. We put out fires. We let things slide and hope that no one will notice. Or we try to do everything and spread ourselves way too thin.
The red blinking light reminds us about being more intentional. For executives, it means committing to managing their actions as carefully as their words. For most people, it means you have to make choices about the actions you want to emphasize. The best place to start is by choosing the actions that make up your core values or, in other words, your personal presence brand.
Are You a McDonald’s or a Starbucks?
When you developed your personal presence brand in Chapter 1, you determined what you want to be known for. To support this intention, you must also decide which actions to focus on the most. Your ability to give a reliable impression creates your image, just like a corporate brand. If McDonald’s used unique ingredients and pricing in each of its restaurants, you’d have another feeling about the brand. McDonald’s prides itself on providing a universal experience: similar restaurant design serving food that’s fast, consistent, inexpensive, and pleases the masses. Starbucks creates a different yet equally reliable impression. It has built an amazing brand in a relatively short period of time by appealing to a subset of coffee drinkers who prefer a certain type of café experience. The company has made choices—good coffee, upscale pastries, green products—and that’s where it never scrimps. The environment can be unique to the location, but you know what core products to expect when you walk in the door.
The client I mentioned in Chapter 1 wanted to be known as someone who was helpful—and he made that a core part of his brand. When there was an opportunity to assist a colleague by lending his expertise, he made sure to do it, even if it meant that other actions had to slide off his plate. And of course, people noticed that his actions underlined his presence. He used his red blinking light to create his personal presence brand.
In today’s workplace, it is impossible to be 100 percent consistent about 100 percent of your actions. That’s why we must choose. For CEOs, your personal presence brand may be exactly the same as the company’s priorities. You are about integrity and so is the company. For professionals in other positions, or those in various stages of workplace (re)entry, your personal presence brand is individual. Perhaps you want to be known for efficiency, creativity, collaboration, or risk taking. Regardless, remember that your actions will underline or undermine your presence.
To help demonstrate this process, let me use a personal example of my own red blinking light, and how I used actions to support my brand. Having a personal presence brand of accountability is a deeply held core value of mine, which spans across my entire life and career. I’m chronically on time, will do almost anything to meet a deadline, and own up to my commitments probably far beyond what is expected of me. (This has a downside too, which rears its ugly head in my schedule.) When I get the sense that I’m shirking my duties or sloughing off work to someone else, I feel horrible. I don’t give my word lightly, but when I do, I’m all in.
From my first job onward, this trait has meant that I’m frequently given the tough clients or the turnaround projects—a role that I relish most of the time because it plays to my strengths. In my early career, it even helped me develop a niche. No one likes to deal with difficult people, but turning them into happy customers is rewarding for me.
As a business owner with numerous employees and moving parts, dealing with heated client situations comes with the job. At times, your team gets called to the carpet for a misstep or misunderstanding and you’re the best one to find a remedy. A veteran entrepreneur once told me that the owner can fix practically any problem a business faces, which was golden advice. Mistakes are inevitable, but how you deal with them makes all the difference. Nothing angers clients more than firms that refuse to acknowledge and accept responsibility for their share of the blame. We picked up many clients from such firms, as this is a common refrain. Again, accountability is my natural instinct, which is a plus. Yet, in the middle of a tough conversation it’s hard to remain calm and positive without falling into defensiveness. Sometime the client is just difficult. In these situations, I have had to be carefully, even exquisitely, intentional to stay true to the brand I wanted to convey. I also needed to push back (gently) on issues that clearly weren’t our fault to establish boundaries moving forward. Figure 2-1 lists the actions I intentionally took around client relations to underscore my desired brand as an accountable leader. Now, try this exercise: See if you can narrow down the actions you need to take on a daily or weekly basis to support your personal presence brand by filling in the rest of Figure 2-1.
Stories of Contrasting Actions and Personal Presence Brands
I’ve had a client named Greg Stock for close to 15 years, since I started my PR firm. When I first met Greg he was the VP of marketing at a technology company that later went public. Today he’s the CEO of Vovici, a company that develops enterprisewide online feedback tools such as surveys and analytics to use in building better customer and employee relationships. One of the attributes I’ve always admired about Greg is that he’s masterful at intentionally using his own actions to set a culture and focus attention. He’s got a great amount of energy, and if you don’t know him, you may just figure he’s someone who has more hours in the day than the rest of us. But in fact, he manages his time well, using it to build his personal presence brand as well as his company’s brand.
Figure 2-1. Actions to support your personal presence brand.
Greg’s background story is very telling: During college, as the drum major in the Penn State Blue Band, Greg had to attempt a full frontal flip before the start of each football game in front of 109,000 screaming fans (and millions of television viewers). Sounds stressful enough, right? But add to that the Penn State tradition: When the drum major makes the flip, Penn State will win the game; when he misses, Penn State will lose. Oh, and by the way, the drum major performs in full uniform, including a 20-inch hat.
So Greg must have been a gymnast, right? Guess again. Greg tried out for the drum major position as a freshman. That was when he did a flip for the first time in his life. He came in second place and went on with student life, not thinking much about it. Then nine days before a game against Temple, Greg got a call that the drum major had fallen during a flip and broken his neck and both wrists. Greg was asked to step in.
Over four days Greg trained for the flip. He was exhausted, sore, and gut-wrenchingly nervous about the game. Let’s not forget that the last drum major broke his neck. Greg wasn’t even able to practice in uniform because of the hasty alterations that had to be made. Finally, it was game day. The fans were screaming. Greg started running and stuck the flip perfectly. He made every flip that year and Penn State won the national championship. Greg was the longest-serving drum major in Penn State history—a five-year streak—and he missed his landing only four times. (Penn State lost each of those four games.) They played in three national championships—the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl—winning two of them. Today, Greg’s legendary flips can be seen on YouTube.
This story tells you quite a bit about Greg’s ability to focus his actions behind a goal. Now fast-forward to 2009, when Greg took over as CEO of Vovici. He immediately wanted to focus the company on getting closer to its customers because they held the secret to success, as well as to continual product improvement and market intelligence. Plus, as a provider of software-based products and services for building customer relations, Vovici had an extra incentive. As Greg explained, “We were in the business of helping companies get closer to their own customers, so if we didn’t lead the way, shame on us. We had to be the role models.”
The role modeling began with Greg himself. On one of his first days as the new CEO, he showed up unannounced at a routine product-training meeting for customers. He said hello and answered questions about the company. No big agenda. But the fact that he’d made it a point to be there as one of his first orders of business sent a powerful message that customers were a priority. He embarked on a customer road show, meeting face-to-face with a target list of Vovici’s top 100 customers. He initiated a customer conference, and then a customer advisory council. He linked every employee’s quarterly bonus to customer satisfaction performance goals. And the list goes on.
When you ask Greg how he organizes his time, he’ll tell you that when a customer or prospect needs to see him, he’s there. No excuses. In fact, when he led an effort to establish new corporate values, No. 1 was “Customers Rule.”
With the actions to back up the words coming directly from the top, you can guess how Vovici’s employees relate to their customers, and what effect that’s had on the company. Since Greg came on board, Vovici has doubled its average deal size and boasts a customer retention rate of 93 percent. In July 2011, the market noticed too, as Vovici was acquired by Verint Systems for $76 million.
Compare that story to Brian, who was also the new CEO of a midsize company. Brian was a whip smart, successful guy who wanted to build a more collaborative company. He inherited a culture that could best be described as adrift, disjointed, and skeptical. In the absence of strong leadership there was a power vacuum from which individual fiefdoms had emerged. The last CEO had ruled with brute force and left heavy emotional carnage in his wake. People were territorial and protective.
Brian came in and saw that there was considerable talent in the company, but scarce collaboration. He gathered all the employees together for a staff meeting and announced that collaboration would be a core value of the group from this day forward. He knew that to role-model collaboration, he needed to be seen as someone who was in the trenches with his people. As Brian stood in front of his group, he meant every word that he said. His intentions were positive and pure.
In the daily chaos of work, however, things got tricky. Brian’s core nature was to be an introvert. As a former engineer, he loved to solve problems in his head. His analytical mind worked on hyperspeed; few people could match his intellect. Whenever there was a chance to collaborate with his colleagues to solve a vexing problem, Brian would default to solving it himself and presenting the answer. His team caught on pretty quickly that you shouldn’t waste too much time solving a problem when the boss is going to do it his way anyway. Brian’s heart was in the right place, but his actions simply didn’t support his intention. And his inspired speech about collaboration? Background noise.
We worked to find Brian new actions that supported collaboration. When issues arose, one approach was to hold short sessions immediately where Brian only asked questions to elaborate on the situation—withholding any and all answers. Then he let his team collaborate on solutions. His role was as a coach, not an omniscient guru. It was a difficult change for him, and a constant struggle to combat his own default action. There were times he wanted to scream, “Can’t you see the obvious right answer?” But awareness is the first step in change, and he moved perceptions over time. Brian gradually saw that while his employees may approach a problem from another direction, or even at a slower pace than he did, in the end the reward of an engaged team produced longer-term results and enhanced buy-in. He had a clear idea of what actions he should take—and avoid—to support his intention.
Intentional Acting Starts by Paying Attention
Actions are the communications we trust the most. Your work on presence won’t get off the ground unless you can begin to notice, and then to understand, and finally to change your micro- and macro-actions.
Right about now you may be thinking, “This is a lot to try and be intentional about. I have to set intentions about my presence in general, and then be intentional about my body language and my actions.” Remember one of the promises of this book: You don’t have to do everything. Pick and choose what works for you, and what gives you results. There are a lot of ways to improve your presence. Some of them will give you more leverage than others. It’s your call.
Key Takeaways from Chapter 2
1. Humans trust actions over all other forms of communications. Actions either underline or undermine your presence.
2. For clarity in your communications, you must have alignment between your intention and your actions, both through micro-actions, such as body language, and macro-actions, such as how you spend your time.
3. You already know how to have perfectly aligned body language in situations where you feel comfortable.
4. Your body naturally knows when it’s out of alignment with your intentions. You can monitor your own body language when you give yourself the opportunity to self-observe.
5. Most people need to smile more, especially at work. It improves your presence to others and reinforces good thoughts for yourself.
6. Your actions are like a red blinking light that signals to others “This is important to me.”
Ideas I Want to Try from Chapter 2:
