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We’re “read” unconsciously by the people around us. We convey our attitudes through our nonverbal signals much more powerfully (and directly to the unconscious) than we do through our speech. So when we try to get a sense of our personal presence—how we’re showing up—we need to understand that our physical actions and presence are what convey our persons or our personality to others. It’s all the more powerful because it’s unconscious.¹¹

As Goldin-Meadow has found, important information is communicated unconsciously through gesture even in normal conversations. Listeners tested afterward don’t know which information comes from gesture versus speech. Some studies show that if a listener copies the gesture a speaker makes, the listener is more likely to like the person and attend to what he or she said.¹² I’ll talk more about that phenomenon in chapter 2.

Goldin-Meadow says, “Gesture is a powerful tool. It can be used for good, or it can be used for evil.” She’s found that you can implant ideas in people’s heads through gestures. They won’t be aware that you’ve done so, but later on, they’ll start to talk spontaneously about the ideas you’ve gestured about earlier. I’ll talk more about that aspect of the power of nonverbal communications in chapter 6.

You think consciously about someone else’s signals only when they’re really strange or alarming or the person is really important to you and you’re actively wondering what his or her state of mind is. But that unconscious activity determines an extraordinary amount of the effect you have on other people, the relationships you have with them, and your influence upon them.

As a first step, then, it’s essential to get a handle on these unconscious cues.

Power Cue 1: How do you show up when you walk into a room?

Body language is crucial to today’s leaders because it tells us what we think about other people. People decode emotions primarily through gesture (and tone of voice). The emotional component represents a separate, nonverbal conversation that goes on parallel to the verbal one and typically a split second before the verbal one.

So leaders must master both conversations, but especially the second.

That conversation will make or break you as a communicator. Again, you may be entirely unaware of it, but it may confirm you as the top dog, sabotage your authority, connect you with your mate for life, get you in a fist fight (or out of one), win you a game or lose one, blow your chances at getting a raise, get you the big sale, lose you the prize or win it—and so on and on through most of the big moments in life.

How can you become more aware of this conversation that your body is having with the other bodies around you? Is it worth the effort? Will you become self-conscious and inauthentic if you do? Can you monitor what everyone else is “saying”? Is that helpful? Will it get you to places you won’t otherwise reach?

Understanding the second conversation is key to leadership, because it’s not something that you can leave to chance or the unconscious. There are simply too many decisions to be made, too many inputs to weigh, too many players to manage and lead. In the twenty-first century, the pace of leadership has accelerated, the flow of information has exploded, and the sheer physical and intellectual demands on leaders have intensified. You can’t rely on common sense or instinct or winging it as you once might have done.

The first step to mastering your personal communications, then, is to figure out what you’re saying in this second conversation. You’ll need to take inventory of how you inhabit space, how you stand, how you sit, how you move, and how you interact with others. When you’re sitting alone, do you slouch or sit straight? When you stand, are you taking up all of your space, or do you shrink into corners? When you move, do you move confidently or do you slink—or do you careen?

What do your interactions with others look like? Do you come alive when other people are in the room with you, or do you go on the defensive?

In the next chapter, you’ll learn ways to control those gestures. In this first step, you’re just learning about how people naturally present themselves through posture, gesture, and motion.

As you work further on emotion, gesture, and your presence in chapter 2, you’ll delve into the connection between these aspects of communications. But for now, I just want you to get a sense of your gesturing style, frequency, and intensity as part of the complete self-inventory.

When you have a moment, fill out the questionnaire at the end of this chapter to help you begin the process of gestural self-awareness.