Body language: the new science of embodied leadership

It’s no secret how much body language matters for public speaking and leadership. The real secret is this: leaders who want executive presence (and the people who coach them) have been working on the wrong problem. Here’s how fixing the right problem helped one CEO land a $6.3 billion deal.

When professionals stand up to speak and the stakes are high, they want to appear confident and authoritative. They want to project “leader energy” and so they focus on what they do with their bodies in the moment – gesture, movement, eye contact, posture vocal projection and so on.

But teaching your body to stand or move or speak in certain ways won’t help you come across as a leader. You can’t convincingly perform leadership traits like confidence or authenticity – you have to embody them. What your audience sees and hears is an expression of the underlying state of your nervous system. Regulate that, and your body language will take care of itself. Don’t treat the symptom – treat the deeper cause.

Almost everything you can do to project authority in physical presence already happened before you walked through the door. This is the new science of “embodied leadership” applied to public speaking as “mindbody priming”.

Body-language coaching is a scam

Here’s how traditional coaching for public speaking used to work. The client delivers a presentation, recorded on video. The coach gives tips on voice, posture, stance, energy, engagement and so on. Performance and feedback – rinse and repeat. By round three, the client is always looking more confident, energised and dynamic.

It looks and feels like the coaching worked, but it didn’t. Frankly, you could call it a scam.

The main reason the client improved is this: delivering the same presentation three times, with friendly encouragement, has regulated their nervous system, relaxed their body, and got them into flow. The coach could have advised “that’s great – but next time wiggle your toes more” and the client still would have felt and performed great by round three.

This matters because public speaking training that directly targets body language doesn’t get results that endure, or translate into real-world performance. The fuzzy feeling at the end of a day of body-language coaching won’t be available the next time the client steps onto a stage or into a boardroom – with their nervous system starting from cold.

After 20 years of coaching on leadership communication, I spend very little time giving specific advice on body language. I target mind-body priming and embodied presence.

It is often counterproductive to focus on your body language while you are public speaking. It makes some people self-conscious. It uses up scarce attention that should be on content and persuasion and engagement. It makes it harder to get into a flow state. Worst of all, since you’re not Meryl Streep or Robert De Niro, deliberately trying to act or move in a particular way often looks fake. We’ve all cringed at over-trained speakers with lego-man hand gestures, cabin-crew smiles or creepy fixed eye contact.

Authenticity is everything

Your body already knows how to perform with genuine energy and flow. You do it without thinking when you have an animated conversation with friends and family, when you tell a joke, when you play with children.

Body and voice merit attention for public speaking precisely because this situation puts your neurophysiology in a state of alert. It’s normal, because the stakes are high. Most people don’t enjoy being in the spotlight and so are at least a little worried, anxious, or even anxious about looking anxious.

In this perfectly natural mild state of alert, your body doesn’t have access to the relaxed-but-energised presence that you want to project. Adrenalin and cortisol cause stiff posture, shallow breathing, quiet tense voice, low energy, small gestures and emotional reactivity. Traditional body-language coaching treats only these symptoms. Mindbody priming for embodied presence treats the root cause.

The $6.3 billion payoff

Here's an example of how it works and gets results – a true story from a client project.

A CEO and his team are about to pitch a US$6.3 billion infrastructure project to a panel of government ministers and aides. They’ve done all their technical preparation and we’ve been polishing the slide deck for weeks, optimising the information architecture and narrative for clarity and persuasion. We’ve rehearsed their presentation and Q&A for coaching on performance.

How should the CEO spend the last 15 minutes before the presentation?

In the past, he would have rehearsed one last time and then sat alone at his desk, flipping through the slides, reviewing the speaking notes or script, and trying to memorise the messaging and Q&A documents. But this time, he does something different.

He primes his body by taking a brisk walk around the building and up two flights of stairs, which helps his cardiovascular system to clear the stress hormones. He does three minutes of stretching exercises to relax the musculature on the front of his body for open and upright posture. He does three minutes of cranial and facial muscle pressure-point drills to prime his expression and open his jaw for voice projection. He puts in his AirPods and follows a three-minute guided breathing meditation, which clears his buzzing mind while also priming his diaphragm, thoracic and abdominal muscles for posture and vocal projection. He sits for 60 seconds in silent, clear-minded release.

His autonomic nervous system is regulated. His muscles are loose. His body is ready to perform, relaxed and energised.

He doesn’t like formal voice drills, so before the clients arrive, he warms up his vocal chords in animated conversation with his team. He tells a joke and chats about sport. His professional but relaxed energy is infectious, and sets the tone for them also to perform their best.

During the pitch, nobody even thinks about performance or body language. They’re in flow, and the authenticity shows. They score the deal.

Mindbody work is a true art and science of leadership embodiment. This article touched on one application – mindbody priming for public speaking.

Next steps

If you’re interested to learn more, here are some next steps:

• ISOC open Public Speaking training courses for individuals and small groups
• ISOC custom Public Speaking coaching for companies, executives, teams and VIPs
• Contact us to learn more about ISOC executive and leadership coaching

About Will

Will Hardie is a psychologist, journalist, strategist and coach with 25 years’ experience in 50+ countries as is one of the world’s leading communications advisors. He spent six years as chief advisor on communications for a well-known Prime Minister. Will is a Managing Partner at ISOC, where he specialises in executive coaching, public speaking, media training, crisis, positioning and strategy. He also works as a psychologist specialising in trauma, deconditioning, relationships and interpersonal communication.