To Build Influence, Master How You Enter a Room

How can you wield influence while being empathic? It begins with how you enter a room.

Be aware of your unconscious cues. 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? When you’re sitting alone, do you slouch or sit straight?

There are two essential points here. The first is that you’re always signaling about your intentions and feelings, and so is everyone else. The second point is that most of the time you don’t pay conscious attention to all those signals — either the ones you’re putting out or the ones others are sending to you. Your unconscious mind handles all that. It determines an extraordinary amount of the relationships you have with other people and your influence upon them. Thus it’s essential to get a handle on these unconscious cues. Once you’ve formed a picture of yourself and have either embraced what you see or resolved to improve it, then you’re ready for the next step.

Focus on a key emotion.Think of a time when you’ve walked into a meeting, or come home to your significant other, and been asked without preamble, “What happened?” You’ve been brimming over with some news — either good or bad. You’re excited, or in despair, or triumphant, or whatever the case is. That’s charisma. It’s really about focus.

And finally, have something interesting to say. If you’re going to wield influence, you need to know what you want to be influential about. And you’d better have done your homework because once all eyes are upon you, everyone will expect you to have something worthwhile for them.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/09/to-build-influence-master-how-you-enter-a-room/