If I were to bring a person into the room and place them behind a screen so that you can’t see them, then tell you that this person is feeling depressed, how do you think they would they be sitting? When I ask this question to the groups I work with, I usually get responses such as: looking down, shoulders slumped, eyes half closed, shallow breathing, frown on their face and leaning forward.
Let’s change it around a little. If I bring in a person and place them behind the screen and told you they were motivated and excited, what would the answer to the question be now? Most people say: looking up, eyes open, sitting upright (or not sitting at all), twitching – ready to go, breathing deeply, a smile on their face and very alert.
The interesting thing is: How did you know when you couldn’t even see them?
The link between psychology and physiology (our body) is strong. Although this happens naturally, it is the leaders who implement this on a conscious level, that have the real advantage.
Effective leaders have the ability to manage their ‘state’, that is, how they are feeling, to ensure that each day produces the best results. Being able to manage your state through the way you hold your body is one of the easiest and quickest ways to place you in the desired position.
The most popular research relating to this belongs to Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist from Harvard University. She found that people standing in ‘power poses’ (open stance, hands on hips, head up) had a significant positive hormonal response and in turn felt “more powerful” and “in charge”. Whereas those participants that took ‘weak poses’ (hunched over, arms crossed, head down, frown) also had a hormonal response – one that produced a less than powerful feeling.
Previous research supported Cuddy’s findings, where participants placed in a hunched, depressed pose were more likely to give up on a task and also reported feeling more depressed. A study in 1988 placed a pen between the participants teeth (this stimulates similar muscles to smiling) and asked them to watch cartoons. Participants found the cartoons funnier with the pen between their teeth than when they didn’t have the pen between their teeth.
A more dramatic piece of randomised, double-blind, placebo research found that when clinically depressed patients were injected with Botox (which makes it difficult to frown) they reported a 50% reduction in a depression rating scale. This is compared to a 15% reduction in those patients who received a placebo injection.
Even more interesting was that over a quarter of the patients given Botox achieved a clinical remission six weeks after the single treatment, compared to 7% of the patients given the placebo injection.
Finally, in another study more reflective of what happens outside a research laboratory, Cuddy influenced the postures of participants by issuing tasks that needed to be completed on either an iPod Touch, iPad or an iMac.
The smaller devices forced workers into a hunched over position, whereas the iMac forced a more upright, open pose. To cut a long story short, those that were using the larger iMac device showed almost twice as much assertive behaviour than those using the iPod Touch.
The ability to turn up to work every day in the optimal state is a skill that would serve any leader well. The rare thing about the use of body posture to manage state, is not only backed up by solid research, but is also something we already inherently know. The challenge is to use it to our advantage. So go ahead – strike that power pose for your optimal state.
