Its a body thing: leadership begins with your biology
Effective leadership is not a mythical quality gifted to a lucky few; leadership is actually rooted in our biology. Powerful, confident people have distinct levels of two hormones that affect the brain’s ability to react to stress. It turns out that leaders have high testosterone and low cortisol levels, making them less reactive to stress. So these leaders can thrive in times of high pressure or crisis.
Before you rush off for hormone level tests or decide you haven’t got what it takes there’s interesting news…
Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist, found that ‘feeling powerful’ can be artificially created, simply by changing posture. Adopting a ‘high power’ pose, such as standing with legs apart, hands on hips and chin lifted for two minutes, delivers the ‘leadership’ combination of increased testosterone and decrease cortisol levels.
Cuddy shows how this affects performance through experiments on people in stressful, job interview, situations. And the outcome is remarkable. All of the high power posers are hired; not because their qualifications are excellent, or because of the quality of their interview speech, but because of the presence the candidates brought to their interview. By feeling powerful the candidates were able to be authentic and bring their own ideas to the table.
Such a small change yet such a big impact. Feeling powerful is not luck, it can be created.
Watch Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk HERE.
