The Art of Manliness - #615： How to Develop Authentic Gravitas

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. When it comes

00:00:11.520 to how you're perceived in your professional life, it's likely you want to be taken seriously.

00:00:15.440 You want your words to carry weight. You want to be influential and listened to regardless

00:00:18.740 of your position in a company. You want to carry yourself with gravitas. My guest today

00:00:23.180 is an organizational psychologist and executive coach who explains how to cultivate this quality

00:00:27.060 in her book, Authentic Gravitas, Who Stands Out and Why. Her name is Rebecca Newton and we begin

00:00:31.620 our conversation together by delving into the traits that go into embodying gravitas as well

00:00:35.780 as the myths we have about this quality. We discuss how gravitas doesn't necessarily include

00:00:39.400 confidence and charisma as well as its false manifestations. Rebecca then walks us through

00:00:43.380 the steps to carrying yourself with gravitas in meetings and presentations, including why you

00:00:46.980 should script the beginning and end of your speeches and how to put more gravitas into your voice and

00:00:51.060 words. We also discuss what to focus on when you're pulled into an impromptu conversation,

00:00:54.920 how to get real feedback about how you can improve the way you carry yourself, and how

00:00:58.400 to convey gravitas in online communication. We then discuss why practicing self-leadership

00:01:02.720 is so important to developing gravitas, why Rebecca thinks everyone needs to create a personal

00:01:06.720 thought leadership window, and how you can use your drive to and from work to become more

00:01:10.760 thoughtful and reflective. We end our conversation with the questions you should start asking yourself

00:01:14.520 today to develop more gravitas. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:18.440 aom.is slash gravitas. Rebecca joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:31.560 All right, Rebecca Newton, welcome to the show.

00:01:34.980 Thanks for having me, Brett. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:37.380 So you are an organizational psychologist, and you got a book out called Authentic Gravitas,

00:01:42.540 Who Stands Out and Why? So I'm curious, how did your work as an organizational psychologist,

00:01:46.820 first off, what is an organizational psychologist? And then how did this lead you to writing about

00:01:50.960 gravitas?

00:01:52.700 So, great question. I essentially do leadership development and look at how to create healthy

00:02:00.260 teams and cultures in organizations. And, you know, so I've been working both one-to-one

00:02:08.000 coaching people and running kind of large-scale executive education programs for close to 20 years

00:02:14.740 now. And time and time again, people would say to me, particularly in a coaching conversation,

00:02:22.080 they'd say, Rebecca, do you know what I really need? I need more gravitas. And it was almost like

00:02:29.240 this, you know, people will often whisper it. They'll say it quietly as if they shouldn't want

00:02:34.140 it or they don't think they could really have it. And I think that people believe that they're very

00:02:39.600 unique in feeling that this is a gap for them, when actually I just came across it time and time

00:02:46.620 again. So, hence why I went on a journey to research it, to find out what it was, what it wasn't,

00:02:53.520 and to come up with some practical ideas that would really help people to increase their gravitas.

00:02:58.940 Well, so when your clients whisper to you, I need more gravitas, like what do they mean by that?

00:03:04.500 Like what, what do they think gravitas is? Yeah. So, it's about being, wanting to be trusted,

00:03:11.820 to be respected, to have their words carry weight. So, having their ideas taken seriously.

00:03:20.560 But one thing that kept coming up that I think is a really great description,

00:03:24.320 people would often say when they were describing other people who had gravitas. So, I would put that

00:03:29.940 exact question out to them and say, okay, what do you exactly mean by this? And in the research as

00:03:34.600 well. And people would say, it's about being able to lead the room, regardless of your position in it.

00:03:43.260 So, to some degree, it's about being able to influence and to be taken seriously and have your

00:03:48.280 ideas matter and make a difference and a positive contribution, regardless of the hierarchy and

00:03:54.420 regardless of the position that you're in, in terms of your authority.

00:03:58.800 So, as you started researching this, right? So, you saw a need amongst your clients,

00:04:03.720 they want to have more gravitas, be taken seriously. I imagine you started asking them,

00:04:07.860 okay, what do you think you need to do to have gravitas? And I'm sure you saw some,

00:04:12.900 not like some myths that started popping up.

00:04:16.440 Yeah. It was really interesting to see, you know, I think one of the things that we have to do is

00:04:20.700 debunk the myths in our own mind around what it means to have gravitas and what it takes to have

00:04:27.020 gravitas. And a few things. So, the first I call the myth of the gravitas gift, which is

00:04:33.440 people often see it as something that they have or they don't have. And, you know, so it's, it's

00:04:40.820 quite, it's unhelpful if you think I don't have this and it's something that people are almost born

00:04:45.900 with, kind of almost as a personality trait, which is just not true. And what we did was have a look

00:04:52.060 and see where people had developed gravitas. So, as reported by other people. So, a manager would

00:05:00.060 come in and say, this is an area that this person needs to work on. They need to have more gravitas.

00:05:05.720 And then they would recognize that down the track with some development that that person

00:05:10.780 had increased their gravitas. So, it definitely is something that can be developed. Whereas I think

00:05:16.320 instinctively, it's easy for us to think, I don't have that. It's not really attainable to me.

00:05:21.000 So, that's the first one. The second one is the myth of confidence. A lot of the time when we're

00:05:27.640 talking about gravitas, people would be linking it to confidence and would see confidence in other

00:05:34.940 people and think that they needed to be that confident in order to have the same degree of

00:05:42.420 gravitas. So, what we did was ask the people who others reported as, you know, being confident

00:05:50.700 confident, would they describe themselves as particularly confident? And it was interesting

00:05:55.080 because time and time again, those people would say they didn't always feel confident by any means

00:06:02.060 and that actually often they would have to give themselves a pep talk. You know, some of them

00:06:07.060 would say, Rebecca, I look at myself in the mirror in the morning and I think, it's okay,

00:06:10.520 you've got this, you can do this. And it's interesting to me, you know, we look at other people and we

00:06:14.720 see things that we know we doubt our own confidence, but we don't know that other people

00:06:21.800 doubt themselves at times. And certainly in this kind of professional working environment,

00:06:26.420 people wouldn't really walk around disclosing things like that. So, that's the second thing,

00:06:31.320 the myth of confidence. You don't need to have a really high level of confidence in order to have

00:06:36.520 gravitas. In fact, I think that working on increasing your gravitas ends up increasing

00:06:41.160 your confidence. And then the third thing is the myth of charisma. So, thinking that you need to

00:06:48.760 be charismatic in order to have gravitas. So, in the research, we found that while people with

00:06:56.060 gravitas, some people with gravitas were charismatic, you didn't need to be regarded as charismatic in

00:07:03.240 order to have gravitas. Which is important because, you know, charisma is kind of linked to

00:07:11.480 a personality trait, which is fairly stable over time, whereas gravitas is absolutely something that

00:07:18.700 can be developed and learned. And we'll dig more into this idea of charisma here in a bit. But one

00:07:24.600 of the things that really stood out to me was that idea of gravitas means you're a confident person.

00:07:29.480 And I liked how you talked about, instead of thinking about you need to be confident,

00:07:32.740 it was choose to be courageous instead. Yeah. So, that's what people would say. So,

00:07:39.080 those people who others regarded as having a high degree of gravitas, when we asked them about this

00:07:44.980 confidence point, they would describe how they were choosing courage. So, they, you know, like giving

00:07:51.780 themselves a pep talk and doing things afraid. So, rather than focusing on whether they felt confident or

00:07:59.540 not, they would be actively choosing to be courageous and to take step forward. You know,

00:08:04.960 I often say to my clients, I think that we should feel slightly nauseous fairly regularly. You know,

00:08:10.720 it means that you're stepping outside your comfort zone and pushing forward. But we have these

00:08:15.480 expectations on ourselves that we should feel confident, meaning we should feel comfortable in

00:08:22.020 all scenarios. I think actually, I would be worried if I always felt completely comfortable. I think

00:08:27.640 I'm not moving forward. I'm not stretching. What are some examples from clients you've worked with

00:08:31.420 where they had to choose to be courageous and trying to see the practical, like, you know,

00:08:35.040 so our listeners can see, like, what does it look like?

00:08:38.220 So, one of the examples is things like often putting their hand up and volunteering or asking to be the

00:08:44.520 person to do something. Like, say, it might be a big meeting or presentation or take the lead on a new

00:08:50.800 project or idea where they feel like it's somewhat out of their comfort zone or they think that

00:08:57.440 naturally there are other people who might be a better fit for it. And so, it would be easy to be

00:09:02.460 reticent. It would be easier to let someone else take the lead. So, choosing to put your hand up and

00:09:09.780 to put yourself forward for those kinds of situations to, you know, maybe it's managing a new group of people,

00:09:14.660 maybe it's starting a new social impact initiative, maybe it's hosting a big presentation.

00:09:22.640 Yeah, something that makes you feel, you know, kind of sick.

00:09:25.960 Right. Or it might be like bringing up bad news that no one wants to hear.

00:09:32.420 Yeah, I think you have to be, you know, I would want to make sure people are particularly skilled.

00:09:38.360 Bringing bad news is never an easy thing. So, being skilled and having difficult conversations,

00:09:43.720 well, I think might be important in that scenario. But absolutely, just the things that you

00:09:49.400 might naturally not put your hand up for and not put yourself forward for,

00:09:54.560 just making sure that on a regular basis, we're not just keeping going in what's comfortable.

00:10:01.980 Because actually, it's not just that we're looking to be comfortable, it's that we can get very busy.

00:10:07.740 And so, just doing what we keep, what we have to do already, I think we almost have to be

00:10:13.340 prepared to react spontaneously, to be courageous, like kind of choose it as a mindset every day,

00:10:20.780 you know, today, if the opportunity arises, I'm going to choose courage, but also to be strategic

00:10:26.160 about it. Because otherwise, we can just get busy and not think about how we could put ourselves forward

00:10:31.600 for opportunities or ventures that might be taking us quite far out of our comfort zone.

00:10:38.500 All right. So, choose to be courageous instead of thinking about I got to be confident in all

00:10:41.460 situations. Then you also, how about digging into this idea of charisma? So, you say that you don't

00:10:46.540 have to be charismatic to have gravitas. Any examples of individuals that you've come across that

00:10:53.280 are not very charismatic, but they're, you know, they're filled with gravitas as leaders?

00:10:58.000 Yeah, actually, in a business context, I come across people often who wouldn't be described

00:11:05.240 as charismatic, but certainly would be regarded as having gravitas. You know, I think that we can

00:11:11.100 associate charisma with that kind of loud life of the party, engaging, winning everybody over.

00:11:19.000 And that's, that's just not, you know, like I said, those people certainly can have authentic

00:11:24.700 gravitas. But you don't need to have that to be regarded as somebody who has gravitas. So,

00:11:31.820 I'll often see leaders, for example, there's one professional services firm that I've worked with

00:11:36.260 for a long time. And the person who time and time again, others would cite as an example of somebody

00:11:44.360 who they say has gravitas is a very senior person in the firm who is extremely quiet and

00:11:51.680 not assuming in any way, certainly would not be described as charismatic, is not the kind of

00:11:58.240 life of the party. And, you know, it's just a very bright person who is committed to making a

00:12:07.320 positive difference. And, you know, it's, it's amazing to see. And then there's other people who

00:12:12.560 are, you know, all kinds of, I guess the point is that regardless of personality type,

00:12:17.900 you can have gravitas. And you also tell, you counsel your clients, instead of thinking about,

00:12:22.660 okay, I got to focus on, you know, develop my charisma skills, instead focus on just connecting

00:12:27.420 with others. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, so when we looked at who are the people who are regarded by

00:12:33.460 others to have gravitas, the consistency was that they were able to, they were regarded as people who

00:12:39.280 connect well with other people. One of the things that can get in the way of genuinely,

00:12:44.280 meaningfully connecting with people is just the busyness of day-to-day work. And, you know,

00:12:50.300 I think that we rush often from meeting to meeting and we, you know, don't make time for what I call

00:12:58.160 space in the middle. So we might have small talk kind of beforehand, and then we jump straight into

00:13:02.580 the agenda points, but we don't really carve out time to find out what's most important to people,

00:13:08.140 what's challenging for people right now, whether that's internally or externally with clients and

00:13:12.760 customers, just those bigger, broader questions, spending time on that. It's difficult to do in

00:13:19.180 the reality of, of daily working life. Yeah. But there's lots of different things. I think

00:13:24.100 one of the ways I frame it is about balancing clarity and curiosity. So clarity in terms of

00:13:31.280 knowing your own point of view, thinking about the value that you add, but equally being curious all the

00:13:37.600 time and, and being interested in people and finding out where they're at, what's important

00:13:43.220 to them, what's driving them. Well, we're going to dig in here a little bit more because you've

00:13:47.620 developed these models on how you can, I think, connect more with people. But before we do, let's

00:13:52.920 sort of recap. So a definition of gravitas or authentic gravitas, right, is someone, it seems that

00:14:00.720 they're taken seriously, they provide value to others, and they do that pretty much by choosing to be

00:14:06.000 courageous, doing the hard things, being uncomfortable, and then connecting with others,

00:14:10.840 like just being curious about them and finding out how they can influence them more effectively.

00:14:16.700 Yeah. So there's a range of factors. So absolutely, they're courageous. They're committed to connecting

00:14:21.100 with people, which is a choice that we all get to make, right? I'd say they are collaborators. So

00:14:27.240 not independent superheroes, not having to be the one who has the spotlight on them all the time.

00:14:33.960 It's interesting, you know, the subtitle of the book is who stands out and why. And I think

00:14:37.700 the people who stand out at work are often the ones who aren't necessarily trying to.

00:14:43.320 So they're really committed to adding value and meaningful connection and collaboration with

00:14:48.480 other people. And they end up standing out, but they're not necessarily looking for the spotlight.

00:14:52.940 Well, so this is your definition of authentic gravitas. You also contrast that with adverse gravitas.

00:14:59.160 What does that look like? Yeah. So I think that we have all come across people who in their posturing

00:15:07.520 present in the way that we might expect people to have gravitas. So I call it surface gravitas when

00:15:15.020 people posture and they present as being, you know, fairly self-important and owning the space in the

00:15:24.160 room and being dominant. And so surface gravitas, you know, it's basically when you look at someone

00:15:32.140 and in that moment, we might regard them as being someone who's particularly serious or important,

00:15:38.800 and they're giving off the signals that they are important. But adverse gravitas is, you know,

00:15:45.800 that may or may not have a negative impact. Adverse gravitas shuts down the contribution of other

00:15:50.880 people in the room. So it has a negative impact on the people around them. And I think that we all

00:15:55.760 know what that's like. So people end up walking on eggshells, they may not contribute as much as they

00:16:00.500 otherwise would. And so the kind of collective value of the group is diminished by the fact that

00:16:06.280 one person is particularly domineering or posturing their own kind of self-importance.

00:16:14.340 I think we've all encountered those people who take themselves really seriously,

00:16:16.920 but because they take themselves very seriously, like it's hard to take them seriously.

00:16:21.820 Yes. It's, yeah, sometimes I walk away from conversation thinking, I never want to see you

00:16:27.980 again. But that happens rarely. I think most people in the world are not like that. But I, you know,

00:16:34.540 we all know. And to be fair, a lot of the time, you know, I don't think any of us are perfect.

00:16:41.140 And we all have a gap between our intention and our impact. So when people sometimes are

00:16:48.520 demonstrating what I call adverse gravitas, and I have the opportunity to coach some of these people,

00:16:55.360 they're not intending to have a negative impact on others, right? So, well, for the most part. And so

00:17:02.440 the challenge for all of us is to think about the impact that we want to have on other people.

00:17:07.840 Like, what's our intention for impact? Continuing to get feedback, because, you know, the higher you

00:17:14.660 go in organizational life, the less feedback you tend to get until probably you hit the very top,

00:17:19.600 and then you get more than you could handle. But we, you know, we have to keep open and actively

00:17:25.380 seeking out feedback. And then only then can we really understand this gap that we all have between

00:17:30.560 our intention and our actual impact.

00:17:33.620 Well, speaking of...

00:17:34.540 Which I personally know.

00:17:35.440 Right. Well, speaking of impact, you've developed this impact model that you walk clients through to

00:17:41.300 help them be, have more gravitas. So can you walk us sort of a, give a bird's eye view of what this

00:17:46.540 impact model is?

00:17:47.780 When people are wanting to increase their gravitas, it's often, at least initially, they're thinking of

00:17:53.040 it as being about how they show up in important meetings or big presentations. And so the impact model

00:17:59.600 is designed to help people have a practical tool to walk through. So the first thing is,

00:18:05.040 insight, which is thinking about what do I believe about this topic? What's most important? And what

00:18:11.960 insight do I want people to take away? So it's thinking about your kind of goal for that meeting

00:18:18.620 or presentation before you start thinking about the content of it and what you're going to say.

00:18:23.120 So insight is the first one, then motivation. And it's asking yourself, right, the people I'm about

00:18:30.420 to encounter, whether that's two people in a meeting or 500 people at a presentation I'm about

00:18:36.460 to give, what's their motivation? What's driving them? What's most important to them right now?

00:18:42.640 And so if you don't know the answer to that question, then you know what work you need to do

00:18:49.560 before the meeting to find out, to really understand your audience. And again, all of this comes before

00:18:56.040 thinking about what you're going to say. And then the third part P is perception. So this is checking in

00:19:02.960 on how does my audience perceive what I'm, the topic I'm going to be speaking about right now?

00:19:09.880 What do they think about this? What do they know about this? How might they see it differently to

00:19:15.600 how I'm seeing it? So that's the work that you do beforehand is thinking about where is my audience

00:19:22.000 right now? And what impact do I want to have on them? Then you get into what you're thinking,

00:19:29.700 what you're going to say. Because what I find, the reason for this is that often clients will just

00:19:34.560 want to jump straight to what they're going to say. So we focus on our messaging rather than

00:19:40.240 the purpose of our messaging. So just those three points can help people to make sure they're on the

00:19:45.560 right track in terms of how they're framing things and what they're getting people to take away.

00:19:51.600 So then A is advocate. What do you want to get across? What's most important? What do you want

00:19:57.180 people to remember? I think if it is kind of, what are your three sticky messages? You know,

00:20:02.300 the saying around, if you can't say what it is that you're trying to get across in one minute,

00:20:06.160 then you still have more work to do. And the only then is the C for content. So at that point,

00:20:12.260 I get people to start writing out what it is that they're going to communicate.

00:20:15.880 And it kind of, it's counterintuitive. It feels quite frustrating. But actually, if you go through

00:20:22.060 that process, it only takes around 10 minutes to answer each of those questions. Okay, it might

00:20:27.720 trigger some other conversations you need to have, but there's not too much work to do. And it

00:20:33.620 definitely changes the content that people write or plan to speak. And then the last one is T,

00:20:40.180 that's about the technique. And it's important that technique comes at the end, because the kind

00:20:45.580 of tips and tricks or how we present, you know, the tone and the body language is so important,

00:20:51.620 but actually it's designed to support and to reinforce our messages rather than

00:20:56.760 being the focus of our message. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:21:04.420 And now back to the show. What I love about this model, and I think the insight that I got from

00:21:09.420 was those first three that you talked about. It's all about the audience or the person you're

00:21:13.520 acting with. Because I think oftentimes when people think about, I need to have more gravitas,

00:21:17.420 they go immediately to like technique or content. And like, how can I appear more serious? I mean,

00:21:24.500 that's, you know, you got to think about how can you impact others? Like, what is it that they need

00:21:30.120 to hear from you and how are they perceived by you? So this is like, you can go through these

00:21:34.760 questions. Okay, what's my intent? How am I perceived? What's the motivation of my audience?

00:21:39.660 You can do that if you have a presentation, really take time to think about

00:21:43.100 how to craft that message based on those answers to those questions. But how do you do this on the

00:21:47.940 fly? Yeah, great question. Because all of us are pulled into important meetings suddenly, you know,

00:21:55.240 I remember walking around a client office and they said, Oh, Rebecca, you're here. We'd really like

00:21:59.960 you to come and talk to person X who was quite influential. I was like, Oh, hi, as I'm walking

00:22:06.600 through the door thinking, what am I going to talk about? What am I meant to say? So there's a

00:22:13.360 couple of questions that I think are really important. One is, and I imagine them kind of as

00:22:20.060 as questions on a little sticky note, stuck in my pocket, you know, and so you pull out,

00:22:26.600 what do I want them to think, to feel and to act? So what do I want them to potentially do

00:22:33.620 differently as a result of this encounter with me? But so we often think about, we think,

00:22:39.960 what do I want to say? Or what do I want them to do? You know, we might be mindful of the,

00:22:44.760 of the objective, but we also want to think about what do we want them to think? And what do we want

00:22:50.980 them to feel? I had the managing partner of a firm once say to me, Oh, Rebecca, I've never used the

00:22:57.520 word feeling at work before. And I challenged him. I was like, well, people are making decisions based

00:23:03.840 on how they feel much of the time. So I think it's worth considering. So anyway, not to get too far

00:23:11.280 into the emotions, but so one question is, how do I want them to think, feel and act? And then the

00:23:16.540 other question just to quickly ask yourself is, if nothing else, what do I want them to remember?

00:23:22.160 So if you suddenly pulled into a meeting or given an opportunity, kind of on the fly,

00:23:29.060 what do I want them to take away? Those are, I think those are great questions. The other thing

00:23:33.360 that I liked that you talked about, something you can do on the fly is instead of worrying about being

00:23:38.200 interesting yourself, just be interested in the other people, like be curious about what's going

00:23:42.120 on with them. And that can leave a significant impact on them. Yeah. It's amazing how we feel

00:23:47.900 pressure to perform, to be interesting all the time. And actually people love when you're interested

00:23:56.620 in them. And that sounds obvious, people know that, but it's remembering to do it. And so,

00:24:02.940 you know, one thing I'll often do is give out clients or participants on kind of

00:24:07.000 executive programs. I'll give them a list of open questions and open questions are always my least

00:24:12.880 favorite thing to teach because it seems so obvious, but undoubtedly at the end of kind of

00:24:19.580 spending three days with people, it's the one thing that they always find the most powerful. So, you

00:24:25.340 know, you have to construct it in a way that is comfortable for you, but things like what's most

00:24:30.420 important to you right now, or on a scale of one to 10, how important is this to you? What's one thing

00:24:36.820 that's holding you back? Or, you know, what are you finding to be really interesting in your industry

00:24:42.360 right now? Something like that. And I think if you just have two or three questions kind of up your

00:24:46.920 sleeve, whenever you're meeting new people or going into important conversations, then that just gets

00:24:53.600 the conversation going. People are happy that you're focusing and interested in them. I mean, it has to be

00:24:59.720 genuine. That's the only thing, right? The interest in the other people has to be genuine,

00:25:03.940 but it gets the conversation flowing things. It also gives you a bit of time. So, some of my

00:25:10.420 clients will say they need a bit of time to think. They really want some space to process kind of

00:25:16.400 what's going on and they don't feel like on the fly they can come up with ideas. So, getting other

00:25:21.580 people talking is a great way of learning more about them and at the same time giving yourself a bit

00:25:27.500 of a breather to think about what it is that you want to say next. Right. And if authentic gravitas is

00:25:32.640 about being perceived as someone with value, that brings value to a situation, like that's a great

00:25:38.020 way to show that you can bring value to somebody. It's like, hey, I'm interested in what you, your

00:25:42.880 problems, your issues. I might not be able to solve it right now, but I can, I'm interested in that and

00:25:48.060 maybe we can do something after we have this conversation. Yeah, it definitely is the foundation

00:25:52.800 of collaboration. You can't really have meaningful collaboration if you don't genuinely understand

00:26:00.560 what's most important to other people and really driving them. And so, coming back to this notion of

00:26:06.860 not being an independent superhero, it's, that's the basis of powerful connection and then adding true

00:26:14.460 value to other people. All right. So, we've talked about, you know, doing some prep work, doing the

00:26:19.480 groundwork, laying this foundation of being perceived as having gravitas basically means

00:26:23.420 being interested in others and their, their motivations, their issues. But the last part of

00:26:28.500 that impact model was technique. And you have, you know, highlighted research. There are certain

00:26:33.560 things we can do in our interaction with our body language or the way we speak that can diminish

00:26:38.380 our sense of gravitas or enhance our sense of gravitas. So, let's talk about like, so what does the

00:26:44.580 research say? What are things that we typically do when we're presenting or interacting in a business

00:26:50.820 setting that diminishes our sense of gravitas? What the research shows is the difference between

00:26:56.860 powerful and powerless language is things like using a lot of filler words or doubting yourself in your

00:27:03.980 sentences. So, you know, turning your sentence into a question. Speaking too fast is something that a lot of

00:27:10.960 my clients find when they're nervous when they're presenting or in important meetings, they'll really

00:27:16.800 speed up their pace. And what happens when you convey this powerless language? One of the issues is that

00:27:26.180 the audience senses a lack of confidence that you have in yourself and then essentially questions,

00:27:33.660 should I be questioning this? Should I be less confident in you? And then they start to also

00:27:41.060 think about the speaker more personally rather than focusing on the content that they're speaking on.

00:27:47.440 So, it's difficult to avoid, you know, to always stick with perfect, powerful language, being clear and

00:27:54.560 succinct and all of that. What you can do is think about your opening and your ending. So, what I find is

00:28:02.260 that when people are preparing for important meetings and presentations, they're often very focused on

00:28:07.720 the content and the majority in the middle of what they're going to say. But what we know from the

00:28:13.160 research is that actually people are making decisions really quickly on how they perceive you.

00:28:20.640 And so, if you script your opening, just your opening kind of three lines, the first things that you say,

00:28:28.440 then you're much more able to be clear and succinct in that. And that's powerful language. And then it

00:28:35.660 doesn't matter as much throughout in the middle, people are already with you and following. And

00:28:39.780 then I'd say again, script to the end, what you're going to say, the last things you're going to say,

00:28:44.140 because that's what people take away and kind of remember of you.

00:28:47.680 So, it does seem counterintuitive to people to script the opening and the ending instead of the

00:28:52.700 content in the middle. Because often the content in the middle is your expertise that is the reason

00:28:57.060 you're being asked to speak about it in the first place.

00:28:59.660 And so, when you're scripting the beginning and end, what should you be scripting for? What should

00:29:04.080 you get across in that beginning and that end part?

00:29:07.180 So, just to kind of welcome an introduction, but also what you're hoping to achieve in the time that

00:29:12.700 you have with them today. Thinking about that. And that's where the impact model can help you as

00:29:16.540 well, because you've already done the work around what's your goal and where you think the audience

00:29:21.460 is at.

00:29:21.860 And then on the end, just sort of rehash and like maybe give a call to action.

00:29:26.460 Yeah, a call to action, but it's even thinking about the sentences you say after that. So,

00:29:31.460 I was just with a woman yesterday who's about to give this big presentation to kind of 50

00:29:35.840 influential people. And she was quite nervous about it. This is a really smart, interesting woman.

00:29:43.840 And we're talking about at the end, even saying things like,

00:29:47.360 I'm here over lunch. I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to spend time with you.

00:29:53.000 Please let me know if you have any questions. Just being clear in those moments enables you to

00:29:59.680 come across as being calm, as being genuine. Otherwise, we can do things like we can finish

00:30:07.180 and say, right, well, thanks. So, I'm going to hand you back over to,

00:30:11.960 so scripting in the end is powerful as well.

00:30:16.020 Is there a gravitas voice or like are some voices

00:30:18.120 more have more gravitas than others?

00:30:20.900 I think your voice has a lot of gravitas.

00:30:23.220 Oh, thank you.

00:30:25.120 Really? Yeah. So, there's research that shows that I did look at this at tone,

00:30:30.560 you know, is there's a lower voice connect with gravitas? The answer is to some degree,

00:30:37.900 yes, but we all have our own range. And so, I think what's more important is, you know,

00:30:45.440 it's not just about being, it's not just about being serious all the time, right? It's about

00:30:51.440 adapting your style to your message, to the situation and to your audience. And so, other

00:31:00.640 research shows that, you know, we talk about adapting our words a lot, right? Not using jargon

00:31:06.520 and outside of our industry, things like that. But the research shows that we should also adapt

00:31:10.760 our tone. So, for example, there's a piece of research that talks about the eager tone where,

00:31:17.160 you know, you're happy, you're excited, you're kind of energetic, it's probably a higher pitch.

00:31:23.260 And that's appropriate when things are good and when you're delivering positive messages

00:31:27.340 and then needing to drop your tone, to be slower, to come across as sounding more serious

00:31:33.120 when things are difficult. And that sounds really obvious and we think that we would do that

00:31:39.360 naturally. But the challenge is that the moments where we need to do these things that come to us

00:31:45.820 naturally are the moments that normally through being nervous, we fail to do that. And, you know,

00:31:52.440 I personally gave a talk, I gave a talk to a big law firm years ago and was talking about leadership.

00:31:59.080 And I love leadership. I think it's such an important topic. And so, I was up there with my

00:32:04.480 eager tone going on about how amazing leadership is and blah, blah. But they had just been delivered

00:32:09.900 some really bad news and the audience was not in the space. And on reflection, all of the content that

00:32:15.560 I said was the right content, but the way that I delivered it just wasn't right for the audience.

00:32:21.000 So, we can do that with our tone. We can also do it with our facial expressions. You will have seen

00:32:28.400 research that talks about how, you know, body language and tone actually have more of an impact

00:32:36.160 on how much the audience likes the speaker than the words themselves. I'll often say to my clients that,

00:32:44.660 you know, words still do matter. If you talk rubbish, then people will notice. But one thing I see often

00:32:50.760 is that, you know, when you're asking about these kind of techniques, one thing often is that I see

00:32:55.440 facial freeze. People kind of just become very frozen in their faces when they're talking,

00:33:03.400 when they're nervous in these big presentations. And so, there's different techniques that you can

00:33:08.640 do to kind of loosen up your face beforehand, just so that you come across as your kind of

00:33:12.760 best authentic self, you know, the real self that you want to portray in those moments.

00:33:18.580 And one of the tricky things, I guess, with this technique aspect of how you're coming across

00:33:22.300 your body language and your tone is that it requires feedback. And that could be uncomfortable

00:33:26.440 to hear. You know, it's like, hey, what am I doing that's annoying you? It's basically you have to ask.

00:33:31.880 And that can be hard to get from your colleague.

00:33:34.620 Yeah, it can be hard to get from your colleagues. Some of my coaching clients, when I meet them for the

00:33:41.240 first time, I say, I think you might think I look really friendly. I'm possibly going to be the

00:33:45.520 meanest person you've ever met, just in giving feedback and, you know, delivering messages that

00:33:51.520 other people might not tell them. When, you know, we kind of have to make a commitment to getting

00:33:56.960 feedback and to get real feedback. And one of the ways to do that is when we ask, hey, well,

00:34:07.020 so for example, I think a useful term is to say, is there a way that we could work together more

00:34:14.000 effectively? Because people can often feel uncomfortable giving feedback on you individually.

00:34:20.480 And if you frame it as how could we work together more effectively? How could we work together

00:34:25.120 better? They'll essentially still give you that feedback about how you're working and showing up

00:34:30.020 with them. And then when they do give you feedback, making sure that you say, that's really useful.

00:34:39.940 Can you tell me a bit more about it? If you don't understand or saying that's really helpful. Is there

00:34:45.940 anything else or what else instead of justifying or defending it? So it's really easy to say, well,

00:34:54.600 that's just because, or on that day I was da, da, da, or I didn't mean it. I think that we judge

00:35:01.280 ourselves often by our intention, but we judge other people by their impact. And we have to be

00:35:06.620 open to, you know, keep that door for feedback open. So a lot of things we've been talking about

00:35:11.720 is how to have gravitas with in-person interactions. How do you do this online? Because a lot of our work

00:35:18.040 today is done online. So how can you convey gravitas through your computer screen?

00:35:21.980 Yeah, I think that's, it's a really important question with communication. What we know is that

00:35:28.060 you are more likely to misread signals and to misinterpret things, the more distant the

00:35:34.980 communication method. So I often encourage clients, you know, say for example, leaders, when they start

00:35:41.760 working with people to have face-to-face where they can, at least for the initial kickoff or to be

00:35:48.760 using video conferencing, you know, you just pick up a lot through people's facial expression that

00:35:55.100 you wouldn't pick up just from having phone calls. And certainly you pick up more from

00:35:58.520 tone and from phone calls than you do just from emails. So we email a lot, but I think actually

00:36:03.660 it's important to make sure that we're, when we're working with people virtually, we're building in

00:36:08.140 regular windows for video conferencing and for phone calls. And that sounds obvious as well,

00:36:15.600 but I've worked with a lot of tech companies that will laugh knowing that they don't even use their

00:36:21.040 own technology well when it comes to making sure that it's essentially, you know, it feels fairly

00:36:26.500 face-to-face when you're able to do video conferencing. And then I guess also just be very thoughtful when

00:36:32.040 you do do those emails, over-communicate rather than under-communicate, you know, assuming that

00:36:36.380 people will probably likely misinterpret something if you're not very explicit.

00:36:41.440 Yeah, I guess so. So yes, I'd say be mindful that people could misinterpret it. I'll often check

00:36:51.420 emails. I'll get someone else to check it. Could this be read the wrong way, you know, or is this

00:36:57.420 coming across the right way for particularly important emails? The other thing is to make sure

00:37:02.140 that we're just continually open to adapting our style. You know, some of the research shows that

00:37:07.280 the difference between people who are considered to be highly successful leaders compared to people

00:37:12.600 who are considered by others to be average leaders, that up to 50% of that variance is accounted for by

00:37:19.100 how versatile they are. So being able to flex and to adapt our style is really important. And that's

00:37:26.360 true in email as well. So thinking about, you know, some people will always be, you know, I'm based here

00:37:33.780 in Britain and there's a lot of people who'd be very formal and very polite and, you know,

00:37:41.020 dear Dr. Euton, da-da-da, kind regards. And that's always their messaging. And, you know,

00:37:47.500 I'm just mindful that it's important to mirror other people's styles. And that doesn't mean that

00:37:55.240 you're not being authentic. It just means you're wanting to adapt. So that's especially the case

00:38:00.280 face-to-face when we're working with people. But even in emails, whether it's long or short,

00:38:05.140 I think we can just respect other people's preferences for how they like to communicate

00:38:10.220 and to interact and adapt our style. That doesn't mean we're not being true to ourselves.

00:38:15.860 So a lot of things we've been talking about developing gravitas is focusing on the other

00:38:20.260 and how you can bring value to that person. But you have this whole chapter in the book that,

00:38:24.720 about how individuals who that you found are rated as having, you know, being high in

00:38:30.080 gravitas, they also take time out for self-leadership. So first off, like, what do you

00:38:35.920 mean by self-leadership? And then what do these people who practice good self-leadership, like,

00:38:41.300 what are they doing to do that? Yeah, it's a great question. What do we mean by self-leadership?

00:38:45.940 Do you know, when I first heard the term, I thought, that's ridiculous. Leadership is about

00:38:50.420 influencing and facilitating other people. How could you lead yourself? But self-leadership

00:38:55.420 is thinking about essentially how you influence yourself. So I think it's really about being

00:39:00.700 intentional with how you're using your time, how you're stretching yourself, how you're continuing

00:39:06.440 to grow, how you are making sure that you're outworking your values, the difference that you

00:39:12.880 can make being strategic rather than just habitual or reactive to the pressures all around us.

00:39:19.680 And, you know, if we think about gravitas, coming back to this sentence of, it's about being able

00:39:25.940 to lead the room regardless of position. So leading beyond authority or hierarchy. There's really

00:39:33.320 interesting research and it's fairly consistent that shows that people who are able to lead others

00:39:39.320 effectively are first able to lead themselves well. And in particular, it shows that they are able to,

00:39:48.020 that people who lead themselves, who are good at self-leadership are able to influence others more

00:39:53.220 effectively, that they are able to share their ideas more effectively with other people.

00:40:00.520 You know, there's a lot of different interesting research around self-leadership that's all very

00:40:04.740 powerful. For example, they're more likely to engage in active forms of leadership. So they're more

00:40:10.020 likely to be, say, transformational leaders than they are more laissez-faire, kind of hands-off leaders.

00:40:16.000 So there's a real case for thinking about yourself. You know, so as you pointed out, a lot of the research

00:40:24.880 that I did and the kind of conversations over decades that I've had now around gravitas have pointed

00:40:33.120 to it being about how you interact and show up with other people. But some of it is just about you.

00:40:39.720 Some of it, it kind of starts with you and how you are for yourself. And so there's some really

00:40:45.500 important things that we can do just to make sure that we continue to lead ourselves well.

00:40:50.740 And one of those things that really stood out to me was this idea of making time for

00:40:53.560 thought leadership. What's that?

00:40:56.400 Yeah, so I call it your personal thought leadership window. I find that, you know,

00:41:00.680 often people, particularly as they're going through their careers, just find it very difficult to carve

00:41:08.300 out any time for thinking. And it sounds silly, but that's what a lot of people are in place to do.

00:41:18.680 You know, we need to carve out active time for thinking about things. And so I encourage my clients

00:41:25.760 to take, say, about two and a half hours once a quarter, where they're just going off, ideally at

00:41:31.660 the start of that quarter, ideally out of the office, just with some headspace to think,

00:41:38.380 to think about the season ahead, what they're trying to achieve, what's most important,

00:41:43.640 not just what's urgent, and then breaking that down. So if possible, having at least kind of an hour

00:41:51.180 to an hour and a half monthly or, you know, it's different for everybody, but just making sure

00:41:56.280 you're carving out time and knowing that that's valuable and building it actually into your diary.

00:42:03.480 But that's, it's not just for thinking, it's for being strategic about the kind of season ahead,

00:42:08.280 whether that's the week ahead or the month ahead or the quarter ahead. And I find that it's quite

00:42:13.260 like running that it, you know, so when I get out of the habit of running, I find it really

00:42:18.720 difficult to go back, back into running and quite like running, you know, I'm a busy working mom,

00:42:25.460 I have three kids, when I go running, nobody's calling me. But when I go back to running, I

00:42:31.140 find it really difficult to fit in and to prioritize and to keep going. When it's the same with the

00:42:41.140 thought leadership window, I find that when clients try and start carving out some thinking time for

00:42:45.740 themselves, they find it difficult to put it in. But once they get into the habit of it, they really,

00:42:51.100 in the same way with running, once they get into the habit of it, they really love it and almost

00:42:55.920 resent if they don't have that time anymore. Because we'll often carve out time for thinking

00:43:01.600 about things with teams and that is also important. But I think that we need to carve out time as

00:43:07.600 individuals as well to be thinking about how we are strategic and how we lead ourselves and the

00:43:13.620 people around us. And you also talk about another time you can do this on a daily basis,

00:43:18.040 sort of like, so you can think about your days during your commute. Instead of, you know,

00:43:21.400 listening to the news, use that time to think about your day and how you can be more impactful.

00:43:27.320 Yes, really interesting research that shows how people can use their commuter time well.

00:43:32.840 So one of the things to do is think, it's called prospection, which is thinking about the day ahead.

00:43:38.880 You know, what do I want to achieve today? What's really important to me today? And how do I want

00:43:44.280 to show up today? You know, if we're talking about authenticity, the question to ask yourself is,

00:43:49.880 what kind of professional do I want to be? What kind of leader do I want to be? And on a daily basis,

00:43:56.200 just remembering that and walking in, you know, I had one leader say to me, Rebecca, before I walk

00:44:02.420 through the doors in the morning, every morning, I think, how do I want to show up today?

00:44:07.460 Regardless of what's going on, regardless of whether, you know, the organization is about

00:44:13.440 to collapse or there's chaos or things going wonderfully, whatever it is, what am I choosing?

00:44:19.540 Being intentional with how I'm going to show up today. And so I think that's one thing to think

00:44:23.420 about, but also what do I really want to achieve today? What's most important today? Just to make

00:44:29.340 sure that we're not just doing what's urgent, habitual or reactive. And then the other thing is

00:44:34.400 about spending the time on the way home and how you reflect. And so this really interesting

00:44:41.560 research, or I think so, but you know, I'm kind of an academic nerd maybe, but so research,

00:44:47.420 they did this study where they gave people all these new skills. And then for the last 15 minutes,

00:44:52.880 they gave people the choice. Would you like to keep, keep doing like learning by doing,

00:44:59.600 or would you like to spend 15 minutes reflecting on what you've learned? And the researchers were

00:45:05.340 really surprised by two things. The first was how much of a difference it made that the people who

00:45:13.480 chose to reflect significantly outperformed the people who didn't and who chose to just keep doing.

00:45:21.280 And the second thing they were surprised by was how few people chose the option of reflection.

00:45:28.580 So I think the lesson for all of us is to make sure that at some point, so maybe it's on the

00:45:33.540 commute on the way home. I think that's probably the easiest one to do, but at some point in our

00:45:38.580 working day, just to reflect on the day and how it's gone, what would I do differently? You know,

00:45:44.540 what does it mean for tomorrow? How did I show up the way that I wanted to today?

00:45:48.800 What did I learn from today? And that sets us in a good place. And I think that if you

00:45:55.000 consider the difference that that would make over a five-year period of whether you did that or not,

00:46:01.100 there'd be a significant difference.

00:46:03.220 So we've talked about, you know, different techniques,

00:46:05.800 questions to ask yourself to reflect on how to have more authentic gravitas.

00:46:09.420 Like what's one thing that someone could, who's listening to this episode right now,

00:46:12.580 could start doing today that you think would provide a lot of, you know, bang for their buck to,

00:46:17.060 you know, have developing that more authentic gravitas in their own life?

00:46:21.200 I think the first thing to do is to answer that question, what kind of professional do I want to

00:46:26.780 be? Or if you are a leader, what kind of leader do I want to be? I've found that so many people have

00:46:33.220 said carving out even just a few minutes out of their day in the morning, or a few minutes of

00:46:40.320 thinking time about this has made such a big difference. Because it also helps you when you

00:46:46.580 are on the fly and you're going into things, whether you're planned for or not, it helps you

00:46:51.700 to remember who you're choosing to be and how you're choosing to show up. Because authenticity

00:46:56.140 is about, you know, I think authenticity is misrepresented. Sometimes it's not very clear

00:47:06.020 what it means. It's not about being, it's not quite the same as natural. You know, we have a lot

00:47:12.480 of talk nowadays about, in organizations, we say, bring your whole self to work or bring your real

00:47:17.220 self to work. And I think that we don't make enough effort to break that down. And what authenticity

00:47:24.720 means is being true to what you value. You know, it's about understanding what you really feel and

00:47:33.580 what you think, but it's about outworking your values. And none of us do that perfectly all the

00:47:39.760 time. So we need to be intentional with it. So just asking yourself the question,

00:47:44.720 what kind of leader do I want to be? What kind of professional do I want to be?

00:47:48.900 One way of doing that is to ask yourself, if somebody who knew you and worked with you

00:47:54.020 was asked by another person about you, how would you want to be described?

00:47:59.260 And just write down some words. How would you want someone to describe you?

00:48:04.140 And being mindful of that helps us to be more intentional with the way that we show up.

00:48:10.180 Well, Rebecca, this has been a fantastic conversation. Where can people go to learn

00:48:13.000 more about the book and your work?

00:48:15.060 So I have a website. You can go to RebeccaNewton.co.uk or our business page,

00:48:21.340 which is coachadvisor, A-D-V-I-S-E-R.com. And then I write on Forbes and for the Harvard Business

00:48:29.900 Review as well.

00:48:31.440 Fantastic. Well, Rebecca Newton, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:48:34.040 Thank you so much for having me. It was delightful.

00:48:36.500 My guest today was Rebecca Newton. She's the author of the book, Authentic Gravitas,

00:48:40.520 Who Stands Out and Why? It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more

00:48:44.540 information about her work at our website, RebeccaNewton.co.uk. Also check out our show notes

00:48:49.780 at aom.is slash gravitas, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this

00:48:54.000 topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

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00:49:36.660 this is Brett McKay, reminding you to only listen to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:49:49.740 one.

The Art of Manliness - June 01, 2020

#615： How to Develop Authentic Gravitas

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