Before initiating a conversation, a person judges & assess you by your body language. Not everyone is an excellent body-language reader. But some subtle hints must be noticed. Be it in an interview or an office-meeting, stout & positive body language is essential. That’s why you should follow some Steps To Improve Your Body Language.
Body language can be your most vital key to achieving greater success if properly used. It can help you to develop positive professional relationships, influence & inspire the people who work for you, develop productivity, bond with your team members, & broaden your chance to appear as a successful leader.
Steps To Improve Your Body Language
1. Be Aware Of Your Facial Expressions
Facial expressions can speak louder than words. If you are having a conversation, but your facial expression is uninterested, angry, or confused, it’s noticeable to others.
Don’t be rude — ensure your face expresses a level of professionalism. Don’t appear to someone; you are not. Express according to the topic of discussion, even if it doesn’t interest you. Adapting a poker face isn’t helpful, either.
2. Maintain Eye Contact
One of the vital Steps To Improve Your Body Language & appear confident by maintaining eye contact in social interactions. This body language shows others that you are paying attention & comfortable.
Try to maintain eye contact about 60% of the time. If direct & continuous eye contact feels too daunting & awkward, try to look at a spot close to the person’s eyes, like the bottom of the nose or chin.
Maintaining eye contact with everyone while delivering a speech or presenting can be impossible. Brush through your eyes & ensure you are seeing them all.
3. Stand Tall & Occupy Space
Power, position, & confidence are nonverbally projected by the use of height & space. Keeping your position erect, your shoulders firm, & head held high makes you look confident.
If you walk around, the additional space you occupy strengthens the impression. If you are sitting, you can appear more confident by keeping both feet flat on the floor, keeping your arms away from your body (or placing one elbow on the back of your seat), & extending your things on the conference table to occupy more territory.
But ensure that by this gesture, you don’t make anyone feel you are aggressive or stealing their space. The key is to project & declare your space by allowing others to claim their spaces if they can & if they want.
4. Keep Your Vocal Pitch On A Lower Register
In your workplace, the quality & tone of your voice can decide how you are being seen. People with higher-pitched voices are viewed as less empathic, less confident & more nervous than people with lower-pitched but firm & clear voices.
One easy technique is to put your lips together & to hum. Doing that can relax your voice into its finest pitch. This is particularly helpful before you take a vital phone call – where the sound & pitch of your voice is so crucial.
5. Try A Power Pose
Various types of research into the effects of body language on confidence, conducted at various institutions, has proved that just holding your body in simple, “high-power” poses (such as leaning back with hands behind your head & keeping feet up on a desk, or standing with open arms & legs) for as little as two minutes generates higher levels of testosterone – the hormone connected to power & confidence – & brings down levels of cortisol, a stress hormone.
You can try this before your next vital business meeting or presentation to look & feel more confident & assertive. Besides causing hormonal shifts in both genders, these poses cause improved feelings of power & a higher acceptance of risk.
The studies also state that people are more often inspired by how they perceive you than your statements. Striking a Power pose is one of the vital Ways to Improve Body Language.
6. Always Use Open Gestures
Keeping your movements relaxed & confident, using open arm gestures, & showing the palms of your hands is the ultimate way of stating you have nothing to hide. These are silent signals of reliability & sincerity. People with open gestures are perceived to be more positive & convincing than people with closed gestures (like arms crossed, hands hidden or held near the body, etc.)
In addition, if you keep your arms at waist level, & gesture within that surface, most audiences will think you to be more assured & convincing.
7. Don’t Fiddle
Fiddling is an obvious sign of anxiety, boredom & nervousness. Try to appear more confident by keeping fiddling to a minimum. Various nervous movements, such as bouncing your knee, tapping your fingers on a table, playing with your hair, or clicking a pen, take attention away from your statement & make it hard for the audience to focus on your message. It also makes you appear unconfident & not serious.
8. Cut Down Nervous Gestures
When we feel nervous or stressed, we all try to calm down with some type of self-touching, nonverbal actions: We rub our hands together frequently, bounce our feet, tap our fingers on the desk, play with our jewellery or watch, twirl our hair, bite our nails – & when we do any of such things, we immediately lose our statements of reliability.
If you catch yourself doing any of such behaviours, take a deep breath & make yourself relaxed by keeping your feet firmly on the floor & your hands in your lap, on the desk or the table. Tranquillity conveys a message that you are calm & confident.
Importance Of Positive Body Language
Body language is of the highest significance in this highly cutthroat world. Before taking Steps To Improve Your Body Language, you must know & realize the importance of positive body language:
Confident Behavior: Positive body language helps the person to be more confident & helps to put their opinion forward more easily & confidently than others.
Non-verbal Communication: Since non-verbal communication can either stress our point or oppose it, it is essential to keep our body language in tune with our emotions & statements.
Professional Success: Positive body language is a must in professional life & corporate environment. Positive body language can help build team spirit in the workplace, which can also improve the employees’ spirits.
Relationships: Be it personal or professional, positive body language will help you to develop, foster & maintain healthy relationships. Whereas a negative one will wreak them.
Public Speaking: If you are delivering a speech to the public or presenting in an office meeting. Positive body language will help you to keep your audience more engaged & speech more effective.
FAQs
Q: Can faking positive body language be effective?
A: You know what they say, “fake it, until you make it.” Faking positive body language can bring out the needed positivity.
Q: Can positive body language help me to read the body language of others?
A: Positive or negative, we all possess some level of observation & intelligence to read others’ body language.
Q: Are there any books that can help me improve my body language?
A: There are plenty of such books. Here are some of them:
- Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan Pease.
- Without Saying a Word by Kasia Wezowski.
- The Power of Body Language by Tonya Reiman.
- Louder Than Words by Joe Navarro.
- Winning Body Language by Mark Bowden.
