For years, one of my body language research methods has been simple. On weekdays in the Sydney CBD, I stop at a cafe with a view of an office tower entrance and watch how business people present themselves, through face, posture and movement, as they enter and leave the building and wait for their flat whites and lattes.
What I see, regularly, are executives who carry themselves as if they had the weight of the world on their shoulders. Serious is their default setting. It’s as if they worked out that looking serious makes people assume they are competent and intelligent. Or perhaps it covers how uncertain they feel, or that they are struggling in the role.
Serious does not mean competent
These executives carry real responsibility and real pressure. But projecting seriousness creates distance from the people around them. To be clear, I’m not suggesting anyone become a laugh-a-minute personality.
The larger cost is the model it sets. Junior colleagues who aspire to senior roles watch what gets rewarded, and what they learn is that looking grave is how you get ahead and hold on to a senior seat. With enough repetition, they adopt the same look to fit the mould.
It also shows under scrutiny. An executive who defaults to grim in a boardroom or on an analyst call tends to read as guarded rather than in command, and guarded invites more questions, not fewer.
What people actually follow
Kouzes and Posner’s long-running leadership research, drawing on tens of thousands of respondents across six continents, keeps returning the same four qualities in the leaders people admire: honest, forward-looking, competent and inspiring. Serious does not appear.
Own the conversation
For the next seven days, on purpose:
- Keep a professional attitude to the job, and lighten how you present yourself.
- Use the idea from this post on first impressions and greetings to loosen up: First impression: the long-lost friend technique.
- Choose a regular interaction, such as your daily coffee or takeaway lunch, and engage the person serving you in banter with no aim in mind. Shake off any stiffness that has crept into your self-presentation.
