Somatics: A Critical Leadership Tool

In a recent episode of The Leadership Gym , a bi-weekly class where leaders get to practice flexing their leadership skills for free, we were speaking about somatics in leadership and the benefits of knowing the role of the body in how we lead.

The role of the human mind in leadership is an area that has been extensively studied and written about since the ancient Egyptians , and thanks to all that research that spans millennia, there is much that we understand about behaviors that positively influence, inspire, motivate, and bring people together. For that reason, organizations spend billions of dollars each year on interventions and soft-skills training.? Globally, companies spend three hundred and fifty-seven billion dollars per year on training their people in soft skills and almost all of that training is dedicated to the psychology of personality and behavior.

One area that has not received as much attention is the role of the human body in how we think, feel, and act which is why I thought this would be a very fitting article in this week’s newsletter.

If you haven’t heard of the term somatics before, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Somatics is a term that is derived from the Greek word Soma , which literally means “Body”. In a nutshell, the body plays many different roles in leadership. In this newsletter, I would like to highlight two critical roles of the body, being the role of the body in communication, as well as, in how we think and feel.

Role No. 1 - The Body in Communication

For the past fifty or sixty years, a common understanding in the communications arena is that communication is fifty-five percent body language, thirty-eight percent tone of voice, and only seven percent being the actual words spoken . Some might be inclined to challenge the exact percentages, as they do tend to vary a little based on the 3C’s of Communication being: Context, Clusters, and Congruence, but I’m sure everyone can agree that non-verbal communication weighs much heavier than what is being said.

As a Neuroscientist, I have spent most of my career studying the Brain-Body Connection in leadership, which prompted me to write my first book: Headstrong Performance . In my years researching the brains of leaders, I learned that the process of speaking works in a top-down fashion. Where the pre-frontal cortex thinks of what to say, then sends signals into the body to execute the speech, the emotional centers, deep in the subconscious regions of the brain, also signal the body to display the feelings, memories, and moods associated with the situation and the receiver of the information. What this means is that the communicator, the person speaking, will place a tremendous amount of value in what they want to say because that is part of their conscious process, but the ultimate delivery of the message will be a cocktail of what is being said and the subconscious display of emotions, feelings, and moods. Unfortunately for the speaker, this latter process is subconscious and thus falls outside their awareness, unless they are extremely well-trained in mindfulness.

Interestingly,? The receiver receives information from the speaker in a bottoms-up order, which is the opposite of the speaker. What this means is that the receiver processes the receiving information in their bodies (through their senses) first, which then travels up into the brain through the emotional centers, creating an emotional response, which finally ends up in the prefrontal cortex where the receiver tries to make sense of what they are hearing and experiencing.

With the immense amount of information and signals sent from the speaker’s body to the body of the receiver, accurately interpreting what someone is saying is nothing short of a miracle. In fact, it is so rare, that in most cases we don’t accurately interpret what the other person is saying, instead we just use our own imagination and bias to assume that we are accurately interpreting what is being said.

In my book, Five Energies of Horrible Bosses and How Not To Become One , I share valuable research conducted by Dr. Bruce Lipton and others that shows how the cocktail of information sent between the bodies of a speaker and a receiver is transmitted in the form of energy and that our bodies are always communicating through the projection of energy even when we are not speaking.

Why is this relevant? Well, for the simple reason that you are communicating all the time, even when you are not speaking. What research shows is that we project energy in different frequencies depending on our thoughts, feelings, and moods, but also depending on our physical health and fitness. In other words, your body is always playing a certain tune that people in your environment feel. For example, if you are in a great mood and you’re in a body that is feeling energized and light, you will infect your environment with light and fun energy, which many will interpret as positive energy. On the other hand, if you wake up exhausted, stressed, and possibly in a serious mood, your body is going to sing a very different tune that people in your environment will pick us.

Here’s what’s powerful about this. As the leader, you set the tone of the whole office, just by being present. And do you know what’s even more powerful? The energy you are projecting doesn’t stop at the skin of your recipients, but actually enters their bodies and alters their DNA. Yes, as the leader, simply how you are being present is changing the DNA of your people. Therefore, you have the power to either change your people’s DNA for the better, so they feel safe, energized, healthier, and more engaged, or you can change their DNA for the worse. How is that for deep impact?

Based on this, you can see why the body of a leader is such a critical tool in leadership. Using the 55/38/7 percent rule, simply believing that leadership is strictly a shoulder’s up domain could reduce leadership effectiveness by up to ninety-three percent.

Role No. 2 - The Body in Decision Making

In her 2012 TED Talk: Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are , Social Psychologist, Amy Cuddy explains that body language research shows that when we display a posture of confidence, we begin to feel more confident. What she is implying is that the body doesn’t only display to the world what we are thinking and feeling, but maybe more importantly, that the posture of the body shapes what we think and feel.

As I mentioned earlier, the body connects to the brain through the spinal cord and emotional centers first. Different postures and mannerisms trigger different responses in the brain. If you’re struggling to believe me, try telling yourself you’re having a bad day while smiling. It will feel very different from when you use a serious facial expression. The reason for this is that your facial muscles are directly connected to your amygdala like a two-way street. When we feel something, the brain sends signals to the facial muscles to express what we are feeling, which is an involuntary response. On the other hand, when we voluntarily activate our facial muscles, the emotional centers in the brain also fire up. This effect is not limited to the facial muscles but involves all muscles in the body.

From reading this, you might say: “So, I can use my body to change how I feel, but how does that help in leadership and Decision Making?”. That’s a great question. The answer to that is that how we feel directly impacts what we think and what we pay attention to. For example, if you are feeling stressed because you need to come up with a solution to a problem, your brain is going to think about the cause of your stress and will begin to pay attention to things that are either causing the stress or focus on how to get away from the stressor. Either way, your stress has just resulted in you putting on blinders that limit your ability to see opportunities and solutions in your peripheral vision.

Instead, if you are feeling stressed because you can’t come up with a solution, try changing the shape of your body (and facial expressions) to a body that is not stressed. The change in sensation will trick your brain into feeling different about your situation, thus removing the blinders and giving you access to parts of your brain needed for creativity, innovation, and problem-solving.

Much of the work that we do at Level V Partners is to help Leaders and Teams work with their bodies and minds in a way that opens the door to greater possibilities in how they collaborate, perform, and lead. If you haven’t explored the power of your body in leadership and want to make a greater impact on your team or people, I highly recommend looking more deeply into how you can use somatics as your leadership tool.

Marcel Daane, MSc Neuroscience of Leadership, PCC

As a late teenager, Marcel was diagnosed with Clinical Depression and Anxiety because of the harsh realities of life in exile that he endured as the son of a South African Freedom Fighter. Despite the tremendous challenges Marcel endured living with a mental illness that initially took him down a dark path of alcoholism and attempted suicide, Marcel’s salvation eventually came in the form of studying Martial Arts, Energy Healing, and Neuroscience where he learned to develop a new relationship with his mental health that offers many fresh and unique perspectives to how we live and work.

Years later, Marcel has emerged as a multi-award-winning Executive Leadership Coach and Author of two critically acclaimed leadership books where he leverages his unique mental abilities to help high-profile leaders access even deeper levels of wisdom, knowledge, and intuition for better decision-making, confidence, strategy, and presence.