Communication Skills Tip: Face Your Expressions

In Lanartco’s tip of the week March 25, 2009, I spoke about facial expressions. I have been asked by many of my coaching clients, “How can I keep a poker face during my communication?” This is fascinating to me because it sounds like they want to acquire a stone-like expression in order to play the corporate communication game well. I would like to take a slightly different angle on the notion of playing the corporate communication game. In Daniel Goleman’s foreword of Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee’s book, Resonant Leader, he talks about how important it is for your emotions to be aligned with your goals in order to keep your composure. And I think that if you are deeply rooted in the purpose behind each communiqué, your face will tell the story you want it to tell. The question is: How do you find your purpose? It reminds me of my acting days when we had to choose objectives for each action in every scene our character played. Sometimes this seemed cumbersome—in EVERY scene we had to know the reasoning behind our emotion. We couldn’t just play anger or play delusion or play passion. We couldn’t just step onto the stage and wing it. We had to understand the underpinnings of the character’s motives. And I can tell you that even with all the time it took to get into character, without crisp objectives, my acting work was limited. What this means to you is that you must take the extra time to know your goal for each and every communication. When you do, you can expect that all of your facial movements will be empowered and supported by your intentions. This will help you be appropriately expressive and appropriately neutral and as Goleman says, "It will help you maintain your composure." To be added to Lanartco's Communication Performance Tip of the Week, please connect to this link or send your email address to info@lanartco.com