Look and Learn Exercise

Activity:

1. The next time you’re in a meeting or at a social event, look around the room.

2. Watch carefully how people conduct themselves. Ask yourself who looks impressive and confident and who doesn’t. Now think about why you’ve categorised people in this way and make a list of the things people are doing that make them look impressive in your eyes.

3. Look carefully; you’re interested in how they behave – look for the subtle things as well as the more obvious things. Look at how they sit, how they engage people, how they use their body to reinforce their message, what they do with their hands and eyes, how they use their facial expressions. You’re looking for anything that makes them look good. Very importantly, you’re also looking for anything distracting that suggests they may lack confidence.

4. Then reflect on the list you’ve made – Ask yourself how close your own behaviour is to theirs. Try to copy the impressive body language you’ve seen and address the distracting elements if you see them in your own behaviour.

5. Have this list with you the next time you’re at an event where you need to come across charismatically. Do your best to replicate some of the confident behaviours you’ve identified.

6. Don’t try to achieve them all straight away though. Have a plan and focus on one or two each time. Don’t move on until you’re happy that the ones you’ve started with are working. Just by making some very subtle changes to your style, you’ll be amazed at how people respond more positively to you.

7. Don’t forget also to remember the negative points you listed too. These of course are things you don’t want to be doing.

8. Be disciplined – Reflect regularly on your body language to make sure you’re not slipping into any of those negative traps.