Is your body language working against you? | Cara Hale Alter

Host Elise Hu introduces communication expert Cara Hale Alter’s central question: are we who we feel ourselves to be internally, or are we also the person other people perceive externally? Alter says everyone wants to be seen as capable, competent, intelligent, playful, or charismatic, so a mismatch between self-image and outside perception can be disconcerting and painful. She illustrates the mismatch with Lauren, a Stanford student who described herself as painfully shy and timid around new people. Lauren was stunned when her manager said her new co-workers found her aggressive and judgmental. Alter observed that when Lauren felt nervous or intimidated, she adopted an extreme poker face and rigid, locked-down posture. Her internal experience was “deer in the headlights” panic, but the external signal looked like a cold, hard stare. Alter encouraged her to loosen her facial features and literally reach out rather than close up. After 25 years studying nonverbal communication, Alter argues that impressions are not purely subjective. People rely on recurring cues to assess credibility, confidence, and leadership presence. Because particular behaviors produce predictable assessments, understanding those behaviors gives people more control over the image they project. She focuses the talk on two “keystone behaviors”: strong posture and strong voice.

Alter defines strong posture in concrete physical terms. When standing, weight should be balanced equally over both feet. Standing or seated, the spine and shoulders should form a T, creating what she calls literal core strength rather than a “wishy-washy” spine. The head should move independently on the shoulders, like a camera on a tripod, while the nose and eyes should point and track in the same direction. She demonstrates that when the eyes and nose move independently, a person can look uncomfortable, sneaky, mischievous, judgmental, or skeptical. Her practical translation is to embody the qualities one wants others to perceive: maintain a strong spine and level head if one wants to be described that way; stay “straight on” to appear straightforward and direct; and open up and reach out to create a closer connection. Alter’s point is not merely that posture looks polished. These physical signals affect whether others interpret someone as accessible, direct, and credible. She presents posture as a relatively simple skill that can align the outside presentation with the person’s intended identity, rather than as a demand to suppress personality or adopt a completely different character.

Alter explains the second keystone behavior, strong voice, by rating speaking volume from one to five. One is inaudible; two is below average and makes the listener do the work; three is average and adequate; four is optimal for the room, acoustics, and situation; and five is one step too far, where listeners begin putting up boundaries. She says the jump from four to five can turn a strong connection into the opposite of what the speaker wants. Most people retreat to the safety of average volume, but Alter calls that the most common mistake she sees: people are willing to be merely fine and therefore miss opportunities to be exceptional. She describes this as a case where “good is the enemy of great.” A related problem is a “meter issue,” when someone’s internal sense of loudness is out of sync with the external reality. Eugene, a participant in one of her seminars, could not understand why his ideas received no response in meetings. Alter told him he was speaking at level two or below and that she was missing about 50 percent of what he said. When he asked the group whether that was true, everyone nodded; they had noticed but were too polite to tell him. Eugene realized he had been blaming his character and the quality of his ideas when the practical problem was that people could not technically hear him.

Alter says feedback often arrives as a judgment about character: “show more confidence,” “be more assertive,” or “be more approachable.” Such advice leaves people wondering what exact action to change. In her coaching, she often finds that an apparent character flaw is actually a straightforward skills gap, which can be much easier to address. She gives her own speaking style as an example. If she introduced lots of extraneous head and shoulder movement, someone might tell her to tamp down her enthusiasm or passion in order to show more leadership presence. That interpretation could damage her psyche by implying that enthusiasm itself is the problem. The more useful instruction would be specific: speak while keeping the head and shoulders level. The latter is a behavior she can practice without becoming less passionate. Alter emphasizes that strong posture and strong voice are not the only ways to project credibility, and people who cannot use one of these guidelines for any reason have other options. Still, she considers them relatively easy for many people to adopt and potentially “game-changing.” Her broader lesson is to translate vague feedback into observable behaviors instead of treating it as proof that one’s personality is defective.

Alter tells the story of Jamie, a young woman who saw herself as a capable go-getter and leadership material but was not advancing as quickly as she expected. During on-camera coaching, Jamie initially stood in a small, asymmetrical posture with her eyes cast down. She used a thin voice and upward inflections, sending signals that conflicted with her self-image. Alter asked Jamie, step by step, to balance her weight over both feet, level her shoulders, raise her gaze so her head was level, open her gestures, use a full voice with downward inflections, and make focused eye contact with the people in front of her. After each instruction Jamie complied, and the result looked like the self-assured aspiring leader she believed herself to be. But when Alter asked how it felt, Jamie answered, “phony. This isn’t me.” Alter says deliberately changing habitual behavior can feel unnatural, but she does not define authenticity as remaining in one’s raw, unedited state or not caring what others think. Her definition is alignment: the adjectives one uses for oneself should match the adjectives others would use. If someone sees themselves as brimming with potential but others do not, changing behavior so that others can perceive that potential is not inauthentic; it is representing oneself accurately.

Alter identifies video as one of the best tools for creating alignment because it lets people compare how they feel internally with how they appear externally. Jamie saw both her original and revised presentations and was surprised by the difference; that awareness motivated her to practice the new behaviors until they felt natural. Alter says improvement usually reflects awareness rather than a lack of ability: most people can change a behavior once they know it needs changing. She warns that people should not rely on unsolicited feedback. She recalls playing with her children one morning and drawing a kitty nose and whiskers on her face. She then ran errands, and everyone greeted her with unusually large smiles. Only at home did she see the drawing in a mirror. No one had mentioned it because they assumed such an obvious signal must have been intentional. The story taught her that people react to signals whether or not the sender knows they are sending them, and that those reactions can become reciprocal: by the end of the day, she herself felt full of positive energy and mistakenly attributed the mood to the world. Her call to action is to be courageous and seek an outside view, even by recording oneself on a cellphone at home. She closes by repeating the useful signals—grounded stance, strong spine, level shoulders and head, and full voice—and argues that confidence, credibility, and leadership presence are developable skills, not special talents reserved for some people.