Presence

Key Concepts

What Is Presence?

“There’s another reason we tend to put our faith in people who project passion, confidence, and enthusiasm: these traits can’t easily be faked. When we’re feeling brave and confident, our vocal pitch and amplitude are significantly more varied, allowing us to sound expressive and relaxed. When we fearfully hold back—activating the sympathetic nervous system’s fight-or-flight response—our vocal cords and diaphragms constrict, strangling our genuine enthusiasm.” (p. 20)

“Presence, as I mean it throughout these pages, is the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential.” (p. 24)

“Before moving on, I want to clear up a widespread misunderstanding about presence—the belief that it’s reserved for extroverts. Let me clearly say: presence has nothing to do with extroversion.” (p. 30)

“The takeaway is this: focus less on the impression you’re making on others and more on the impression you’re making on yourself. The latter serves the former, a phenomenon that should become clearer and clearer throughout this book.” (p. 32)

Being present means having one’s emotions and behaviors in alignment

“When we feel present, our speech, facial expressions, postures, and movements align. They synchronize and focus. And that internal convergence, that harmony, is palpable and resonant—because it’s real. It’s what makes us compelling. We are no longer fighting ourselves; we are being ourselves.” (p. 24)

“Virtually all theories about the authentic self, and, by extension, about presence, require some degree of alignment—synchrony, as I will call it. In order for you to feel truly present, the various elements of the self—emotions, thoughts, physical and facial expressions, behaviors—must be in harmony.” (p. 34)

Self-affirmation can help one build presence

“Together these studies make an important point: before heading into a situation where we may be challenged, we can reduce our anxiety by reaffirming the parts of our authentic best selves we value most. When we feel safe with ourselves, we become significantly less defensive and more open to feedback, making us better problem solvers, too.” (p. 50)

“The key to effective self-affirmation is that it is grounded in the truth. Your authentic best self—your boldest self—is not about psyching yourself up or saying, ‘I am the best at this task’ or ‘I’m a winner.’” (p. 51)

“In essence, self-affirmation is the practice of clarifying your story to yourself, allowing you to trust that who you are will come through naturally in what you say and do.” (p. 51)

Impostorism, though common, causes us to think that we don’t belong 

“Impostorism causes us to overthink and second-guess. It makes us fixate on how we think others are judging us (in these fixations, we’re usually wrong), then fixate some more on how those judgments might poison our interactions. We’re scattered—worrying that we underprepared, obsessing about what we should be doing, mentally reviewing what we said five seconds earlier, fretting about what people think of us and what that will mean for us tomorrow.” (p. 89)

“Here’s the cruel irony: achievements don’t stamp out impostor fears. In fact, success can actually make them worse. We can’t reconcile a lofty vision of ourselves with our secret knowledge that we don’t deserve it. Worldly success introduces us to others who will hold us to a standard we can’t possibly meet, thus revealing our true weak, incompetent selves. Achievements present us with new situations and opportunities, which only exacerbate the impostor fears, since every new situation is another proving ground.” (p. 99)

“As I review the research and talk to people like Pauline and Neil who’ve experienced the same fears, I see the one quality of impostorism that stands out from all the others: it makes us feel alone in the experience, and even when we learn that other people have similar fears, we don’t take heart.” (p. 107)

“If we all only knew how many people feel like impostors, we’d have to conclude that either (1) we all are impostors and we don’t know what we’re doing or (2) our self-assessments are way off.” (p. 107)

Our behaviors are different when we feel powerful versus powerless

“Social psychologist Dacher Keltner and his colleagues shed light on how this cycle works: they propose that power activates a psychological and behavioral approach system. When we feel powerful, we feel free—in control, unthreatened, and safe. As a result, we are attuned to opportunities more than threats. We feel positive and optimistic, and our behavior is largely unrestricted by social pressures.” (p. 111)

“On the other hand, powerlessness activates a psychological and behavioral inhibition system, the ‘equivalent to an alarm-threat system.’ We are more attuned to threats than to opportunities. We feel generally anxious and pessimistic, and we’re susceptible to social pressures that inhibit us and make our behavior unrepresentative of our sincere selves.” (p. 111)

“Powerlessness and the anxiety that results from it undermine what psychologists call executive functions—high-order cognitive tools such as reasoning, task flexibility, and attention control, all of which are critical to coping well in challenging situations.” (p. 119)

“The harmful side effects of powerlessness don’t stop there: the more anxious and self-focused we are during an interaction, the more time we spend post-event processing—ruminating about the interaction—even days later.” (p. 124)

“Power makes us fearless, independent, and less susceptible to outside pressures and expectations, allowing us to be more creative.” (p. 129)

“In a similar way, powerlessness can lead to inaction that is directly self-defeating. People who feel socially powerless are, by definition, dependent on powerful others to lead the way. This causes the powerless to endorse the unfair systems that reinforce their state.” (p. 131)

Gaining more power and presence can start in the body, especially with exercises that engage one’s parasympathetic nervous system

“But I am a scientist, and so now I have to eat my resistance, because the evidence that yoga yields positive psychological and physiological results is nearly impossible to refute.” (p. 184)

“Numerous psychophysiological mechanisms have been implicated in body-based interventions such as yoga, but most interventions end up zeroing in on two of them: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which stimulates our stress response, also known as our fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which stimulates our relaxation response, also known as our rest-and-digest response (it sets in, for example, after eating, during sleep, or when we’re sexually aroused).” (p. 188)

“The key agent of the PNS is the vagus nerve, a cranial nerve that carries sensory information between the brain stem and many of our vital organs, including the heart and lungs. When the vagus nerve is doing its job (i.e., when we have high vagal tone), it signals the heart to slow down and the lungs to breathe more deeply, promoting a state of calm.” (p. 189)

Creating power through the body affects the mind

“The way you carry yourself is a source of personal power—the kind of power that is the key to presence.” (p. 198)

“Expanding your body expands your mind, which allows you to be present.” (p. 198)

“As Huang notes, ‘Our experiments [show] that posture actually has a stronger effect than role power on the behavioral and psychological manifestations of power [and]… further bolster the notion that power is embodied, or grounded in bodily states. To think and act like a powerful person, people do not need to possess role power or recall being in a powerful role.’ In short, a simple bodily posture, held for just a couple of minutes, produces bigger feedback effects than being assigned to a powerful role.…” (p. 209)

“Expansive postures also reduce anxiety and help us deal with stress. John Riskind found in his research that ‘people in hunched, threatened physical postures verbally expressed greater stress than those in relaxed positions.’ When people receive negative feedback while holding an expansive posture, the criticism is less likely to undermine their belief that they—not others—control their own destiny. It’s less rattling.” (p. 211)

“Expanding your body frees you to approach, act, and persist.” (p. 211)

“Expanding your body physiologically prepares you to be present; it overrides your instinct to fight or flee, allowing you to be grounded, open, and engaged.” (p. 223)

“Expanding your body toughens you to physical pain.” (p. 224)

“Our findings uncover a cruel irony: while many of us spend hours every day working on small mobile devices, often with the goal of increasing our productivity and efficiency, interacting with these tiny objects, even for short periods of time, might reduce assertiveness, potentially undermining our productivity and efficiency.” (p. 229)

Small nudges can make a difference because they are reinforcing

Self-nudges, as I began to call them, are minimal modifications to one’s own body language and/or mind-set that are intended to produce small psychological and behavioral improvements in the moment. They are tiny tweaks with the potential to, over time, lead to big changes. (p. 256)

In a way, simply adjusting our posture is the ultimate tiny tweak. (p. 259)

First, our behavior reinforces our behavior, in multiple ways. (p. 259)

When we see ourselves doing something with courage or competence once, we can recall that experience the next time we face a similar challenge, making it easier to perform well a second time, a third time, and so on. (p. 259)

And physiological changes—such as the hormone changes that accompany power poses—reinforce the behaviors that go with them. (p. 260)

The second way that self-nudges produce lasting effects is through other people’s reinforcement of our behavior. (p. 261)

This is how self-fulfilling prophecies work: we have an expectation about who someone is and how she’s likely to behave, then we treat her in a way that is likely to elicit those behaviors, thus confirming our initial expectations… and so on. (p. 262)

Presence Exercises

“Here are some of the questions Roberts and other organizational scholars have developed to help us identify the best parts of ourselves.

• “What three words best describe you as an individual? 

• “What is unique about you that leads to your happiest times and best performance?

• “Reflect on a specific time—at work or at home—when you were acting in a way that felt “natural” and “right.” How can you repeat that behavior today?

• “What are your signature strengths and how can you use them?” (p. 46)

“Recall a moment when you felt personally powerful. A time when you felt fully in control of your own psychological state—when you had the confidence to act based on your boldest, most sincere self, with the sense that your actions would be effective. Maybe it was at work, at school, at home, or in some other part of your life. Take a few minutes right now to remember and reflect on that experience of your personal power, on how it felt.” (p. 116)

“Even our hands and fingers can signal power. Hold your hands in front of your face with your palms facing each other and your fingers pointing upward toward the ceiling. Then curl the fingers of each hand toward those of the other until the tips meet in the middle, and spread your fingers as far apart as you comfortably can. If those instructions aren’t clear, look for pictures of The Simpsons character Montgomery Burns. Even this gesture, which psychologists refer to as steepling or finger tenting, is a sign of confidence. It may be subtle, but it’s still spatially expansive compared to how we typically hold our hands.” (p. 150)

“By the way, if you want to feel a little burst of joy right now, here are the breathing instructions the second group of subjects received: ‘Breathe and exhale slowly and deeply through the nose; your breathing is very regular and your rib cage relaxed.’” (p. 191)

Prepare with Big Poses (pp. 243-4)

• “Use the big poses to speak to yourself before walking into a big challenge. By taking up as much space as you comfortably can in the moments preceding the challenge, you’re telling yourself that you’re powerful—that you’ve got this—which emancipates you to bring your boldest, most authentic self to the challenge. You’re optimizing your brain to be 100 percent present when you walk in. Think of it as a pre-event warm-up.”

• “If you can’t strike a pose physically, do it mentally: imagine yourself in the most powerful, expansive pose you can think of.” 

• “If you can and when it’s advantageous to do so, arrive before your audience arrives. Get comfortable with occupying and expanding in the presentation space. Make the space yours, so your audience is coming to your “home” as opposed to you going to theirs.”

Present with Good Posture (pp. 244-6)

• “While you’re presenting or interacting, sit up or stand up straight.” 

• “Keep your shoulders back and your chest open.”

• “Breathe slowly and deeply—remember how much proper breathing can center us.” 

• “Keep your chin up and level, but don’t raise it so far up that you’re looking down your nose at people.”

• “When you’re stationary, keep your feet grounded (no ankle-wrapping). You should feel solid, not as if you’d lose your balance if someone gently pushed or bumped into you.” (p. 245)

• “When you can, move around.” 

• “Use props. If your body tends to collapse into powerless poses when you speak, try using props that will force you to stretch out.”

• “Adopt open gestures: they’re both strong and warm. For example, when our arms are outstretched with palms up, it’s welcoming and signals trust.”

• “Don’t just take up physical space, take up temporal space.”

• “Pause! Terrified of silences, we fail to harness the immense power of pauses.”

• “Try relaxing the muscles of your throat so that your voice lowers to its natural level.”