Yes, It's Difficult––Very Difficult?!

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Somerset Maugham    

At that same “difficult people” workshop sat a woman who hardly ever smiled, spoke in a low voice, and stared at me in a non-blinking sort of way so that I eventually preferred not to look at her. 

I wondered what was going on.  Had she received troubling news within the last 24hrs?  Was she under the weather?  Was my style such that she found it hard to take in what I was offering (I never use PowerPoint)?

Since this was just a one-day workshop in a non-work environment, she really didn’t have any obligation to act in a certain way with me or the others.  As the saying goes, “to each her own.” 

However, I did wonder if this is how she presents herself on an ongoing basis in her professional life.  If it is, then she is acting not in her own best interests.

80% of what we respond to in an encounter with another person is the non-verbal––tone of voice, look in the eye, body posture, etc.  This is what we respond to most, as this is what helps us form impressions of people.

Earlier this year, I taught an elven-week course at UCLA Extension.  One of the participants was a young woman who was taking time off from a graduate program at Harvard.  She was clearly intelligent, driven, and goal-oriented.  Yet, within a couple of weeks, I stopped paying attention to her.  She spent her class time texting, hunched over in her seat, disengaged from the others.  When she spoke, she sounded annoyed and I also had to strain to hear her because she spoke in a soft voice.

Towards the end of the quarter she arranged for a one-on-one chat with me and I was surprised at how engaging, self-aware, and articulate she could be. She expressed a real desire to improve her communication skill set.

Despite all this, she seemed clueless about the damaging effects of her non-verbal presentation of her self.  However, when I explored this more with her, she admitted that several grad professors had already given her similar feedback.

She lamented, “it’s so hard to change!” 

Duh!  It’s VERY hard to change, to break out of what’s comfortable and present yourself in a way that is engaging, dynamic, observant, and strategic.  And to do so means you have to accept power.

Yes, this is me coming back again to that notion of power.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve recently been meeting up with so many people who bemoan how hard it is to change and who seem unwilling to do what they know they must do in order to be confident, successful communicators.

What’s holding you back from owning your voice, your power?