Power Cues: The Subtle Science of Leading Groups, Persuading Others, and Maximizing Your Personal Impact by Nick Morgan
Let’s talk about power cues.
Which really means – let’s talk about the sort of advice that you can stash in your wonder-woman-at-work file. (or superman file if you prefer)
Things like this: when feeling unconfident, duck into the bathroom or an empty meeting room and adopt a super woman pose (hands on hips, feet wide apart) for ten minutes. Do this and you’ll start to automatically feel more confident.
Sounds a little nutz, but if you don’t believe me then watch this Ted video by Amy Cuddy.
I digress – back to this book on seven power cues. Adopt them and (according to the author) become a become the type of leader that walks into a room and charms the pants off everyone.
To avoid any suspense – here’s the seven cues: self awareness, non-verbal communication, unconcious messages, your voice, signals you send, intiutition (unconcious mind) and telling stories.
And a few of my favourite tips from the book…
7 tips on ramping up your power
(headings = mine, quotes all directly from the book)
1. Get focused baby
“…charisma is quite simple. It’s focused emotion.”
2. Faking it really does work
“In other words, sometimes it does help to fake it until you make it! Or more precisely, you can work from either the inside out, that is, from emotion to gesture, or the outside in, that is, from gesture to emotion. The two approaches complement one another.”
3. Tell stories
“Great leaders are great storytellers. These leaders know that they must tell powerful stories to engage and enlist their followers.”
4. Use gestures – and help your brain (seriously)
“But Goldin-Meadow is honing in on a further aspect of gesture and speech, one that has fascinating implications for why we gesture. As she puts it, ‘If you gesture, it lightens your cognitive load.’ By that, she means that it takes less mental effort to speak while gesturing. “
5. Pose like superwoman
“Indeed, the research shows that if you simply adopt the pose of a strong, confident person, your body will respond by making more of the right kind of hormones, the hormones consistent with good kinds of excitement and stress, and less of the negative ones.”
6. Match your words with your body lanaguage (and vice versa)
“How then do you increase your own charisma? First, increase your authenticity. That means being absolutely aligned in what you say and how you say it—content and body language.”
7. Subtly copy (or mirror) non verbals
“In other words, you can get a 33 percent salary bump simply by mirroring your potential boss. Mirroring pays.”
I think the key phase in that last tip is be subtle about it! I’m sure your boss would find it a little strange if you started copying their every move.
Want to delve into the tips? Grab the book here.
Happy reading,
C x
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