From the course: Communicating with Confidence

Move with purpose and impact while communicating

From the course: Communicating with Confidence

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Move with purpose and impact while communicating

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- I hear my students say this to me all the time, especially those who come from the corporate world. They'll say things like this, "Vin, no, I got denied a promotion because my manager told me I lack executive presence." Executive presence" I mean, what does that even mean?" What they usually mean by this is a lack of vocal presence and a lack of physical presence. You can enhance your vocal presence by increasing your vocal variety, especially your volume, and you can enhance your physical presence by learning how to move around with your body. When people don't know how to move around, do you know what they tend to do? Especially their body? Do you know what they do? They just sway from side to side. That's a classic one. And then another one is they kind of sway forward and back, back and forth. And then if it gets really bad, they sway in all different directions. And then while they're talking, they're just moving all over the place. And do you know what this does when you move around like this? It makes people think you're not confident, it makes people think you don't know what you are saying, and it also makes you come across with less executive presence. The biggest rule in movement is only move with purpose. Here are three reasons why you should move, and outside of these reasons, don't move. Number one, move to show a change in time. So just write this down. It can come across a little confusing, but write this down. Time is represented for you when you're speaking to other people. When it comes to time, the past is always on your right and the future is always on your left. And when I do this, it's going to feel a little bit strange to you because you're going to be like, "Wait, that doesn't seem right. It seems like it's the opposite." It's the opposite because you're standing opposite the other person. And remember, when you're communicating to others, you want to communicate in a way that makes sense to them. So again, I always remember the past is to my right and the future is to my left. So when I'm talking about the past, I can move towards my right. When I'm talking about the future, I can move towards my left. And all of a sudden, this is a meaningful way to use movement. Number two, you can move to show a change in growth. All right, and things grow also from the right to the left. Started in the bottom, now we are here, right? And the third thing you can do is you can use movement to show sequence. So you can say, look, the first thing we're going to talk about is this. The second thing we're going to talk about is this. And then the third thing we're going to talk about is this. So all of a sudden you can use movement to show sequence. Again, reminder, things grow, numbers grow from right to left, your right to your left. These are the foundational reasons for movement. And if you're moving for these reasons, that's fantastic. It means you're following the rule. Only move with purpose. As you think about movement and as you think about enhancing your executive presence, keep that rule in mind.

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