#11 | Self-presentation over expertise. A lesson in body language, voice and posture

If we don’t make a good overall impression, we won’t be heard, says Monika Matschnig, Germany’s No. 1 expert on body language, in conversation with Georgiy Michailov, Managing Partner at Struktur Management Partner. That doesn’t mean that only appearances count and content is not important. But a study from Allensbach shows that body language has almost three times the outward impact that the content has. Which is why charismatic people are much more likely to be heard. This is nothing new, Matschnig knows, but the fact that charisma can be learnt perhaps is.

It begins with posture and here, the expert has a simple tip: If you imagine trying to hold a pea with your buttocks, then you’ve got the right body tension. She recommends you try it immediately. Gestures also reinforce your message. By a factor of 12! People often don’t know what impression they are making, explains Monika Matschnig. Which is why she works a lot with video, especially when it comes to gestures and body language. This quickly makes clear what people need to work on and how they can change something effectively. Thanks to her long experience in training courses on rhetoric and communication, the graduate psychologist can also recognise when someone is fibbing or lying. She demonstrated this in her documentary “Die Wahrheit über die Lüge” (“The truth about the lie”), which was shown on the Franco-German TV channel Arte. The question is, however, whether we always want to hear the truth, or whether we need to know it. “We should prevaricate and fib as much as we can”, says Matschnig, “when it’s a case of something positive”. Pro-social lying is what she calls this. Anti-social lying, on the other hand, should be recognised when someone blinks fast, or their voice has a higher register. So if body and statement contradict one another, the body is telling the truth.

You can find out about this and much more on gestures and posture, hearing and listening, mirrored behaviour and why the same body language usually means people are on the same wavelength, in our latest LeaderTalk.

*Video only in German