Posture is the part of SuperModel that people notice before you say a single word. Larry Chiang’s SuperModel layer is built on optics, dressing deliberately, a tie if you are young enough to need one, a pen kept in hand, and none of it reads right if you are slouched. Good posture is not a pose you hold for a photo, it is a habit your body has to be healthy enough to sustain for an hour straight.
Sit the way you would stand for a photograph you actually wanted taken, shoulders back, chin level, weight even. The listening position Larry describes, leaning slightly forward, present, engaged, is physically harder to hold if your back and core have no strength behind them. This is where posture stops being about etiquette and becomes about health, since the habit only holds up if the body under it is actually maintained.
A slouched posture reads as low interest even when the person slouching is genuinely engaged, because the room reads the body first and the words second. Practicing posture outside the meeting, at your desk, in the car, standing in line, is what makes it automatic inside the meeting.
The pen-drop close depends on stillness, and stillness is easier to hold when your posture is not fighting you the whole time. Nobody holds perfect posture by accident for an hour, it takes the same kind of base fitness that lets you show up early and stay sharp late.
Fix posture the boring way, with actual strength and mobility work, not with a reminder to sit up right before you walk in. Presence starts in the spine before it ever reaches the pitch.
Details: Watch Larry on presence and posture
#PostureMatters #PresenceHabit #Web12