Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2015

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-11

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Everyone Can Achieve Personal Empowerment

Cuddy is emphatic throughout Presence that empowerment is available to everyone by using the techniques in her book. In this way, she suggests that her work is not the province of the elite. Rather, her methods are accessible regardless of class and socioeconomic status. She asserts that simple body movements can affect our personal sense of power and help us to feel more confident and powerful.

Cuddy firmly believes that our posture and nonverbal communication speaks not just to others, but to ourselves about who we are and how much power we have. By maintaining upright and expansive posture in public and power poses in private, it is possible for us to tap into our personal reserves of power. She explains: “The way you carry yourself is a source of personal power—the kind of power that is the key to presence. It’s the key that allows you to unlock yourself—your abilities, your creativity, your courage, and even your generosity” (198). Since most people can do these kinds of bodily movements, the technique is available to a majority, rather than a select few.

A critique of Cuddy’s work is that people with disabilities might not be able to mimic power poses. Cuddy argues that people with disabilities are also included; simply visualizing the body in the pose or posture can imitate the same feeling that others get by physically doing the position: “Research also shows that many of the same regions of the brain that become active while executing particular actions—areas in and around the motor cortex—also respond when imagining those same actions” (231).

Cuddy extends her argument to the Internet. She discusses the concept of “virtual posture” in which a person selects or is assigned an avatar in an online environment. In a study Cuddy cites, physical characteristics of the avatar influenced the behaviors of the individuals assigned to them: “Yee and Bailenson assigned subjects to a tall, average, or short avatar, and it turns out, sadly, that even in the virtual realm height bestows an advantage. People who’d been assigned to tall avatars negotiated better deals than those who’d been assigned to average or short avatars” (237). Cuddy concludes from this research that virtual or visualized power poses can create a similar effect to physically executing a Wonder Woman or Starfish pose.

Cuddy believes that personal empowerment is available to everyone with something as simple as a two-minute Wonder Woman pose in the bathroom mirror before going into an important meeting. As evidence, she shares many stories that were sent to her about people’s successful application of her ideas. While sharing these stories, Cuddy presents herself as vulnerable, perhaps as a way of connecting with her reader. As she writes in her introduction to Chapter 11:

My hope is that you will recognize yourself somewhere among [the stories told by individuals]. I say this because I believe that the part of my TED talk that had the biggest impact was not the research I presented, it was my confession that I’ve spent a good part of my life believing ‘I don’t deserve to be here.’ Although I didn’t understand it at the time, I now see why that mattered: it made people feel less alone in the world, knowing that at least one other person has felt this way and has (mostly) overcome that feeling. One true story, one honest confession, can be powerful” (272-73).

Demonstrating Power with Nonverbal Communication

Much of the book emphasizes how the mind-body connection improves our experiences. Cuddy also makes the point that physical manifestations of personal power influence others and their perceptions of us.

In some cases, the lack of alignment between our nonverbal and verbal communication can cause those around us to doubt our sincerity or motives. They can identify something is wrong, even if they are unable to articulate what the problem is. A lack of synchrony between physicality and emotions can have a negative effect: “In fact, when job applicants try too hard to make a good impression through nonverbal tactics such as forced smiles, it can backfire—interviewers dismiss them as phony and manipulative” (21). Pretending to be confident does not work.

Power poses are intended to evoke feelings such as confidence so that they don’t need to be faked. One should perform these poses before arriving in the situation in which you need to display confidence. The body needs time to “talk” to the mind and for the body and mind to be in alignment. Once that alignment occurs, you will have synchrony and won’t appear insincere. Cuddy gives the example of a study where subjects performed or did not perform power poses before a mock interview:

As expected, subjects who prepared for the job interview with high-power (versus low-power) poses performed significantly better and were significantly more likely to be ‘hired’ for the mock job. Power poses had no effect on the content of their speeches. But the high-power posers scored much higher on nonverbal presence—and it was nonverbal presence that completely drove the hiring decisions. In other words, judges wanted to hire the high-power posers because of their nonverbal presence (226).

This is the core thesis of Cuddy’s book: that using power poses in advance is effective in communicating presence to those around you. Nonverbal communication in social situations enables us to better relate to others and have positive outcomes. According to Presence, posture, facial expressions, and gestures can have as much of an impact on others as the words you actually say. Cuddy asserts: “[I]t’s clear that thoughts and feelings shape body language and that each person’s body language speaks to others. Using a purely physical vocabulary, our inner lives communicate, person to person, back and forth. We’re holding entire conversations, exchanging important information, without ever saying a word” (170).

Cuddy also notes that we mimic others’ nonverbal communication in social interactions, which makes it all the more important to project what we want others to see in an authentic way. When we do not have access to participating in mimicry, it becomes more difficult for us to empathize with others. Cuddy explains: “[O]ne of the primary ways we decode others’ emotions is by automatically mimicking their facial expressions. In everyday life, this mimicry is so subtle and quick (it takes about one-third of a second) that we don’t even know it’s happening. Nonetheless, through the magic of facial feedback, this mimicry allows us to feel and understand other people’s emotions” (179).

Nonverbal communication deeply impacts our perception of and interactions with others. It says as much about our sense of personal power as our words.

The Importance of Synchronicity Between the Mind and Body

The concept of presence is predicated on our ability to connect our bodies with our minds and thereby access our authentic selves, even under duress. Cuddy sets up the importance of this “synchrony” and then uses the book to both demonstrate how it can impact us and how power poses can enhance it. Presence is all about being your authentic self and connecting the body and the mind. Cuddy writes extensively about the ways in which the body can be used to change what we’re feeling when we’re under pressure.

One way that the body can influence the mind is through breath. Cuddy observes: “That’s one of the reasons yoga can change the way you feel—it naturally prompts you to breathe slowly and rhythmically, as do practices such as chanting, tai chi, qigong, and meditation” (190). These practices can all help to calm the fight or flight response. If the mind and body are in an anxious state, slow and rhythmic breathing can calm the body, which in turn allows you to calm your mind. As Cuddy explains: “[J]ust by breathing faster or slower, more deeply or more nasally, or with tremors or sighs, people could change their emotions and their states of mind” (191). She suggests that we use this mind-body connection whenever we need to soothe anxiety.

In studies that Cuddy shares, researchers found that by intentionally creating certain facial expressions the study subjects’ mood changes in the direction indicated by the facial expression. The opposite was also true. As Cuddy writes: “In short, by paralyzing or relaxing the muscles that allow us to express real emotions, we are dimming both our own emotional experiences and our ability to recognize those of other people” (179). We have the power to influence our emotions by changing the position of the body or the face. Cuddy suggests that we leverage that power to create presence even in the face of anxiety by adopting power poses. By feeling more powerful, we will be able to confront challenges feeling more connected to our authentic, powerful self, rather than the anxious, insecure self that might show up.

All in all, the mind-body connection comes down to an alignment of the body with the mind. Cuddy writes: “Virtually all theories about the authentic self, and, by extension, about presence, require some degree of alignment—synchrony, as I will call it. In order for you to feel truly present, the various elements of the self—emotions, thoughts, physical and facial expressions, behaviors—must be in harmony” (34). It is this misalignment of our body and mind that causes us to have those moments of frustration and missed opportunity when we do not perform our best when given the chance.

It is not possible to successfully fake this mind-body connection. During one experiment: “The harder candidates work to manage the impression they make—the more tactics they deploy—the more the interviewers start to see the candidates as insincere and manipulative, which ultimately bodes poorly for landing the job” (31). Attempting to force body language to say something that is at odds with what is going on in the brain simply does not work. Therefore, Cuddy recommends the use of power poses before entering a situation so that the body and mind can synchronize, enabling the performance to be more authentic. As Cuddy further explains: “Usually our words are relatively easy to control. We can summon up the phrases and terms we’ve studied and rehearsed in the mirror. It’s a lot harder, and maybe impossible, to manage the rest of our communication machinery—what our faces, bodies, and our overall demeanor tell the outside world. And those other things—the nonwords—matter. A lot” (35).