Magnetic Presence by exuding confidence and having an open, expanded body posture.
In this third video in our series on how to develop magnetic leadership presence and sales presence, we review the five characteristics of leadership and sales presence.
We then focus on the second and third characteristics of presence: Exuding confidence and having an open, expanded body. If you have yet to read the transcripts or watch the first two videos, you may want to do that before watching this third video or reading the transcript.
The five characteristics of presence (including leadership, executive, sales and personal presence):
- Being courageous
- Exuding confidence
- Having an open, expanded body
- Speaking with a full, resonant voice
- Dressing and having visual appearance (clothes, makeup etc.) that sends a message of success
Definition of presence.
Presence is your personal power being projected into the world. When you project your courageous, confident, most powerful self into the world with positivity, you create magnetic presence.
Exuding confidence is the second characteristic of presence. There is both general self-confidence ― the scientific term for this is self-efficacy ― and specific self-confidence, which is specific to a given task or process. Both are important. Strong general self-confidence is a trait often found in successful entrepreneurs, because they believe they can find a way to solve problems as they arise. You also will learn from the research I’ve done with entrepreneurs and other influential leaders that most all leaders want more confidence at least in some situations!
In this video, you will learn the difference between confidence and arrogance, which are actually opposites. You also will learn how to strengthen confidence in your mind and how to use your body to strengthen your confidence by creating the hormonal response associated with high levels of confidence. Most everyone wants more confidence and a magnetic presence, and these immediately applicable techniques are 100 percent in your control.
Join speaker agent Kim Tracy and me to learn to develop greater personal power through enhanced leadership and sales presence, either by watching the video of the interview that Kim originally produced or by reading the transcribed text below, which was edited to enhance readability.
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Kim: Hi I’m Kim Tracy with the Maxwell James Speaker Agency. So excited to be here with Dr. TC North. We are talking about our presence series and we are on number three, which is confidence and high power body.
TC: Yes, those are two of the characteristics. I think it’s a great thing to put these together, so thanks for doing this with me Kim. A quick review of all of the characteristics of presence and the definition of presence, which is really your personal power being projected out into the world. The more power you have and the more that you project it out into the world, the more you become a magnetic attractor.
I really like the term “magnetic presence”. Great leadership presence, great sales presence, great personal presence is magnetic. It draws people to you and you to them.
So the five characteristics are 1) having courage 2) having confidence 3) high power body posture (the two things we’ll do today) 4) having resonate voice and 5) having a great visual appearance. Our focus today on confidence should begin with what it is and what it’s not.
Kim: yes, please.
TC: The scientific term for confidence is self-efficacy. There’s general and there’s specific efficacy. The general is just that general sense of how able are you to do what you want to do in the world? How much do you trust in your own ability to do that on a deep level?
General confidence and general efficacy is really important especially in entrepreneurs, so that even when you run into something that you don’t have plans for, or you don’t have guidance, you don’t have steps for and you’ve never been there (maybe nobody’s ever been there before) but you have the belief that you’ll figure it out. That’s the characteristic of entrepreneurs that are very successful. They have that deep self efficacy that they they believe they’ll figure it out, even when they don’t know how.
There’s a difference between task specific confidence and self-efficacy. One example would be – if you’re a CPA and then you become a parent. You may be very confident with a computer and numbers and excel spreadsheets, but as soon as you get that little bundle of joy in your arms you kind of go “oh my gosh, holy crud, what do I do?” It’s pretty scary. Anybody who has been a parent knows that initial feeling. No matter how prepared you are for it it’s like, ohhh what a responsibility, it’s just overwhelming.
So confidence is usually pretty low as a new parent, because you have no experience and you can’t really draw on anybody else’s experience. You can read everything but once you hold that baby in your arms it changes. It’s like, “I know nothing” to quote Sergeant Schultz if you remember that show Hogan’s Heroes. That dates me. Sorry for you younger folks.
Kim: Just a little bit [laughing]. Oh my gosh, that just dated both of us. Thanks TC!
TC: Yeah, that came back…took us back to childhood. Ok, back to confidence.
Kim: Yeah, back to confidence and what it’s not.
TC: Ok so what it’s not is arrogance. Arrogance is really somebody with a hungry ego need, an ego that needs to be fed. Arrogant people are actually very offensive because they are trying to project that “I’m better than you” because they feel so weak at a deep level.
Confidence is actually the opposite of arrogance. Confident people are very relaxed with themselves and they’re very present with others. They can be very other focused because they’re okay, they’re good with themselves. They don’t have to be feeding themselves.
There’s a big difference between arrogance and true confidence. They’re actually opposites. I’ve had many people come for coaching over the years who said, “I want to be more confident but I don’t want to be arrogant”. It’s really important to understand that difference. Confidence is not arrogance.
Now what I’d like to do is jump right to some tips if I may, some confident tips with your mind and some confident tips with your body. Because we want to talk about high power body positions, we’ll just include that in our tips. I know you love tips, Kim.
Kim: Tips are good!
TC: To increase confidence in your mind, remember that your mind can be trained much like the muscles in your body. It has all these different neural networks and you can selectively strengthen these neural networks. When you want to strengthen your confident neural network the neurons actually get bigger, they get thicker, they get wider and they make more dendrite connections. Just like a muscle gets bigger, every time you think of a time you were confident, every time you remember a time you were confident you actually build that confident neural network in your mind.
Now it’s also important to understand that every time you remember being afraid and fearful and feel like a failure you’re building those parts of your neural networks and those parts of your mind. So be very careful with what you think about because you’re always building your neural networks, whether you know it or not.
In order to build your confidence, just remember a time you’re confident. It’s that easy. And you can access confidence for yourself just by remembering a time you were confident and it sends that whole signal to your body.
That’s one confidence building exercise. Another is using high power body postures. I’m going to tip the camera a little bit so you can see more of me. When I stand like this, (arms held straight up above the shoulders, pointing at the sky) it is one of the greatest postures to send the signal to your body that “I’m strong I’m confident”. And what it does is it actually decreases the cortisol level and increases your testosterone.
Cortisol is your stress hormone. So it decreases your stress hormone, which means you’re relaxed. Cortisol also blocks the use of the most important part of your brain, your pre-frontal cortex. It’s the most advanced part of your brain, the part that’s called the executive brain, because all of the executive functions happen there.
If you block your pre-frontal cortex use with cortisol released when you are stressed, your creativity goes down, your ability to problem solve goes down, all of that goes down. Anything that decreases cortisol is good. This stance decreases cortisol and it increases testosterone which is your assertiveness hormone. It’s good for men and women. People think of testosterone only for men, but it’s your assertiveness hormone.
To emanate strong presence – you have to be able to speak your truth, you have to be who you are, so increasing testosterone really helps. And the opposite of course is this closed up body position (arms crossed over chest and legs are tight together). Example, when looking at your cell phone, this closes you up and increases your stress hormone cortisol, it decreases our testosterone, your assertiveness hormone. So it actually sends a message from your body to your brain that you are weak and not confident.
Kim: Interesting.
TC: Amy Cuddy, in her book “Presence” – a fabulous book I recommend it to everybody, she has scores, maybe a hundred or so studies that support what I just said. Her conclusion is literally like in the animal kingdom – the more expansive you are, the more you send the signal to your own brain as well as the rest of the world that you’re strong and that you’re confident.
Kim: Excellent.
TC: A summary of body posture and confidence– what I want people to recognize is – it’s in your control. Most people want confidence. I did a survey of 395 executives using remote devices in an audience recently. 96% of business owners or C level executives want more courage or confidence in their most challenging situations. And in my thirty years of this work Kim, whenever I ask the question in an intimate setting where people are comfortable being honest, it’s really close to 100%.
People say they want more courage or confidence at least sometimes. So don’t feel alone, everybody wants that. It’s in your control and these techniques help you take control of your own mind.
Kim: That is fantastic. If you would like to bring TC North in for an amazing keynote, workshop or seminar please contact me, Kim Tracy through www.MaxwellJames.net. Thank you so much again.
TC: Thank you.
Speaker agent Kim Tracy at the Maxwell James Agency produced this video. Please contact her at www.maxwelljames.net if you’re interested in having me deliver a keynote, workshop or webinar on developing presence for leaders, sales professionals or executives. Or contact me at www.TCNorth.com if you would like individual coaching to strengthen your personal power through presence.
