Acting At Work

So here’s the acting tip. When you speak, choose how you want to affect your audience.

Choose a verb and choose it boldly:

• Warn.
• Seduce.
• Incite.
• Persuade.
• Reassure.

The bolder choices (incite, seduce) may seem inappropriate, but they’re effective. It’s understood that you won’t actually incite or seduce your audience, but the thought of inciting or seducing will help greatly.

Avoid weak choices: “inform”, “communicate”.

Also, ensure the verb you choose is aimed at your audience. “Celebrate” is a bad choice (unless you are actually “celebrating” your audience), but “inspire” is strong.

Then, if you like, add an adverb. Again, choose boldly:

• Warn gently.
• Seduce confidently.
• Incite warmly.
• Persuade intelligently.
• Reassure strongly.

Then, as you speak, use that action.

If you’re speaking at length, choose a different action for each section of speech. An actor, in analysing a test, might choose a different action for each few words. At work, a different action per paragraph will serve you well.

But how does this help you appear more confident, in control and so on?

The answer is: however you want to appear, place it in the adverb. If you want to appear confident, attempt to “warn confidently”. Choose related words, too: to appear in control, choose to “seduce assuredly” or “warn definitively”.

This is more effective than simply “acting confident”, because you stay focussed on your audience. If you try to “act confident”, you focus on yourself, and communication with the audience ceases. If you try to warn your audience confidently, you focus on them.

There is a side-effect, too. Many of the acts you’ll attempt (warning, seducing, reassuring) are, themselves, confident actions. By doing them, you appear confident and in control.

Imagine you’re giving a presentation. The message you need to get across is:

• “We need to cut our budget by 10%”.

What are you trying to do to the audience, with this information? What effect do you want your words to have? Do you want to…

• Warn the audience?
• Reassure them?
• Excite them with a challenge?

Try saying that phrase, “We need to cut our budget by 10%”, three ways. Say it out loud, imagining you’re addressing an audience.

1. The first time you say it, imagine you’re warning the audience.
2. The second time, try to reassure them.
3. The third time, try to excite them.

You’ll say the phrase differently each time.

Now try the phrase “We’re starting a new project”, three ways:

1. To rouse your audience.
2. To seduce your audience.
3. To grab your audience’s attention.

Again, you say it three different ways.

This trick, of using words to affect your audience, is a fundamental and invaluable acting tip. In the next post, I’ll explain it fully.

To summarise, then: don’t act a quality. Don’t try to “look confident” in an interview or when giving a presentation.

There’s various reasons.

1. If you “act confident”, you often look like someone who’s trying to look confident. That makes you look nervous.

2. Confident people don’t “act confident”: they don’t speak loudly, smile a lot or make big gestures.

3. Confident people don’t think about “acting confident”. More likely, they concentrate on what they are saying. If you want to appear confident, so should you.

4. When you try to look confident, you’re concentrating on yourself. To be effective, you will normally need to concentrate on other people.

Given that, what can you do to appear more confident? In the next post, I’ll explain. Here’s the brief version: stop concentrating on how you look; start concentrating on the other people in the room.

Bear with me. I’m going somewhere with this, I promise.

For an actor, playing drunk is notoriously difficult. It’s easy to fall into stereotypes: slurring words, stumbling, swaying. It’s easy to overact. It’s difficult to act drunk convincingly.

However, here’s a trick that works well. To act drunk, try to act sober. Concentrate on acting as soberly as you can: speaking precisely, not stumbling, not swaying. Put your full attention into not appearing drunk.

Paradoxically, this makes you look like someone who’s drunk and trying to conceal it. You overarticulate your words; you look as though you’re afraid to move, in case you fall over.

Now, trivial though this is, there’s a practical point.

If you concentrate on portraying a quality, often, you’ll give the appearance of trying to portray that quality. For example:

• If you try to appear confident, you’ll look like someone who’s trying to appear confident. This makes you look nervous.
• If you focus on appearing powerful, you may look like someone who’s trying to appear powerful: and, therefore, as someone who’s nervous about their power.

Overall, note the paradox. The more you try to seem sober, the less sober you seem. The more you try to appear confident, powerful or intelligent, the less convincing you are.

The lesson from the previous exercise is: people don’t act as we imagine they act.

Confident people don’t “act confident”: they don’t speak loudly and make big gestures. Similarly, powerful people don’t “act powerful” and intelligent people don’t “act intelligent”. Our stereotypes, generally, are wrong.

For example, one of the most confident people I know is Nicola, a doctor. I’ve observed she communicates confidence as follows:

• She speaks politely but directly - often extremely directly - and without qualification.
• She uses a quiet, low-pitched and clear tone of voice.
• She dresses on the smart side of casual.
• She remains still while speaking, rarely gesturing.

Again, note how this differs from a stereotype of confidence. If you asked me to appear confident, I might speak loudly, make expansive gestures and wear a suit. Nicola does none of those things: although she does speak directly and dress smartly.

So here’s an acting tip. It’s a negative one, but useful. Don’t act a quality. Don’t try to act confident, intelligent, powerful or any other adjective.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are things you can do to appear more confident, intelligent and powerful. But, when you’re performing, the last thought in your mind should be “acting confident”.

Over the next few posts, I’ll expand on this, and come at it from various directions. First, though, an instructive diversion. In the next post, I’ll teach you how to act drunk.

Did you do that exercise? Pick a quality you’d like to display at work, then observe someone with that quality. What do they do? How do they behave?

I did the exercise. I want to appear more reliable. So I observed the woman in the office next to me, who has a reputation for being reliable. Let’s call her Sarah.

Before I describe her, imagine how you’d act reliable and trustworthy if I asked you to. Here’s what I’d do: I’d slow down, speak in a deep voice, be stiller, speak more monotonously, sit in a contained way.

Here’s what Sarah does.

• Sarah moves fast: walking controlledly, rather than running. She bursts into our office, grabs stuff from the printer and leaves within seconds.
• She makes jokes and laughs a great deal. She’s extremely sarcastic.
• When she has something important to say, she slows down and her voice becomes deeper. She looks at you very directly. She doesn’t embroider her words: she’ll state what she thinks, very directly. (”That’s really bad.” “That’s dangerous”).
• Her voice is generally confident, perhaps slightly lower than a normal female pitch. Her rate of delivery is slightly fast, even when it’s important.
• She doesn’t often face you directly. Often, she’ll talk while facing nearly 90 degrees away from you. However, she’ll turn to face you when it’s important.

Now, note how this differs from the “acting reliable” stereotype and how it resembles it. If you asked me to “act reliable”:

• I’d move slowly and stolidly. Sarah moves fast.
• I’d speak seriously. Sarah jokes.
• I’d speak slowly. Sarah speaks fast.
• I’d lower my voice. Sarah does that, but only when she’s serious.
• I’d face you almost directly, perhaps at a slight angle, to show how serious and reliable I was. Sarah faces away.

The lesson here is: people don’t act like we think they act. Reliable people don’t act as we think “reliable people” act. That’s an early indicator that, when I try to “act reliable”, I’m acting differently from the way reliable people act.

Before we move on, remember that exercise. It’s invaluable. If you want to display a quality, observe people with that quality. See how they behave.

Let’s start with an intriguing exercise.

Choose a quality you’d like to display at work. Confidence is a good example, but choose one you’d like to display. For example, I think I appear confident already, but I’d like to appear more dependable.

Then, over the next few days, find someone whom you believe has that quality.

Now, forget about that quality, and dispassionately observe:

1. What they do with their voice.
2. What they do with their body.
3. How they stand.
4. How they use their arms.
5. Their eye contact.

As you observe, forget about the quality. Don’t try to deduce how they communicate, say, confidence with their voice. Just observe how they use their voice.

Equally, don’t choose the person based on your preconceptions about how one should best communicate that quality. If you think that a loud voice is important to appearing confident, make sure you don’t choose someone because they have a loud voice. Choose someone who just, to you, appears confident.

I’ll do the exercise, too, and we can analyse the results afterwards.

Welcome to Acting At Work. My name’s Graham, an actor living in London. I work with companies to help them recruit.

In this blog, I’ll talk about using acting skills at work. How do you fake confidence? How do you present yourself to best effect? Given a message, what’s the best way to communicate it?

I’ll cover using your voice, your body and your words and give general tips about faking something you don’t feel.

Let’s start with a small exercise on confidence. What should you do to appear confident? One approach to this is: what do other people do?