[jsteele]

I wonder if this book has any novel information that isn't available in the dozens of other books on the subject, or in the one I read fifteen years ago that covered all the examples in the Forbes article.

Although I've found it occasionally amusing at interviews and meetings, since reading that one book many years ago, to lead other people through series of posture changes, or to make some overconfident fool drop his alpha posture by adopting the same, in general these techniques are for bullshitters. If you're touching your neck because you feel uneasy/unsure, DO something about that. Don't find ways to appear competent, confident, whatever -- be competent, confident, whatever by knowing what you're doing and talking about.

These postures, gestures, etc. will flow naturally from the ease and confidence of having achieved something honestly. Like Lupe Fiasco says: The wings don't make you fly and the crown don't make you king.

[nonrecursive]

I wonder, however, if adopting the body language of the way you want to feel will make you actually feel that way, in the same way that adopting a facial expression will make you feel the corresponding emotion.

And with your suggestion to "be competent, confident, whatever by know what you're doing and talking about. These postures, gestures, etc, will flow naturally" - from personal experience I know that being competent does not automatically make me feel competent or confident, and it certainly doesn't make me appear that way.

I can easily see how these techniques can be used for bullshitters, but at the same time it might be necessary for someone learning how to honestly feel differently to know how to act differently.

Have you ever seen the Dog Whisperer? This guy Cesar Milan works with dogs with huge behavioral problems. With a dog that's incredibly fearful, he sometimes takes its tail and physically lifts it up, so it's in the position that a confident dog would hold its tail. When Cesar does this, the fearful dog becomes noticeably calmer. That's not the only thing Cesar does, but addressing the dog's "body language" definitely helps. Probably the same kind of thing works with humans too.

[wallflower]

> Have you ever seen the Dog Whisperer?

Cesar Milan's body language communicates to dogs and humans that he is the leader.

"When Cesar walked down the stairs of Patrice and Scott's home then, and crouched down in the back yard, JonBee looked at him, intently. And what he saw was someone who moved in a very particular way. Cesar is fluid. "He's beautifully organized intra-physically," Karen Bradley, who heads the graduate dance program at the University of Maryland, said when she first saw tapes of Cesar in action. "That lower-unit organization—I wonder whether he was a soccer player." Movement experts like Bradley use something called Laban Movement Analysis to make sense of movement, describing, for instance, how people shift their weight, or how fluid and symmetrical they are when they move, or what kind of "effort" it involves. Is it direct or indirect—that is, what kind of attention does the movement convey? Is it quick or slow? Is it strong or light—that is, what is its intention? Is it bound or free—that is, how much precision is involved? If you want to emphasize a point, you might bring your hand down across your body in a single, smooth motion. But how you make that motion greatly affects how your point will be interpreted by your audience. Ideally, your hand would come down in an explosive, bound movement—that is, with accelerating force, ending abruptly and precisely—and your head and shoulders would descend simultaneously, so posture and gesture would be in harmony. Suppose, though, that your head and shoulders moved upward as your hand came down, or your hand came down in a free, implosive manner—that is, with a kind of a vague, decelerating force. Now your movement suggests that you are making a point on which we all agree, which is the opposite of your intention. Combinations of posture and gesture are called phrasing, and the great communicators are those who match their phrasing with their communicative intentions—who understand, for instance, that emphasis requires them to be bound and explosive. To Bradley, Cesar had beautiful phrasing."

"What the Dog Saw" by Malcolm Gladwell

http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_05_22_a_dog.html

[bingaman]

Any suggestions for books of this sort? I've never read anything on the subject, and just realized how many of these I've been doing without realizing. (Especially "I'm the boss", oops.)