Do you feel like you make a statement when you walk into a room? Some believe that charisma is an innate skill limited to a lucky few, but the truth is anyone can develop the social skills to make their presence felt.
During this Meetup Live recording with Tatiana Kolovou, you’ll learn to curate a powerful and provocative presence. Tatiana will walk you through essential verbal and non-verbal behaviors to increase likability, persona building with a focus on warmth and competence, as well as off-putting practices to avoid so that you fully engage others and stand out in a crowd. Watch to improve your presence and communicate more effectively.
Main Takeaways:
- Our first words in a one-on-one conversation or in a presentation are critical and should include both warmth and competence.
- Presence comprises 5 characteristics:
- Your authentic brand, the presence you cultivate should be authentically you.
- Your projection of that competence and warmth depends on the audience and depends on the context.
- Your ability to deliver compelling and memorable messages.
- Ability to read an audience to know who you are communicating with
- Confident, open, audience-relevant body language.
- Posture is the #1 leadership component. You want to look relaxed, but it’s also important to look attentive and engaged.
- Eye contact communicates a strong presence.
- Facial expressions are a critical form of communication.
- Hand gestures can be easily distracting. Our body instinctively tries to protect itself when speaking to larger groups of people, we tend to do different gestures in front of our body. It’s important to practice relaxing your hands in a neutral position.
Top Q&A Questions and Resources:
- What are some tips for introverts who are sometimes uncomfortable with direct eye contact?
- Take time to demonstrate that you’re listening. If you are speaking and need a second to think, look up to the right versus the floor. Looking at the floor demonstrates that you are nervous. You can also look at your notes to relieve some eye contact.
- Is speaking in public the only way of improving speech and confidence?
- You can practice in private when recording yourself with some of the suggested apps. You can also call someone, tell them you want to leave a message for practice, then play it back to improve your speaking.
- Please speak on developing warmth more, do you have any references that can help?
- Warmth comes from the way you start a conversation. Instead of being very direct saying “Do you know what are we doing today”, you can say, “I hope my email finds you doing well,” or “It was nice to see you yesterday,” if it’s in writing. This also applies in a face-to-face conversation. If you are perceived as cold, think of how to build rapport. Start with an introductory comment, or remember something that you conversed with the person from a previous conversation, making it a little bit more relational.
Resources:
- Tatiana’s LinkedIn
- Linkedin Stronger Newsletter
- Authentic Elevator Pitch course
Last modified on October 11, 2022
