What does the book add for Leaders or Public Speakers? This personal story made reading the book much more relateable and engaging for me.
Touchingly she started from a position of having had a tragic accident that left her with very low self confidence and a strong case of “Imposter Syndrome” – believing that she didn’t deserve to be in her job as a lecturer and then professor in Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Not surprisingly the book fleshes out this research, gives a lot more data and also explains Amy’s personal story as to how she came to carry out this research. (Preferably somewhere private, because you can look pretty silly standing like Superman/Wonder Woman in the auditorium before you go on stage). The take-away messages are that if you’re doing public speaking or going into any challenging situation where you want to relate with others you will (a) feel more confident, (b) be perceived as more confident if you prepare by consciously adopting a confident body posture for a couple of minutes before you “go into battle”. Furthermore, that people who adopted these poses as preparation for mock interviews or public speaking tests were rated significantly higher by those observing them than those who did nothing or adopted the opposite “low confidence poses”. So, in short it makes you feel more confident and less stressed. Her research showed that simply standing like Superman or Wonder Woman with your hands on your hips and shoulders back for as little as 2 minutes raises testosterone (a hormone associated with confidence as well as maleness) by upto 25% and decreases the stress hormone cortisol by a similar value.
If you are interested in the area of speaker confidence, this book is well worth the investment of your time and money.įor those who haven’t seen Amy Cuddy’s 2012 TED talk she offered compelling research that there is a powerful link between how we hold our bodies and our level of confidence. I had been concerned that she was going to try to find a way of turning her 20 minute TED talk into a complete book without adding any new material of value. I’m often disappointed by books in this arena, but Amy Cuddy’s Presence was a pleasant surprise. When that person an authority on confidence has given one of the most popular TED talks of all time (33 Million views and counting), it’s a fair bet I’m going to want to read it. When someone releases a book called Presence I usually sit up and take notice.
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