My Master’s degree includes a variety of career events at the university. Company representatives
visit and talk about interesting topics that are relevant in their companies
and professional lives or the career perspectives students have in their companies.
Sometimes, however, it is not what representatives say, but how they behave that is actually most interesting.
Just last week, we had three female
representatives visiting. At the end of their presentations, a Q&A-session
took place. I realized that I perceived one of these women as more competent
than the others, even though I had only heard a short presentation by each of
them and could by no means judge their professional performance. So what caused
my perception?
Having a closer look at each of the
women gave me a clue: the one woman that I assumed to be more competent was
sitting on her chair in an upright position and looking attentively into people’s
faces. Another woman was somehow crouching on her chair and often stared to the floor in a forward-bent position. The third woman was constantly playing with a
strand of hair. In no way do I want to deny these women’s individual
professional competence, but it was startling how much influence their posture
had on me.
Paying attention to your body language
This incident reminded me to pay more attention to my own posture when being in a professional environment! I also googled this topic and would like to share an interesting finding:
by now, we probably all know that we
should have a firm, but not too strong hand shake, make eye contact and stop
fidgeting (which could be playing with your hair, picking at your nails or
displaying some other nervous action). But I had not heard about the following concept before:
The social gaze vs. the look of business
Women often tend to use the social
gaze when they should actually use the look of business. The difference lies in
where your eyes are focusing when you are talking to somebody.
source |
Focusing on the eyes-to-forehead triangle signals a
no-nonsense approach, while shifting your eyes to the mouth of a person can be
misinterpreted as flirty. This does not
mean that we should never use a social gaze in business environments, but rather
that we should pay attention to the individual effect of where our eyes go.
Next time you go to an important event or meeting, just take a minute to think about your posture and adjust appropriately!
Carolin
Next time you go to an important event or meeting, just take a minute to think about your posture and adjust appropriately!
Carolin