18 Ways to Improve your Body Language

1. Don’t cross your arms or legs – You have probably already heard you shouldn’t cross your arms as it might make you seem defensive or guarded. This goes for your legs too. Keep your arms and legs open. 2. Have eye contact, but don’t stare – If there are several people you are talking to, give them all some eye contact to create a better connection and see if they are listening. Keeping too much eye-contact might creep people out. Giving no eye-contact might make you seem insecure. 3. Don’t be afraid to take up some space – Taking up space by for example sitting or standing with your legs apart a bit signals self-confidence and that you are comfortable in your own skin. 4. Relax your shoulders – When you feel tense it’s easily winds up as tension in your shoulders. They might move up and forward a bit. Try to relax. Try to loosen up by shaking the shoulders a bit and move them back slightly. 5. Nod when they are talking – nod once in a while to signal that you are listening. But don’t overdo it and peck like Woody Woodpecker. 6. Don’t slouch, sit up straight – but in a relaxed way, not in a too tense manner. 7. Lean, but not too much – If you want to show that you are interested in what someone is saying, lean toward the person talking. If you want to show that you’re confident in yourself and relaxed lean back a bit. But don’t lean in too much or you might seem needy and desperate for some approval. Or lean back too much or you might seem arrogant and distant. 8. Smile and laugh – lighten up, don’t take yourself too seriously. Relax a bit, smile and laugh when someone says something funny. People will be a lot more inclined to listen to you if you seem to be a positive person. But don’t be the first to laugh at your own jokes, it makes you seem nervous and needy. Smile when you are introduced to someone but don’t keep a smile plastered on your face, you’ll seem insincere. 9. Don’t touch your face – it might make you seem nervous and can be distracting for the listeners or the people in the conversation. 10. Keep you head up - Don’t keep your eyes on the ground, it might make you seem insecure and a bit lost. Keep your head up straight and your eyes towards the horizon. 11. Slow down a bit – this goes for many things. Walking slower not only makes you seem more calm and confident, it will also make you feel less stressed. If someone addresses you, don’t snap you’re neck in their direction, turn it a bit more slowly instead. 12. Don’t fidget – try to avoid, phase out or transform fidgety movement and nervous ticks such as shaking your leg or tapping your fingers against the table rapidly. You’ll seem nervous and fidgeting can be a distracting when you try to get something across. 13. Use your hands more confidently – instead of fidgeting with your hands and scratching your face use them to communicate what you are trying to say. Use your hands to describe something or to add weight to a point you are trying to make. 14. Lower your drink – don’t hold your drink in front of your chest. In fact, don’t hold anything in front of your heart as it will make you seem guarded and distant. Lower it and hold it beside your leg instead. 15. Realise where you spine ends – many people (including me until recently) might sit or stand with a straight back in a good posture. However, they might think that the spine ends where the neck begins and therefore crane the neck forward in a Montgomery Burns-pose 16. Don’t stand too close –one of the things we learned from Seinfeld is that everybody gets weirded out by a close-talker. Let people have their personal space, don’t invade it. 17. Mirror – Often when you get along with a person, when the two of you get a good connection, you will start to mirror each other unconsciously. That means that you mirror the other person’s body language a bit. To make the connection better you can try a bit of proactive mirroring. 18. Keep a good attitude – last but not least, keep a positive, open and relaxed attitude. How you feel will come through in your body language and can make a major difference. For information on how make yourself feel better read 10 ways to change how you feel and for relaxation try A very simple way to feel relaxed for 24 hours.

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NEW DELHI: The spirit of professional growth keeps Infosys at the forefront of the fast-changing IT industry. This is quite evident in the fact that the company lays emphasis on its leadership development programmes designed to create leaders of tomorrow.   1.What is the vision behind Infosys leadership programme? One of the areas for improvement was the need to have a structured way of developing leaders. So, the vision behind the leadership institute is to create leaders of tomorrow. Our programmes focus on nurturing leaders with a global perspective. We groom leaders and provide them the opportunity to shape the future of Infosys. Every year, we groom about 700-800 employees. 2.How do you identify the leaders in your organisation? There is no specific mechanism by which we identify leaders. We invite application from employees at middle and senior level management to undergo the leadership programmes. We also have a leadership competency department which evaluates these applications on the basis of these nine leadership competencies and selects employees for different set of programmes. 3.Can you throw light on your grooming process and the stages that the participants go through after being selected? Leadership is a continuous process. This is because leadership is all about mastering yourself at some level. Infosys leadership modules cover all sorts of programmes where employees are taught how to manage teams, negotiating, handling conflicts and cultural diversity. We have ‘Leaders Teach’ series where leaders actually share their experiences in particular area. Also, we invite speakers to discuss team strategies, share their experiences and involve teams in group activities. 4.How do you measure the success of these programmes? For every leader we develop a leadership index which is the ranking or the rating that he has been given on a five point scale against each competency. We measure each leader’s score at the year end and draw analysis. 5.How is your leadership programme different from  other IT majors Wipro and Satyam? Our aim is to ensure the proper execution of such programmes to groom potential leaders. We have a leadership index which measures how you have achieved and what you have achieved. So our programmes rate each competency. Also, our leadership development is not time-bound. It runs parallel in our day to day functioning. That is where Infosys makes a difference. We also emphasise that to develop a good leader, no one else can develop him, but himself. Only you as a person can develop yourself. We provide the frameworks and the support mechanisms, but the responsibility for development needs to taken by each leader. The definition of leadership that we have is that a leader must go above and beyond expectations. 6.What are the typical challenges that you have faced? The challenge is to get everyone spend an adequate time on development. To keep telling people to further develop is quite a challenge. This is where rating competencies help and we discuss with employees about the skills they have developed and areas of improvement. 7.What do you think should be the role of a leader in tough time ? In any situation, a leader should be able to bring in a lot of positive energy. A leader is someone who raises the confidence of employees and makes them believe that working in this team is a great experience. Employees get motivated when they feel they are adding value to themselves and the organisation. Also, one of the most important qualities of a leader is to listen.