A guide to gravitas
KTG founder Nat Maher and communications expert Catherine Allison discuss some of the challenges women face getting their voices heard in our agency world, and look at practical tips that’ll boost your gravitas.
Getting your voice heard
At KTG, there’s one question that crops up time and time again:
“How can I get my voice heard in a room full of men?”
We can all play a role in helping embolden women to back themselves more and doubt themselves less; to take more risks, to throw themselves into doing the very things they’re afraid of. Only by doing that will women come to realise how little reason they had to fear. Often the only way to build confidence and courage is by acting with it.
But how do women, take that first bold step, build our inner strength and stability, and gain the courage to take more risks and increase our self-confidence?
In her book, Gravitas, Caroline Goyder suggests that you first recognise the inner helmsmen in your head – two key members being 1) your inner coach and 2) your inner critic.
Your inner coach does calm and celebration and is a positive voice that lets you know when you’ve done something well, supports you and gives you praise. You can learn to turn up the calming voice of the coach whenever you hit anxiety. By doing so, you’ll start to notice how it calms you down.
Your inner critic does refinement and helps you honestly step up and improve (rather than doing a full on character assassination). Your inner critic is an essential tool for inner confidence and gravitas because it allows you to transform, improve, refine. Think of a moment where you’ve felt stressed or under pressure recently. The negative voice you hear in these moments is your critic. Notice how when you turn up the inner critic it raises your anxiety levels and stresses you out but if you turn the volume down you relax.
Use the critic to make you better not worse. If all the critic is doing is making you feel bad you need to take it in hand and get it to refine: “Yes, you could have done that better”, rather than attack: “You were a disaster”. It’s crucial to know the difference and train your critic to help you.
For many of us, the inner critic is often shouting far too loudly in our heads. We need to encourage our inner coach to work harder. We need to know when to refine and when to celebrate. Caroline assures us that if we can find the balance, it will give us honesty, humility and instinct…all leading us to have greater gravitas and authority in the workplace.
As we work for balance between our inner voices, there are also some direct, practical, immediate tips we can also deploy to help us attain that valuable gravitas:
1.Non-verbal communication
Try the power pose before walking in to a room – stand tall and take up space, even stick your hands on your hips if you really want to feel it – it will immediately make you feel more in control, and more powerful.
Walk tall, shake hands firmly and establish good eye contact.
Minimise nodding – replace nods with stillness – keep your head still and relaxed.
Do smile – smiling helps with approachability and like-ability - but for more status, only smile if it happens naturally. Try and avoid raised, ‘like me! like me!’ eyebrows. Relax your face. You’ve got this.
2.Fine-tune verbal comms
Introduce yourself / ask how client is with a strong, firm, low voice.
Be comfortable with a pause – avoid unnecessary nervous laughter or ‘fillers’. Don’t fill the pause, just chill, and if in doubt relax your face and remember to breathe.
At the end of a sentence, try dropping the pitch of your voice (vs going up at the end of a sentence so it sounds like a question). Think of a newsreader – “Here is the [drop the note] news”.
Make your messages simple, clear and easy to remember – use short sentences and simple language.
If looking to influence / persuade, call out your own weaknesses in your argument or position, and do this just before your strongest point.
3.Consider your attitude
Focus on the task, not the relationship, in order to boost your status.
Get quickly to the point, and on to the task – avoid trying too hard to be someone’s friend.
Ask questions about the people you are with – it’s important to ask questions that are interesting to them and ask them to talk about things from their point of view.
Believe that you’re the expert – truly know your subject, and you’ll feel a greater sense of confidence.
4.Focus your attention
Take the focus away from yourself and truly focus your attention on the person you’re meeting. Give them your full attention, however harried or distracted you may feel
Don’t mistake ‘being interesting’ for ‘talking about myself’
Change your focus from yourself to the other person – truly LISTEN – the more you listen, the more information you get
5.How you look…
This isn’t about a need to conform but simply about wearing what makes you feel powerful and confident – wear what works for you.
It’s important to note that these tips are intended to help women project greater confidence and authority which will in turn enable them to feel more confident on the inside. It shouldn’t ever be about suggesting women try to be someone they’re not. This would suggest that women are lacking in something, whether it’s skill, will or background, which is of course not the case.
Go forth and have gravitas, sisters.