It is in your expectations

When you expect the best of people, it’s amazing how often they deliver. If you expect the best, you unconsciously send the best signals. By expecting the best, your approach and your body language towards your team changes. You look forward to interactions with them, you like to hear about their progress and you delight in their high achievement. When you don’t expect much of someone, even if you say nothing, that will show as well and they will not surprise you.

Go and search ‘The Pygmalion Effect’ online. It is a classic and controversial piece of research that showed that the greater the expectation teachers placed on students in an experiment, the higher the performance. It was named after Pygmalion, a play by George Bernard Shaw. Apparently, the opposite is called the Golem effect, in which low expectations lead to a decrease in performance.

In the experiment, teachers were given a list of students who had been identified as ‘high achievers’. The teachers were told that these students would deliver remarkable results. At the end of the year those students did deliver great results – even though they were, in reality, not high achievers and had been chosen at random from the pool of pupils. It turned out that it was the teachers’ belief in their potential that was enabling their exceptional results, a belief that was never communicated directly to them, but was constantly communicated through non-verbal clues. The teachers unconsciously conveyed empathy, likeability and approachability. When dealing with the pupils, they did not use any ‘power’ behaviour and would give more positive feedback, would display encouraging body language whenever they dealt with them, and regularly gave many other signals that showed approval and encouragement.

It sounds absolutely too good to be true, but university researchers have found the Pygmalion effect to have positive outcomes with all sorts of work groups. Simply by holding a positive expectation, this is communicated and has an influence on whether the team delivers outstanding results. It is how you inspire without words.

On the other hand, when you send signals of status, power and supreme confidence, by standing tall, keeping your head straight, minimizing facial expressions and speaking in a forceful tone of voice, you are very unlikely to engage people. There are occasions when such signals are needed, but you need to be conscious of how you are using them.

It is in your attitude

As a leader, you have to take responsibility for the fact that it is you, more than anyone else in the team, who impacts on how people feel in the office. How you make them feel determines their engagement, and their engagement determines results, for which you are ultimately responsible. As the boss you have a disproportionate power to make people feel important or unimportant depending on the signals you send. Everything you say or do is hugely amplified by the position you hold, and even the mildest telling off can create feelings of unimportance.

Ask yourself how you feel about feeling important. This ties directly to your sense of self-esteem, and the link between self-esteem and performance is straightforward. Like President Bill Clinton, if you treat every employee as if she or he is the most important person in the company, you will have a dazzling effect on them.

I have often said that if you tell people exactly what to do, you are far less likely to achieve great results than if you encourage them to come to the answers themselves. To do this you have to listen to them, ask the right questions and lead them to the solutions. They will feel important because you’ve given them your time, you’ve taken an interest, and they were able to propose a solution that you agreed with – and now they’ll not only be committed to the action, but determined to deliver a great result.

The work environment is crucial to people’s levels of enthusiasm and engagement. It isn’t only about desks and seating and paintings on the wall; it is mostly about the atmosphere – and that’s determined by you.

It is in your appearance

When I first started out in sales, my boss decided that I was to take up golf. His view was that, in sunny South Africa, being a golfer would enable me to network and lead to relationships that would result in more sales. He was right. He was also clear from the outset that I had to look like a golfer, so he personally accompanied me to a golf professional store one day to oversee the clothes, shoes, bag and kit that I chose. He was the ideal boss, because he also got me membership of a golf club and instructed me to attend the club every Wednesday – the only rule was that I had to make sure that I was there with a client or potential client.

Although I had dabbled in golf up till that point, I had never really felt like a golfer. And the first time I stepped out onto the course in my matching golf outfit and kit – to my surprise – I really did feel like a golfer, and I carried myself with much more confidence simply because I looked the part.

There is a lot of truth in the need to look the part. People do judge you on your appearance, which is the first filter through which you communicate. Looking like a leader is the first step to becoming one. If you want to portray executive presence, you must have a degree of gravitas and excellent communication skills as well as a polished appearance. Personal grooming matters a great deal. Many of the leaders I interviewed specifically told me that they looked at personal grooming and were swayed enough to decide against candidates very quickly if they did not come up to standard. This does not mean having to wear a suit if the company culture is for casual clothing, but it does mean making sure that you don’t have unkempt attire – wrinkled, dirty or too tight clothing. Clean nails, shiny shoes, manicured nails and a good haircut all send signals. Be aware and take more care.

Send signals to yourself

How we hold ourselves can change our minds, and what’s in our head changes our behaviour, and our behaviour determines results.

Being a leader means looking, acting, walking and talking like a leader. Leaders who clearly love what they are doing, who show it in everything they do, in every expression, are hugely infectious, not least to themselves. Great leaders communicate positivity and optimism, and they often do it through a smile, or by walking with energy, or by standing straight and tall. People definitely notice.

I read recently about Charles Garfield, the author of Peak Performance, who told about how facial expressions had an effect on the performance of the Russian Olympic weightlifting team. Apparently Garfield noticed that when weightlifters were lifting to the point of exhaustion, they would grimace at the painful effort. He encouraged them to smile when they got to that point of exhaustion, and this enabled them to add more weight and further improve their performance.

They were sending signals to themselves. Grimace says this is a difficult job, and your brain actually sends stress chemicals into your blood. The more stressed you are, the more difficult things become. On the other hand, when you smile, the signal you send yourself is a positive one. You most definitely can do this.