Tag Archives: body language

Leadership Mints Series Sampler: AIRING YOUR MESSAGE

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Remember the first time you got the urge to play your air guitar?

That’s body language — a genuine outer expression of an inner impression.

And it comes from the heart and soul based on authentic feelings.

Guitarists in particular and music fans in general note that playing the air guitar first took root in America in 1969 when authentic feelings flowed on stage at Woodstock.

At least that’s how Smithsonian magazine’s April White captures the vibrations and rhythm of the first air guitar performance on a public stage.

“Joe Cocker could feel the music channeling through his body as he began his final number on the Woodstock stage.

“With one hand the singer mimed the song’s opening piano notes, and then as the drums kicked in, Cocker lifted his left arm and swung his right in front of his body in perfect time with the dramatic first chords of his hit:

With a Little Help From My Friends. There in front of hundreds of thousands Joe Cocker was playing the air guitar.”

Authentic gestures — like Joe Cocker ‘s impressive and expressive 51-second air-guitar playing — project a sense of integrity and sincerity.

Authenticity like that earns trust and credibility from an even more engaged audience.

And authenticity like that stirs greater memorability and mobility from an even more motivated audience to act on your message.

Indeed your body speaks long before you do.

To help you develop even more authentic body language in general and presentation skills in particular, consider purchasing a copy of SPEAKING Like a Leader, a 298-page book now available on Amazon.com.

SPEAKING Like a Leader is part of the Leadership Mints Series that also includes a book on creativity —THINKING Like a Leader , a 284-page book filled with 77 Leadership Mints and a 300-page book on empathy filled with 77 more Leadership Mints-LOVING Like a Leader.

All three books in The Leadership Mints Series are designed for busy leaders seeking to refresh their feeling for leading in 5-minutes or less — the average reading of a Leadership Mint.

What ‘s a Leadership Mint?

Consumed like a breath mint — quick and on-the-go — a Leadership Mint is a short story that energizes leadership behaviors and personalizes leadership principles so they are more easily remembered, more readily acted upon and more fully applied.

 

Kiss ‘n Tell: Giving More Than Lip Service

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you more fully communicate without words.

Jimmy Stewart passionately kisses Donna Reed in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The producer and the camera crew were thrilled with the scene. But the scriptwriter had a major concern, complaining the actors left out a whole page of dialogue. Frank Capra, the director, responded: “With technique like that who needs dialogue? Print it!”

How’s your technique? No, not for kissing. For leading — with your body language.

Sure, you know only too well that well-worn bromide that actions always speak louder than words.

But the most effective that leaders I’ve met ALSO KNOW how powerful their smile can be in leveraging their face value in particular and their body language in general. They know a smile, the only thing you can’t break by cracking, can soothe as good as many a medicine.

At least many injured soldiers thought so.

Imagine a hospital scene with four MILES of beds to accommodate 1800 injured soldiers. Florence Nightingale and her staff of 43 nurses administered smiles as much as medicine to those injured. One soldier wrote: “She would speak to one and nod and smile to many more. We lay there by the hundreds. But we could kiss her shadow as it fell and lay our heads as the pillow against it, content.”

Florence Nightingale leveraged her face value- her smile — to affect even more people that she could personally attend to. You don’t have to be a Florence Nightingale to leverage your face value in the workplace. But you do have to be aware of the tool all leaders wield-their body language — to affect the behavior of others, to affect the well-being of others, to effective the productivity of the others.

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