Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

This chapter opens and closes with discussion of the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks, and their intimidating and powerful haka (a traditional Māori dance). Body language communicates nonverbally and often without conscious awareness of our own sense of power or powerlessness. Cuddy writes: “Whether temporary or stable, benevolent or sinister, status and power are expressed through evolved nonverbal displays—widespread limbs, enlargement of occupied space, erect posture” (146). She notes that this is true across cultures and even in those who were born blind, and who could not have picked up nonverbal displays from watching others.

There are many aspects of nonverbal communication, including “facial expressions, eye movements and gaze, body orientation and posture, hand gestures, walking style, [and] vocal cues such as pitch and volume” (149). Power can also influence the way we see ourselves and others. We can perceive our relative height to be greater than it is when we are feeling powerful, and less when we are feeling weak. These nonverbal cues can eclipse job titles and other indications of power when they contradict each other. For instance, the water boy was seen as more powerful than the coach when he was posed powerfully and the coach was posed more submissively.