What does your smile say about you?
“Russians don’t smile-it’s a cultural thing”-so said a journalist on BBC Radio 4 recently as the nation prepared to host the global spectacle of the FIFA World Cup. Official welcoming staff were being given lessons in how to smile and prescribed “laughter therapy” involving practicing deep belly laughs. Russia is clearly taking to heart the old Jewish proverb, “Don’t open a shop, unless you know how to smile”. No doubt the general idea being the host nation wants visitors to feel welcome and appreciated to maximise commercial opportunities and change the global image of Russia.
It begs the questions why might the nation be so glum in the first place, is it true and what can we learn from it. Decades of repression under the old Soviet regime did a lot of damage to the general mood of the nation. In the bad old days, apparently people were stopped and questioned if they were caught smiling “for no reason”-it was considered highly suspicious and a sign of idiocy! The idea of laughter therapy, whilst comic to watch is not quite as bizarre as it might first seem and resonates with the work of Amy Cuddy on Power Posing as being proven to actually change hormone levels and as a result outcomes. See https://tinyurl.com/b5rcgnl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc
What about when it comes to presenting to investors or pitching for business? We are often asked “how should I start?”. We advise that execs start with a smile and a pause for the simple reason if you want to engage with an audience you first have to connect on an emotional level. The usual response is your audience will be to smile back at you. If they smile, it relaxes them, making them feel positive and receptive towards you and your message. If you can make them laugh, even better- hence the old idea of the salesman telling a joke. But you can’t just give them any old smile- there are smiles and there are smiles. A fake smile, which does not involve the eyes and teeth, is really more of a grimace and will have a negative impact.
We once worked with a client with one of the Big Four Audit firms who wasn’t winning as many pitches as he should or wanted. He was very competent Partner with many years’ experience so to find out the problem we recorded and analysed his voice, facial expressions and gestures using our Personal Presence Analysis? diagnostic tool. See https://tinyurl.com/y9l496ao
His report revealed a fundamental problem-his most common facial expression was one of utter contempt! We saved him many hours weekend work on his slides and focused on solving the actual problem.
Anyway back to those Russians. If you don’t believe in the transformational effect of a smile watch this:
A final word…If you meet someone who isn’t smiling, why not give them one of yours.