Have you ever walked into a space and immediately felt calmer clearer, more confident, without anyone trying to impress you?
Learn today how you can have that effect on other people.
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of A-listers so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your magical executive presence coach, pod mother, and strategist.
And by the end of today's short episode, you'll know why calm pacing overrides fast talking.
To communicate confidence and intelligence, how you can reduce cognitive friction and become easier for executives to start trusting right now.
And five neuroscience-backed shifts that elevate your executive presence without over-performing.
There's no rush, no hype, no performance.
There's a feeling that you get When you walk into a Sid Mashburn store.
I'm linking that in the show notes.
They're in several cities.
It's a small business.
Sid Mashburn has men's clothes and the sister store, Ann Mashburn, has women's clothes, and they're both highly recommended.
Anyway, you walk into the store.
It's welcoming. classy, a little sense of humor, and it's very inviting.
You feel good when you walk into that store.
Today I'm going to show you how this Sid Mashburn store experience I've had in Atlanta Georgia, several times mirrors the way senior executives are evaluated in real rooms, and And why talking more, explaining in more detail or continually proving yourself is often doing the opposite of what you intend.
So I've been in the store many times and I can tell you that the experience is consistent.
So you walk in, nobody's going to jump on you.
They don't, you know, in some stores, they seem to think you're going to steal from them.
It's not like that.
If you want help, fine.
If you want to look, fine.
There's no overload of anything.
Sometimes one of their salespeople will offer you a bottle of water, say do you want still or bubbly?
And that probably costs them, what, a dollar and a quarter?
And yet I feel seen and valued.
But here's what's happening neurologically.
That's what we're into right now.
Our brains are constantly scanning for threats, right?
And When things are rushed or chaotic, our amygdala kicks in and that creates a sense of anxiety.
On the other hand, when it doesn't feel rushed, when it feels calm, you have the feeling of psychological safety, and safety is the prerequisite for trust.
I'm sure you all know the research on high-performing teams.
Psychological safety is the foundation.
So senior executives will respond to people in exactly the same way.
And remember, they're stressed out a lot of the time.
So here's a reframe that a lot of you have missed until today.
Executive presence is not about being chatty Cathy, thank God, right?
It's about reducing cognitive friction.
And if you can just use that as a filter in your communication, you're gonna be way ahead of the game.
But the easier your ideas, what you say, is to process, the more competent and trustworthy you are perceived to be.
And that's not my opinion, that's neuroscience.
And a lot of you are over explaining, giving more details, Because you're operating on the exact opposite assumption.
So let's go into these five tips or five lessons.
So lesson number one the reality is that calm pacing signals authority, without saying anything, right?
So pacing is slow on purpose in a Sid Mashburn store.
And if you're wondering, well, what the heck is calm pacing?
That refers to the intentional use of slower pacing, more deliberate speech and movement during communication.
It is the opposite of rushing or speaking rapidly and it creates a sense of control, confidence and presence.
And as you can probably guess by listening to this podcast, this does not come naturally to me.
I'm always like, go, go, go.
When I slow down, I am much more effective.
Why?
Because the brain equates calm delivery with certainty.
That's why when you hear newscasters speaking, they're speaking slowly.
Same with national politicians.
But note that calm doesn't mean that you're tired or low energy.
It's this intense focus which favors the introvert personality.
And so also note that calm delivery doesn't mean you can just, you know, sit through the meeting and not say anything.
That's not what i mean.
Fast talking gives the perception of unresolved thinking.
And that may be absolutely incorrect.
When I am talking to you on this podcast, I am very resolved in what I want to tell you.
And still, I may stutter and stammer, and I may talk too fast.
But you can have that perception that I'm not really sure what I'm talking about.
But pausing transmits confidence.
So your first lesson, you've heard it before, pause before you answer.
And that tells everybody in the room that you are confidently choosing what you're going to say.
Lesson number two, restraint increases perceived intelligence.
So the Sid Mashburn clothing is edited.
It's highly edited.
It's not crammed full.
Yes, a tie there does cost.
I bought one at Christmas time for $155 plus tax.
You can buy a really good tie at TJ Maxx or Marshalls for $25.
Different tie, different experience.
And the discounted tie may not even be that different in quality, but it's the experience that's different.
And here's the thing.
I love these discount stores.
I am very frugal.
But when you go to one of those stores, you have to sift through so much merchandise.
You have to be patient.
You have to come in with high blood sugar because there's a lot you have to go through.
And then you have to wait in a long line to check out.
At Sid Mashburn, it's an easy selection.
It's easy to find things.
When I went in December last I wanted a specific tie for my husband and They were apparently out.
But then I saw it on a model you know one of the mannequins and popped that thing off the mannequin and into my shopping basket, even though I didn't really have a shopping basket.
But anyway, neuroscience calls this processing fluency.
What does that mean?
It means the simpler something is to understand, the smarter the source appears.
And you've all heard this from Albert Einstein saying if you can't make it simple your explanation, you don't know it well enough.
Overexplaining increases the mental load and the mental load reduces trust.
And that's all happening subconsciously.
So when possible, give only one suggestion, one recommendation.
Now, if you're pitching something complex, you may need to give three reasons, three factors, three risks.
But whenever possible, sift it down to one.
And the fewer the options, the easier.
And that's what your executives want for you.
They want you to be the filter and to give them what they need and nothing more.
Lesson number three. context builds trust faster than data.
You know, almost every day, I am more aware of how we are just drowning in data.
So when you walk into a Sid Mashburn store, they're not walking up to you and saying, Oh hello, welcome to this luxury establishment.
They're not trying to like fast, talk you into our ties, or hand finished, or I don't know.
The fabrics that they use are, I'm sure, very high quality.
No, if you're looking at something, they may tell you something about it, but they're not trying to impress you.
And that in your brain triggers relevance filtering.
We only want to hear what connects to me.
That's when we pay attention.
Senior leaders do the same thing.
So you want to anchor your suggestion, your idea to a shared constraint or a shared objective.
For example, giving the timing pressure this quarter or, with this risk exposure that we're managing right now, connect it.
Connect it to something everybody is concerned about and that automatically turbo charges your idea and makes you appear smarter.
That gives you alignment and you're not performing.
Lesson number four, stop justifying your value.
You don't need signs screaming at you.
Oh, this is a luxury product.
This is premium.
No, because the brain trust felt quality over claims, right?
That's why when people tell you things that sound fishy, your body automatically distrusts them.
If you say something like well, I worked so hard on this, or let me go into the details, then you're activating skepticism, not credibility.
So drop your justifications and lead with the impact.
Connect your message to the impact on the company, not the effort.
Nobody cares about your effort.
All right, number five, clarity is kindness and clarity creates relief.
Here's the real metric of executive presence.
How do people feel after the interaction?
You've all heard that.
Maya Angelou, people remember how you made them feel.
So neuroscience tells us that clarity reduces cortisol. cortisol is stress.
Uncertainty increases cortisol.
So Sid Mashburn gets this right, and so do trusted executives.
You want to end your messages with relief, like what to do.
Here's the simplest next step.
Here's the decision that I recommend, and that's leadership.
So here's what I want you to take away from today.
It's executive presence.
It's not about being impressive.
It's about being easy to trust, and to trust with more responsibility than what you are currently managing.
Quiet is better than loud.
Edited is better than excessive.
Calm is better than convincing.
It's kind of like a quiet luxury of executive communication and that's totally on brand for us introverts and ambiverts.
So if people leave meetings overloaded, tense unclear, then your expertise is not the issue, it's your presence.
It's that you have not filtered or curated sufficiently.
The good news is that executive presence follows patterns The patterns you can learn.
It's a skill set.
If you would like some help in identifying where your presence could use some bolstering and where it's really strong, I suggest you download the Executive Presence Scorecard.
There's a link to that in the second paragraph of these show notes.
And it's very simple to take.
All right, so the room is not waiting for you to talk more, it's waiting for you to be trusted.
Have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.
