When we think of boxing matches, and what helps an opponent win or lose in the ring, most of us think of strength, speed, and agility. And these are all true. But as many professional boxers will tell you, a lot happens before the opponents even set foot in the arena, before the first punch is ever thrown. The way the fighters carry themselves, how impressive and intimidating they can make themselves appear to be, is also key.

Though you may not realize it, your subconscious mind is constantly scanning your surroundings as you move through your environment to glean the information you need to keep moving forward. Your eyes scan and assess potential obstacles, including other people in your way. To determine whether you need to modify your route to avoid them, you read their body language without even realizing it.

If they’re broadcasting a body language that says “you better move aside, baby” you will most likely pick it up and make way for them. Conversely, if you feel you’re the bigger gorilla, you’ll stay your course and expect them to deviate.

Right now, imagine a very large gorilla. A rival has just breached his territory, and the gorilla is furious. He goes charging through the jungle, reaches the top branch of the top tree, and there, wants to broadcast his presence to all around and intimidate the rival off his territory. What would he do? He’d likely inflate his chest and pound it with his fists—both these actions have the effect of making him look bigger. The pounding makes him loud and scary. That’s what a gorilla charging through the jungle wants to look like: big, loud, and scary. In human terms, we read confidence the same way: how much space people are willing to take up.

Says Deborah Gruenfeld, Organizational Behavior professor at Stanford business school, “Powerful people sit sideways on chairs, drape their arms over the back, or appropriate two chairs by placing an arm across the back  of an adjacent chair. They put their feet on the desk. They sit on the desk”— all this, she says, as ways of claiming space.

The next time you’re out in a crowded environment, practice getting people to move aside for you. You could even do this on your way to work. First, visualize what a big gorilla would look like charging down the street. Then get into the body language. Imagine you’re a big gorilla about to go charging down the street and let your body express that. Take up as much space as you can! Inflate your chest and charge through the crowd. You might even swing your arms as you go, taking up yet more space.

When you first start trying out this confident body language, it can feel a little scary. But it’s well worth it. What’s the worst that can happen? You bump into someone. Use that as an opportunity to practice switching into ‘kindness charisma’ with a quick visualization to increase your warmth. Imagine the person you’ve just bumped into is a good friend or see them with angel wings.

Your job is to learn how to take up space and to get comfortable doing it.

As Stanford’s Gruenfeld found, people who assume expansive poses (taking up more space) experience a measurable physiological shift: in one experiment, assertiveness- and energy- promoting hormones rose by 19 percent, while anxiety hormones fell by 25 percent.

Assuming a strong, confident physical posture will make you feel more confident and more powerful. As you feel more powerful, your body language adapts accordingly. This in turn gives you yet another biochemical boost, and the cycle builds upon itself. All you have to do is get the cycle going, and if you keep practicing, confident body language confidence will become second nature.

This was part of the toolkit I presented this morning at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for the Presence Initiative 

Imagine a time when most people were still living in small tribes. One morning, two tribesmen set out together to seek food for the day. As they reach the edge of the jungle, they decide to separate so they can cover more ground.

One of the tribesmen is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky lad who tends to notice and appreciate all things bright and beautiful. As he moves through the jungle, he delights in the natural beauty surrounding him.

The other tribesman tends to focus on everything dark and negative, and always dread the worst possible outcome for any situation. As he goes along the path, every time a twig snaps, he goes on high alert: “Oh, this could be a saber tooth tiger!”.

Life is much less pleasant for this tribesman. With this quickly-triggered fight-or-flight response, he floods his body with stress hormones, and may suffer from many stress-induced ailments. However, he is also more likely to come out of the jungle alive.

The cheerful tribesman, on the other hand, when hearing a twig snap, would perhaps just enjoy the sound, and continue delighting in the forest. Perhaps he’d even assume “Oh, this could be a beautiful bird!” And he will certainly be happier. But sooner or later he is also going to be eaten.

We are the product of the tribesmen who survived, thanks to their tendency to look out for danger, to imagine worst-case scenarios, to react with internal negativity, and to act accordingly.

You know those moments when you have an important decision to make, and there are pros and cons on each side, and you just can’t decide which way to go? Here’s one easy, and surprisingly effective, trick to finding out what your “deep essential self” really wants: flip a coin.

The trick lies in, first, absolutely convincing yourself that however this plays out, is what you will do. Make this coin-flipping decision as “real” as possible.

Second, be prepared to pay very close attention to your physical reactions in the split-second when the coin lands and you realize the implications.

Your physical reactions are a direct access to your subconscious mind, which does not express itself in words, but in feelings. That’s why your physical sensations in those first seconds give you direct access to how your subconscious feels about something.

You only get a tiny window, though: within seconds, your conscious mind will slam back in.

Think Steve Jobs was always this charismatic on stage? Think again.

When he first presented the Macintosh in 1984, he spends most of his time hiding behind the lectern. He’s reading from his notes, and has zero engagement with the audience. His body language is low-confidence, displaying hunched shoulders; often looking down (he frequently seems to be looking at his shoes.) He seems bashful, awkward, shy.

By 1996, he’s walking around the stage, clearly more comfortable and confident. He’s speaking more fluidly, looking at the audience, taking questions and answering as he goes along. He’s now looking straight ahead. However, overall, he still seems awkward, stiff, like the Tin Man character in the Wizard of Oz movie. He uses far too many useless gestures, with ‘umms’ and ‘ahs’ punctuating his sentences.

The Steve Jobs of 2000, announcing his return as CEO of Apple and introducing the Apple G4 is a different animal altogether. He’s a showman now. He owns the stage. His eye contact is now outstanding. Hand gestures are few, and are now deliberately.

His speech is carefully orchestrated, he uses theatrical techniques throughout his presentation. In fact, he’s using the same techniques as professional magicians. Five minutes into the G4  presentation, the image is striking: just like a magician in a black cape, with a black hat, pulling out a white rabbit, here’s Steve in his black top, against a black background, with a black pouch, pulling out a white G4 cube.

His verbal language is much more concise. The “one more thing” is now a inside joke; some people think it’s his creation. In fact, he may have gotten that from the defunct TV show Columbo. The great charismatic masters aren’t afraid to copy, imitate, and outright steal…

Theatrics and magicians’ tricks will become a hallmark of his; you can see them again in his 2005 presentation introducing the iPod Nano: revealing the small white Nano that had been hidden in his pocket throughout the presentation, to the oohs and aahs of the audience.

Just like in film, he’s using close-ups to direct audience’s attention to where he wants it to go.

By 2007, his body language is now so understated, casual, comfortable. He could be speaking from his living room.

His confidence shows not just in his body language, but in his deliberate, dramatic use of silence: he’s comfortable making the audience wait for his next words. In fact, he plays with the audience; he teases the audience.

By 2011, he expresses humanity and vulnerability. He expresses awe and wonder, not just pride. He makes fun of himself, and of Apple. He actually talks about his products’ defects (and jokes about them). But he’s lost energy. He’s relying more on the data; less on his own presence and ‘wow’ effect. Even brings other people up on stage. One could say he’s past his peak, as far as pure stage charisma goes.

Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets: An excellent “How To Present Like Steve” PowerPoint guide.

Let’s say you’re in the middle of a presentation, and you suddenly make a mistake. You stutter, you say the wrong thing, you miss a bit, or your mind simply goes blank.

if you start beating yourself up for this, you risk launching your “fight or flight response” and effectively shutting down your brain’s ability to think rationally. Which is probably the last thing you want to do in that particular situation.

When our internal mental critics act up, they can generate an automatic “threat response” or “fight or flight response.” Because our brains can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality, internal mental are perceived just as would be real, saber-tooth-tiger attack. The body directs all its resources towards crucial fighting capabilities such as oxygen flow; muscle reaction; and so forth—and shuts down such unnecessary functions such as cognitive reasoning.

So what to do?

if you’re lucky to notice the self-recriminating thoughts before the corresponding emotions fully blossom, aim for a quick perspective shift. This is called “cognitive reappraisal”, and works better than trying to suppress emotions.
Just considering, even for a second, the mistake you just made as a GOOD thing, can be enough to stop the fight-or-flight response in its tracks. The brain’s first reaction to new concepts is to accept them as valid; disbelief takes a split-second longer; and in that interval, you can have moved on already. You can tell yourself, for instance, that mistakes were purposefully used by business moguls and entertainers alike to make themselves more likeable to the audience.

Frank Sinatra would carefully mess up his shirt collar before stepping on stage. Sam Walton (the founder of Walmart) would purposefully drop his notes on his way to the lectern. You’re in good company.

If the self-recriminating emotions have already arisen, you’re going to need to activate the “parasympathetic nervous system” to quiet them down. The fastest way to do this is to flood your body with oxytocin.

To this end, you can:
1. Aim to access the feeling of gratitude. Find little things, right then and there, in the moment, that you can be grateful for; whatever they may be: your ability to breathe; or knowing that however this experience goes, you WILL come out alive.You can also aim for compassion; whether for yourself or someone else: any thought which fills you with compassion will flood your system with oxytocin.

2. Imagine getting a great hug from someone you trust for twenty seconds (of course, you may not have 20 seconds, but when you do, this is remarkably effective)

Once your threat response is quieted down, to bring yourself back into a state of confidence, remember a moment in your life— near or far— when you felt absolutely triumph. Thanks to your brain’s inability to distinguish memory from present day, your body will be filled with the same cocktail of chemicals (yes, we’re helping you play chemist with your brain), thereby morphing your body language into exactly what you need to be impressive, persuasive and inspiring again.

Charisma may be one of the few factors to enhance performance on creative tasks. Since Dan Ariely’s research showed that for tasks that require thinking, memory and other complex cognitive functioning, financial incentives can actually diminish people’s capacity for creativity and innovation,8 the million-dollar-question has been: how, then, to encourage creativity?

“Individual studies have linked charismatic leadership to employee trust and cooperation, performance on creative tasks, and intrinsic motivation.” This may be due to the ability charismatic people have to get people to like them; because  the degree of “positive affect” (warmth and affection) a leader can generate in his followers  seems to be a critical determinant of performance on creative tasks.

In addition, charisma may be the only way for us to get creativity to rise through the ranks; and /or to ensure that creatively-minded people can rise to positions of leadership. Indeed, alarming studies11 indicate that the expression of creative ideas diminished perception of leadership potential unless the person expressing them was seen as charismatic.

It’s worth repeating: non-charismatic people who expressed creative solutions during an interaction were viewed as having lower leadership potential, and this, even in a sample of employees working in jobs that required creative problem solving.

Why on earth would this be? The studies’ authors point to preconceived notions as possible culprits.  Our commonly held stereotypes of “creative people” and “effective leaders” may seem incompatible. But that explanation doesn’t completely work, because the prejudice did not affect the perceptions of competence.

Whatever the cause, the effect remains. And one could imagine the consequences: either the aspiring leaders learn to  refrain from expressing creativity; or they keep on expressing it but don’t rise to leadership level. Either way, this would propagate a dearth of creativity in leadership level, and this is a cost we can’t afford. What organization can survive, let alone thrive, while repressing creativity?

The most celebrated hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky, was known for saying that the reason for his success was his ability to predict where the puck was going to be.

That means he could get into the other players’ heads, understand them well enough to be able to predict the moves they’d make.

If that’s not psychology, I don’t know what is.

Psychology comes from the greek psycho / logia  (ψϒχο  λογια), the science of the mind. Lee Iacocca often mentioned that the most valuable lessons he ever learnt were given to him by his undergraduate psychology courses.

At a certain level, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all a mind game. Like it or not, you’re playing them anyway. You might as well equip yourself to play as best as you can.

• When people are sitting across from each other with a table dividing them, they speak in shorter sentences, are more likely to argue, and can recall less of what was said.

• Employees perceived managers who stayed behind their desks when interacting as less fair minded, less prepared to listen and more likely to show favoritism.

• Only 10% of patients reported feeling at ease when the doctor sat behind a desk; versus 55%  without a desk.

• Respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure rapidly increase when a person sits with his back to an open space, particulalry where others are moving about. Tension is further increased if the person’s back is towards an open door or a window at ground level.

• Experimental jury deliberations revealed that the person sitting at the head of the table was chosen significantly more often as the leader; particularly if that person was perceived as being from a high economic status.

• Two of the researchers recommend placing the shyest, most introverted person at the head of the table, with their back to a solid wall; to notice the metamorphic (transformative) effect of a power position.

Excerpted and synthesized from the research of Allan & Barbara Pease, Stodtbeck and Hook and A.G. White.

ScienceDaily just reviewed a study, showing that “people ignore heroic pasts — or even count them against you — when assigning blame.”

In the experiments involved in this study, those who highlighted past suffering were held less responsible for transgressions and given less punishment.

In fact, this research finds that people had trouble even remembering the misdeeds of victims.

When we think of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), most of us picture people driven by the need to compulsively flicking light switches ten times in a row; or wash their hands twenty times a day.

It seems odd, alien; and perhaps we feel pity for those who are in the grip of such unfortunate mental states. But the truth is, we all have a certain degree of OCD.

Imagine you’re dealing with a difficult situation, where the outcomes are uncertain.  You envision a variety of ways the situation could play out; and you strategize how to best deal with each. So far, so good.

Once you’ve thought through each scenario, the rational, reasonable, logical thing to do would be
to put the situation out of your mind, and go about your day until action is actually called for.

But how many of us have felt our minds going over the different outcomes again and again, rehashing the various plans we’ve made, replaying possible scenarios? Mentally rehearsing the upcoming conversations not just once or twice, but ad nauseam?

In large part, this stems from our natural human tendency to be uncomfortable with uncertainty. (if this is of interest, please let me know, I’ll explain further in the next issue)

And here’s where we can start parallels with the field of OCD. Because at heart, compulsive habits are a way for  people to feel safe, reassured, to stave off danger.

When Adam Berman, Executive Director of Berkeley’s Center for Innovation, asked me to create a program to help business executives better navigate and embrace uncertainty, he suggested we examine the tools OCD experts had devised, and see which ones might be applicable within a business context.

One of the most effective was the transfer of responsibility. We often feel the pressure to make the best possible choice or decision; and can feel the latent fear of failing in this endeavor.

What do we really fear about failure?  We fear the external consequences, of course, but often, we equally fear the internal consequences: the feeling of having failed, our internal critics going on a bloody rampage.

Whereas if the responsibility for success is transferred to an outside entity, we’re absolved from self-recrimination if things go wrong.

This is why transferring responsibility to God/ Fate/ whatever works for you can be such a relief, because the burden of optimization is lifted off your shoulders.

Even if you don’t have a pre-existing belief in an outside entity to transfer responsibility to, just imagining this possibility even for a few seconds (though you know it’s purely imaginary) can provide some modicum of comfort, thanks to our brains’ wonderful placebo effect, which works even when we know we’re self-deceiving.

You’ll find the transfer of responsibility process well explained in Jeff Bell’s When in Doubt, Make Belief.