Power Cues. Nick Morgan

can learn how to turn on charisma. It’s controllable; it’s not magic or something given to a select few at birth. Charisma is focused emotion, but I’ll talk much more about that later. Showing you how to control your own charisma, so that you can turn it on and off when you want to, is another one of the purposes of this book.

      Confidence, intuition, and charisma. These are the raw ingredients of mastery. Oh, yes, and one more: leadership. What kind of natural leader are you? Again, just try to note your behavior without judgment in these first few weeks on the road to mastery. You need to have a realistic sense of who you are and how far you have to go in order to get the most out of this book. So study yourself and your behavior when you’re with your colleagues, family, and friends. When you make suggestions, do people generally go along with you? Do your plans, ideas, and feelings generally get implemented, acted on, and acknowledged, or do you feel ignored and misunderstood?

      Natural leaders, by definition, are few and far between. Most of us are listened to occasionally; natural leaders effortlessly dominate the meeting, the occasion, or the party most of the time. Again, this dominance is something you can learn to switch on, augment, and create in yourself so that you can lead when you want to and follow when that suits you, too.

      For now, you’ve completed your personal inventory, and you understand the connections among a complex of communications tenets: how you show up, how you create and transmit thought via your gestures, and how other people read you. You’re ready for chapter 2.

      FIELD NOTES

      The How-You-Show-Up Questionnaire

      In each chapter, I’ll include some notes on how to apply the ideas you’ve just learned. Let’s start with a quiz about you.

      Answer each question true or false, and give yourself 1 point for each true answer and 0 points for each false answer.

      1 I am aware of how I am seated during the course of a business meeting.

      2 I am conscious of what I do with my hands when I get into a spirited discussion.

      3 When I’m interviewing people, I focus on their body language as much as on what they say.

      4 I can tell when someone is bluffing.

      5 I can tell when someone is lying to me.

      6 I know, in a meeting with my boss, when she has decided to end the meeting before she says anything about it.

      7 When I’m negotiating, I pay more attention to the opposite party’s body language than I do their counteroffers.

      8 I can tell when my coworkers are displeased before they say anything.

      9 I usually get my way in team meetings.

      10 When I speak, I have no trouble getting everyone else to listen to me.

      11 I often know what people are going to say before they say it.

      12 My voice carries easily so that everyone can hear me, even in a room with fifty people.

      13 My intuition is strong; I often am able to read others without thinking about it.

      14 When I walk into a meeting, I have no trouble sensing the mood of the people already there.

      15 I can easily establish rapport with new people I meet.

      Score

       1–5 You need to increase your body language awareness.

       6–10 You have average body language awareness.

       11–15 You are ready for the World Series of Poker! You have above-average body language awareness.

      CHAPTER SUMMARY

       For a long time, we’ve misunderstood the importance of gesture in our lives and communications.

       Researchers thought that the gestures that accompany speech were meaningless; now we know that they are meaningful and that they precede speech by a nanosecond or two.

       Researchers have studied how children learn, for example, and have determined that they learn nonverbally first.

       The first step in mastering your communications and leading the people around you is to determine what your own posture, personal presence, and gestures are like.

       Keep a diary or take video of yourself to determine—as objectively as possible—how you’re appearing to others.

       Your self-assessment of your own confidence, intuition, and charisma will help get you started on the road to mastering leadership communication.