Demonstrating Greater Impact

Early in my career as a trainer, I had some pretty tough feedback from a client who claimed that I didn’t have enough ‘impact’. This was a bitter pill to swallow as I had never been given feedback like that before, and to make matters worse the client didn’t give me any specifics about what led him to think this. My first response was to dismiss the feedback, as it wasn’t supported by specific examples to help me understand what I was or wasn’t doing and so I felt the feedback was about as useful as a chocolate teapot. A number of years later I read an interesting book about body language by the husband and wife team Alan and Barbara Pease. It was only then that I reflected on the feedback I had been given and realised that it was probably certain aspects of my body language that gave the impression that I lacked conviction or impact. The more I read about it the more I realised that by making subtle changes to what I did would enable me to be seen in a more positive light. I noticed that when I was training and made a particular point I had a tendency to step backwards slightly rather than staying still or moving forwards. I also noticed that I occasionally shifted my weight from one foot to the other, which gave the impression that I was unsure or nervous (although I didn’t feel nervous at the time). In addition I recognised that I held onto the flipchart probably too often. This probably gave the impression that I was using it as a crutch and it certainly didn’t help me to emphasise any points I wanted to make with my hands. Making myself aware of my own body language made me feel pretty uncomfortable and self-conscious at first. However, I realised that I needed to make a few subtle changes to what I did if I was to create a more favourable impression. However, I worked on these 3 things and so far so good, I haven’t received any more feedback about the lack of impact I have when training, well so far anyway!