How to cultivate and project gravitas

Recently a participant who had attended one of my in-house ‘Delivering memorable spoken messages’ programmes said, “A hot topic for me is ‘Gravitas’”. That is, skill in being able, when appropriate, to project a serious demeanor.

So how do you cultivate gravitas? Here’s one way for its cultivation. Rushing, in speaking and in movement of your body, decreases gravitas. Taking and ‘owning’ time, in speaking and in movement of your body increases gravitas.

One practical way to increase gravitas is through coordinating your body movement and speaking. Overall, aim to coordinate your movement and speaking in discrete, sequential steps, versus moving and speaking all at once. This movement and speaking in sequential steps will add to your projection of gravitas.

For example, when standing (for example you might just have concluded an interaction with a colleague in your office) think ‘Move, Stop, Speak’. This means, that you would, Move to a different place (eg. back to your work area). Stop at that place. Then as appropriate, Speak another message (eg. to another colleague nearby) – versus moving and speaking all at once.

When sitting in a meeting (eg. At a boardroom table) it could work like this. Someone in the meeting asks you a question. You would Move (turn you head and body orientation toward the questioner). Stop that movement. Then Speak your message/answer the question.

The ‘how to apply’ for this post: In the next seven days intentionally daily practice the Move, Stop, Speak sequential step process in your interactions, meetings and sales presentations, and reflect on the impact of doing this.

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p.s. If you have any senior executive personal communication, sales presentation, speech communication or other topics you like me to comment on, I’d welcome your contact. My contact details are ph: (02) 9416 2311, michael@kellyspeech.com.au