How to Become a Commanding Presence in a Room

Being able to command a room is a skill that only certain people have, and it’s one that can be immensely useful for anyone in a leadership position. If you can command a room, then you can get people to listen to your instructions, you can build respect, and you can help to establish calm when there is a panicked atmosphere. 

 

So how do you do this?

 

Use Body Language

 

In one study, participants were asked to rate speakers who they thought were highly charismatic. In almost every case, those participants rated the people who spoke with the broadest gestures and most movement as being the ones who were truly charismatic.

 

This is because we actually use body language for the lion’s share of our communication. Therefore, when you gesticulate and move around the room, it ensures that your body seems congruent with what you are saying. 

 

This in turn makes you seem much more interested in what you are saying, and much more genuine in it.

 

At the same time, taking up more space makes you appear more confident and dominant, while moving around more will make you easier to pay attention to.

 

Speak From a Place of Emotion

The mistake many people will make is to try and “fake” this charisma by forcing themselves to move unnaturally. Unsurprisingly, this seldom works and instead only makes you appear more insecure.

 

That’s why the best way to be more charismatic and to use your body language correctly, is to truly believe in what you’re saying. Moreover, you need to really believe in what you’re saying.

 

One way you can do this is to tap into a powerful emotion whenever you speak. When you think about how important, exciting, infuriating, or endearing something is, you will be able to convey that same emotion to your audience.

 

And great communication is about transmitting emotion as much as it is about transmitting words.

 

Use Silence

 

But while pacing and gesturing can get you a long way, you can also command a room with the power of silence. Next time the office is raucous and you want attention, try standing silently in the corner of the room with your arms crossed. 

 

This will have an unsettling impact on the team and slowly they will become silent and pay attention too. It takes a huge amount of presence to be able to silence a room this way, and huge confidence to do so without opening your mouth.

 

How to Deliver Instructions So They Will Get Followed

As a leader, a large part of your role is going to involve providing instructions for people to follow, and then helping to make sure that they follow those instructions and complete them.

 

While this might sound like a very simple part of the job, it’s actually an area where there is a lot of room for error – and this can seriously undermine your effectiveness as a leader. Read on then, and we’ll discuss how best to provide instructions so that they are followed correctly.

 

Be Clear and Concise

 

The first and most important rule when it comes to providing instructions, is to be as clear and concise as possible. That means reeling off the points in a bulleted list that outlines each step that a person needs to take. This will in turn ensure that they aren’t confused, and it will be especially important during high pressure situations.

 

In fact, wherever possible, a great idea is actually to provide some form of checklist. Countless studies show that when you provide a professional with a checklist, they will tend to complete much better work. This is because they can’t overlook or forget an important step. This is not only useful for beginners, but also for the highly trained who can sometimes become complacent and forget important steps.

 

Explain the Why

 

Using lots of detailed and simplified instructions might sound like you’re talking down to your employees or team members. It certainly does run this risk!

 

That’s why it is so important that you make sure that you also explain why you are giving any instructions. When you do this, you are giving the people listening to you more respect and responsibility, which will help to motivate them to do better work.

 

More importantly though, explaining why someone should do something will help them to better understand what you have asked and it will reduce the likelihood of error. 

 

At the same time, when you give these kinds of explanations, you also provide your listeners with the ability to make their own decisions about how work gets done – which allows them to be more creative AND to work around problems.

 

If you are tasked with following a specific instruction with no idea why you need to do so, then you won’t be able to adapt to challenges that come up. But if you know what the end goal is, you can think outside the box and find an alternative option to reach the same point!

 

How to Gain the Respect of a Team

Think back to your days at school, and try to remember the different types of teachers that you dealt with. Chances are, that you had teachers who were able to gain the respect of your classes and who were well liked by everyone. When they asked the room to be quiet, it normally became quite quickly!

 

But then there were the teachers who had no grasp on the class whatsoever – who were teased and bullied by the class and who couldn’t control their behavior.

 

And so it is with managers, parents, and all kinds of leaders. So how do you go about gaining the respect of your team and avoiding becoming an ineffectual leader like the latter example?

 

Don’t Want it Too Badly

 

One of the worst things that any leader can do, is to appear desperate for their team to like and respect them. This is why the “buddy buddy” approach never works. If all you do is to try and please your team, if you try to make them laugh, and if you give in to all of their commands and requests, then you will eventually find that you completely lose the respect of your team and that they end up taking advantage of you.

 

Don’t try and be cool or be liked – just try and do the best for your team.

 

Control Your Emotion

 

Another easy way to lose the respect of your team is to lose your cool. The teachers that were most effective at controlling the class were not the ones who shouted the most but often the ones that were able to remain calm and collected.

 

If you seemingly explode every time something goes wrong, then you are going to become a target for your team to try and goad. But if you can stay calm and in-control, then you will earn their respect.

 

Do the Best For Them

 

Ultimately, the best manager or leader is the one who sacrifices themselves and puts their team first. That means taking flak from higher-ups when things go wrong, and it means trying to guide and nurture the team so they can do their best work.

 

If you do this, then your staff will pick up on that vibe. This will ensure that everything you do is seen through that lens, which will ensure that you gain their appreciation, and therefore, their respect.

 

How to Get the Most Out of Members of a Team

Being a leader is truly about taking a step back, and about allowing your team to really perform their best work. Rather than “taking the bull by the horns” and attempting to micromanage your staff to follow your every instruction, instead you should be letting the individual creativity and talent of each person shine. That’s why they were hired in the first place, after all!

 

So how do you do this? How do you go about getting the most out of each individual team member? Here are some useful points to keep in mind.

 

Make Them Feel Safe

 

One of the most important roles of any leader is to make the team feel safe. In a work place environment, this will often mean that you are taking on responsibility, such that they don’t take the blame when things turn sour.

 

If your team know you will blame them for every mistake that they make, then they won’t be able to take creative risks. Likewise, if they are terrified of layoffs and higher management, then they’re not going to work well either!

 

Know Their Skills

 

Another important thing to consider is how each of your members operates as an individual and how best they can be integrated into a team. Different people have different skill sets and work better in different capacities – which means that different people will work better in certain groups and in certain positions within those groups. If you have someone who is a born leader then of course that person is an asset to any group – unless that group already has a born leader in place in which case you are going to cause friction. Think of how each new member will fit into the dynamic of each group and choose how you assemble the teams based on this. At the same time though, be sensitive to how your staff react to these decisions and be willing to move individuals to other groups and departments if necessary.

 

Likewise, this allows you to know who to assign to each task when they are required to work independently.

 

Give Them Ownership

 

One of THE most important tips for any leader, is to give members of the team a sense of ownership over what they are doing. While it’s your job to take responsibility when things go wrong, you should also make sure that they have something to show for their hard work, and that they have control over. If it goes well… they get all the credit!

When someone isn’t working their best, it normally isn’t because they are “bad workers” but instead because they don’t feel intrinsically motivated by the work they’re doing. Give them a project that they have some creative control over, and that they can add to their CV… and all that often changes!

 

How to Make Sure Your Team Reaches Their Targets and Goals

As a leader, you have many important jobs. In a business setting though, one of the most important of these is simply making sure that your team reaches its targets and goals.

 

You will be put in charge of a group by your managers, and the reason for this is so that you can help them to get the business to where they think it needs to be. This likely means earning a certain amount of profit, taking on a certain number of new clients, or perhaps turning over more work.

 

Whatever the case, you need to decide how to help your team to get there. So how do you do that?

 

Smaller Goals

 

The first step is to break those overarching targets down into smaller and more accomplishable goals. This will help you to see whether or not you are on track to meet the targets at any given point. Have you reached X milestone within the expected timeframe?

 

You should make sure that these milestones are not too tight, and that they leave a little bit of space for error and leeway. It’s not a good idea to try and race toward a deadline as it will create a stressed atmosphere and it will likely lead to you getting behind schedule which can be very difficult to recover from.

 

Assigning Roles

 

Once you have your goals, you need to start assigning roles to members of the team and placing them correctly to do their best work. That means further dividing the work you need to do into small and precise chunks. Think about who is best to tackle each of those chunks, and how best to motivate them to tackle them.

 

Process Kaizen

 

The next thing to think about is efficiency. This is sometimes referred as “process kaizen,” which essentially means honing in on small changes you can make to daily processes, that can save large amounts of time and energy in the long run.

 

For example, if your team of writers are writing their work, editing it, then uploading and formatting it, then you might find that having them edit at the same time as they upload and format can reduce the number of steps and thereby get work done more quickly.

 

Invest in Force Multipliers

 

A force multiplier is anything that you can use in order to get more work done more quickly, without putting in more energy. An example is a forklift – this multiplies the number of palettes that a single person or a team can move exponentially! Computers are also force multipliers, and making sure that everyone’s works to the best of their ability is a huge way to make sure they’re able to work as quickly as possible.

 

Why Getting Staff to Work Together is Vital for Any Business

A business is much more than just the sum of its parts. You can have all of the very best staff, all of the very best tools, and the best ideas and business models – but if it doesn't all come together into one cohesive whole with a strong message, a great drive and single-minded ambition, then it can still fail.

 

One of the most important aspects of this is getting your staff to work together and if they do not, then even if they are each individually incredibly skilled and talented, they still aren't going to produce the best work and will be likely to make mistakes.

 

Getting your staff to work well as a team and as a cohesive unit requires a lot of understanding regarding group dynamics and psychology in general, and it can be a constant struggle. This is where it pays to have a skilled and effective leader in charge, who can help to take charge and lead that team as a unified group.

 

Here’s what that involves.

 

Knowing Your Team

 

One of the most important skills for any manager is emotional intelligence. This is the ability to understand what motivates someone and what affect your language or behavior might have on them (it also describes your ability to understand and control your own emotional response too!).

 

Being an effective manager means knowing which members of the team are likely to get along. It also means recognizing what has gone wrong when those people don’t get on. Not taking sides or pointing the finger, but understanding that sometimes personalities clash, and sometimes people have bad days. Your job is not to punish, but rather to diffuse the situation and prevent it happening again.

 

Reducing Stress

 

One of the most important ways to prevent arguments and even bullying within the workplace is to reduce stress and pressure. If you are trying to squeeze as much productivity as possible out of your team, then you might inadvertently be increasing the likelihood of arguments and other issues breaking out. This is suddenly when it’s a big deal that Jeff likes to take 20-minute cigarette breaks!

 

Let your team work at a more relaxed pace however, and you might find they’re more likely to get on!

 

Avoiding Boredom

 

That said, it’s also important to avoid boredom as this is what can often lead to petty behavior. Make sure that everyone has work to do, but that they are happy doing it with a strong sense of camaraderie. 

 

Why Micromanagement is a HUGE Mistake

When you think of someone who is a bad manager, you will likely find that a few specific words and phrases come to mind to describe that stereotypical individual. One of the most common of these is “micromanager.”

 

What is a micromanager?

 

This is someone who feels the need to take control over every last aspect of a job, and who will often attempt to grapple that control from their workers.

 

They might do this with the best of intentions. Probably, it is the manager who will be in trouble if the team is not meeting targets. Therefore, it makes sense that they should take control. At the same time, they might be trying to help their staff and their team by giving them lots of detailed instructions.

 

But the end result is a frustrated and stifled team, along with sub-par final products.

 

Let’s use web design as an example. If you are a micromanager who has tasked a member of your team with creating a website, then you might be tempted to provide lots of steps and details. You might tell them the size that the logo needs to be, the color, and the position. You might show them multiple examples of what the site should look like, and you might make strict rulings about the tools used to build it. Perhaps you tell them that they should use a certain font, and maybe you send the work back multiple times for corrections and for changes.

 

This is micromanagement. 

 

But it’s also a big waste of time – all the time you spend going back and forth with your work is time wasted that could have been spent simply developing a better website.

 

It also wastes the talent of one of your skilled workers. You likely hired this person because they were good at web design – so why wrestle control from them?

 

From their perspective, this is highly frustrating. Chances are that you – not being a web designer – are providing them with a spec that they know will result in a sub-par end product. But what is more, is that it removes all their creative freedom and expression.

 

Creating a great website is creative work that someone should enjoy and should feel proud of. But if all they did was to follow an exact brief to the letter – with zero room for improvisation – then they won’t have any of that feeling at all.

 

The Power of Silence for Leaders

Being a leader means many things, but one of the most important skills for anyone who is in charge of other people, is the ability to command a room and to gain attention. You can be the best leader in the world in terms of your strategizing and your people management – but if you can’t get anyone to listen to you, then you won’t be effective!

One of the greatest tools in your arsenal when it comes to getting over this obstacle and commanding that audience, is to use silence.

 

Many of us think that the best way to gain attention and to look in control, is to shout and make a lot of noise. The truth couldn’t be further from this.

 

Why is that? Because when you shout and make fuss, you look desperate for that attention. Most of us have been conditioned to learn that if someone is desperate for attention, then we probably shouldn’t give it to them!

 

Conversely, someone who is seemingly calm and indifferent to you, will instantly become more intriguing and dynamic. Because they are trying to impress you, the power dynamic shifts and you find yourself trying to impress them.

 

When someone stands up to talk and starts with a moment of silence, this makes them seem extremely confident. That’s because most of us are constantly anxious that even a moment of silence will mean we lose our audience!

 

At the same time, starting a sentence or a speech with silence will ensure that everyone needs to lean in and listen to what you are saying. This will set the tone for what you’re about to say.

 

Watch an actor or a politician who is known for being charismatic. That could be Will Smith, Dwayne Johnson, Obama, etc. What you will find, is that they tell a lot of stories. And when they do this, they leave moments of silence in between their statements in order to create suspense and drama. This is one of the biggest differences between those confident and charismatic speakers, versus someone who comes across as nervous and anxious.

 

How can a story have a dynamic ebb and flow if you try to get it all out in moments?

And when someone uses silence in this way, they come across as supremely confident and in charge of the room.

 

Try using more silence the next time you speak to someone, and see just how powerful this can be!

 

Understanding Convergence and Divergence for Leaders

Convergence and divergence business/sociology term that refers to the way that groups tend to grow to become more and more like the other members of that group. In other words, if you spend time in a group of people with a particular accent and particular habits and views, then most of the time you are likely to find yourself speaking with that accent and adopting some of those habits and views. That's convergence; divergence meanwhile however refers to the way in which those groups grow to become more unlike other groups so that they develop a kind of group identity. This is often how feuds and disagreements start so you need to keep an eye on it.

 

So, what does this have to do with leadership? Simple: if you are leading groups, then you need to recognize the tendency for sub groups to form. This is why many offices will end up becoming somewhat tribal – where the accounting department is made up of one clique for instance, while sales might be another.

 

Convergence is a good thing if you can encourage it as a way to get all of your staff to feel like they're part of the same group and working towards the same cause (as long as they aren't too much of a clique when you get new staff), but it's a bad thing if it means they become narrow-minded and don't take on board other vies and it's certainly bad news if it means that the finance department goes to war with HR. It's your job to prevent this happening and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to make sure you keep rotating and mixing up the teams so that there is constantly new blood and they are constantly woken up to outside views.

 

Another option to prevent convergence from happening to a large extent is to ensure that you engage in group activities for the whole office/team. That might mean days out to team building events, or just the occasional party.

 

Finally, keep in mind that convergence can be a destructive force even when it affects the entire team and seems to bind them together. Diversity is crucially important for any system, as a way to prevent defects from becoming magnified, and to help bring new creative ideas to the workflow.

 

Keep looking for outside influences, and don’t allow your team to become too cliquey.