Ep. 55: The Command Triangle | Elevated Communicator Series, Part 4

Your words said all the right things. But the room didn't move. Nobody leaned in. Nobody nodded. And you walked out wondering what went wrong.

This week on The Sam Linton Show, I'm introducing the Command Triangle — the three-part framework that turns your physical presence into your most powerful communication tool.

Body Language × Pacing × Silence = Executive Presence That Commands

In this episode:

- Why your body is speaking before you open your mouth

- The difference between open and closed posture

- How pacing controls attention and builds authority

- The power of silence — and why most leaders are terrified of it

- How to use the Command Triangle in your next meeting, keynote, or tough conversation

Take the free Competence-Communication Audit: https://samuellinton.com

Part 4 of The Elevated Communicator series.Episode 55 | The Command Triangle | The Elevated Communicator Series, Part 4

Take the confidence audit here ==> samuellinton.com/audit

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Some of what I know about speaking can be adequately summed up by John Mayer. And this might be the most important lesson about communicating, especially as an executive. And you didn't know that John Mayer was in the space of teaching people how to communicate, but he is. And it's because he wrote a song that I think about every single time I speak to any coaching client. And it's what I'm going to teach you today. What I'm going to teach you today is so important that John Mayer wrote a song about it. Now, I don't know the order whether I came up with it and then John Mayer stole it. I mean, me and him will talk about that in litigation. But essentially the song is Your Body is a Wonderland. Now, full disclosure, I really don't know any of the other lyrics of the song. I just assume that it's about public speaking. If you know what the lyrics are, don't share them with me. My pure mind cannot handle that. But your body is a wonderland is an adequate way that most people are handling their body language.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

I was in a group training with uh maybe about 12 or 15 people, and there was a young lady, brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I mean, in every way, brilliant. She had the degree, she had the leadership role at her company. Her company had enrolled her to come to us so that we could help her become better equipped to speak in front of people. She was definitely, in my humble opinion, one of the smartest clients I have ever dealt with. As soon as she started talking, I mean, we went over her message, the content, the chapter of what she was going to be covering with regard to her presentation. As soon as she started speaking, her foot came out and started to do this weird kind of jumbly thing where it was just going back and forth and back and forth, almost like Elaine from Seinfeld. For those of you that are young enough to know that reference, when Elaine dances at the party. Now, why I think of Elaine from Seinfeld is Elaine from Seinfeld thought that she was a good dancer. So when the music hit, so did Elaine. She was like, Yeah, I'm gonna kill it. And she got on the dance floor, and everyone around her was like, Oh my goodness, what is going on? But Elaine had no idea. She was completely unaware that she had a body language problem with how she was dancing. And the same was the case with this young lady. So when I coached her, I asked her, Do you consciously make the decision about deciding to put your foot out and move it back and forth?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

And she looked at me, dead serious, and said, What are you talking about? What do you mean? My foot?

SPEAKER_01 3:20

I said, Yeah, like when you start speaking, is there a moment in your talk where you are consciously making the decision to put your foot out?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

And she said, I don't put my foot out. I just stood still. And the problem was she was so habitual in doing this with her body that she was unaware that it was happening.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

That is the problem that we're gonna address today when we talk about movement in commanding the room. This is episode four. Actually, I don't know what our episode is in podcast. It might be 55 or 6. I'm not sure. You can look in the show notes, but this is episode four of the elevated communicator series. This is my framework that I use to coach executives to elevate their communication. And this is usually where most leaders fail. It's in the area of body language. They explore John Mayer's territory and their body becomes a wonderland. Your body is your single greatest visual aid. It's alarming to me how many times I've coached people in just about every industry, and they will spend hours. I'm talking hours on a PowerPoint slide deck. They will spend copious amounts of money on the right visual aid template for handouts. They will even spend a ton of time making sure that their music, if they have background music or if they have a video, they'll spend hours making sure that those visual aids are Forbes richest list prestige. But they don't look at their own body. And it's the one visual aid that every single communicator brings with them to a presentation.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

So we have to talk about movement.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

And the problem is there are so many failures in this area. So many that I don't want to count. I'm just gonna give you a couple of these, and I hope you don't mind if I have a little bit of fun with this because I've been doing this a long time now, and I've I've I've noticed some patterns with people. Okay, so I'm gonna tell you these patterns, and I hope some of them you laugh at, but I also hope that some of them you identify with. Because if you identify with them, then you're gonna know, ooh, I fall into that category. I'm gonna give you some of the most common ones. The first one I call it is the C-sick. The C sick. This is the person that when you're watching them, now I know I'm on video right now, and you, if you're listening, you can't see me, but they're when they're speaking, they're swaying back and forth. Like they're listening to a melody of a song that only they can hear. But they're swaying back and forth. They're going from one foot to the other. They're not moving their feet per se, they're moving from their calves up. And the longer you stare at them, the more you need a dramamine. These are, again, a lot of executives that they have that nervous energy. And the idea of planting themselves in one location is foreign. So they make everybody seasick. I don't know what to say. If you take them on a cruise, or if you take them on a boat, maybe a smaller boat like a catamaran or something, they'd probably look straight up and down. But for you and I in a conference room at a Ramada when they're doing a presentation, or at a C-suite level meeting in the middle of a building downtown, they are going to make you C sick. So that's that's a big problem. That's gonna be your uh C-Sick. A next one I call the pacer, not to be confused with a car, but a pacer is someone that is moving and they're not moving deliberately. Meaning they're just like they're kind of they're again similar to the C sick, they're pacing in a way that is inspiring you to feel like something is going to happen and you have to get out of the room. They're not owning any particular part of the space, and they feel like because they're not being still, they're coming across as more engaging. When in reality, the pacing is causing people to completely disassociate from them. That they don't want to watch them. They don't want to, you know, be a part of whatever is going on in their wanderland of a body. And it's really difficult to pay attention to these people because their movements are distracting. On the flip side of that spectrum would be the podium hugger. They hug their podium like it's a soldier that just got back from war. They stand wherever they can stand and they take the podium, and literally they're married to that podium. They're not leaving it. They're holding on to it. They're, they sometimes will lean on it, they'll sometimes, you know, put their arms around it, they they embrace it, they name their children after it, after it. I know I'm kidding. It's I'm trying to make light of this. But they want that podium there because the podium is essentially their Kevlar to connecting with the audience. But what it also is doing is it's blocking them from making a genuine connection to the audience. And it causes people not to want to pay attention because they are podium bound. They are chained to the podium, just like Katy Perry is chained to the rhythm. Next, there's the hands in the pockets. These are people that they won't do anything with their hands. And we're now going to talk about hands a little bit, and they just keep their hands in their pockets, almost like they're in uh Mayberry with Andy Griffith, and they are essentially strolling up Main Street, just looking at the houses, nothing to do there. And they're afraid to do anything with their hands. So they put them in their pocket in hopes that their hands won't hurt them. Unfortunately, that's divorcing people from watching them because now their hands are not part of the visual aid. So that's the hands in the pocket. Then we have the stiff presenter. These are people that they might not have a podium, but they stand in one place. They stand with their feet so either far apart for stability or close together to almost protect themselves, and they wrap their arms around themselves almost like a cocoon of safety. And it's it's a it's a clear communication that their body is giving that they don't want to be there, they're afraid to be there, they don't know what's going to happen if they stay there, and they are not translating confidence because what they've done is they have made themselves so stiff that if you bump them or if they have to move their hands, you're actually afraid that they're going to fall over and shatter, like an icicle, the stiff presenter. These are just some of the cases of people who I have coached. And some of you, you'll fall on those spectrums. Now you're gonna say, is there a right way or is there a wrong way? What should I be doing with my hands? What shouldn't I do? And this is one of those things where you're gonna hate this, but it depends. It depends. A lot of it depends largely on what it is that you're doing. A lot of it depends on where you are, what the venue is like, but I do have some pretty straight across the board things that I could help you with. And I've broke it into a framework that any of you can apply to any context. And this might be, and I hate saying this because I've said this with everything, this may very well be the most important thing that you understand about executive presence. It's a framework that I've built called the Command Triangle. The command triangle. Essentially, it's a scorecard of what's going on with your body. Once you picture somebody coming up and picture me in the room with you, and you're about to speak, and I pause, everybody's frozen, and I come up, I go, What's going on with your body, bro? What's going on with your body, sister? Right? This is the evaluation that you can put on your body language to instantly elevate your communication to executive level, where you start to feel comfortable in your own skin. And I'm gonna share with you how these three areas are going to essentially help you with connecting. Now, of these three areas, only one has to do with physical body. The other two have to do with auditory, how you're sounding and how you're saying what you're saying, not what you're saying. We talked about that with the fuel formula. Check that episode out if you missed it. But this is also uh reticent of how you say what you say, because if you can get the command triangle down, it's going to position your body, how you look, and how you sound in a way to win your audience. But you have to master these areas. All right. So the command triangle, picture of the triangle, you know what a triangle looks like. And in the center is I call the command zone where you're firing on all sides of the triangle, where you are able to utilize your body, utilize your tone, utilize how you do what you do to make a genuine connection.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Ready for it?

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Well, whether you're ready, I'm gonna give it to you. And you're no longer going to be John Mayer after you get the command triangle under control. So, first, we have posture. Posture. This is how you're standing, how you're sitting. There's two types essentially. There's open and closed. Open conveys I deserve to be here. I'm entitled to be here. Open doesn't mean that you stand wide like a starfish with your arms on every single side. It doesn't mean that. But arms on every single side, like you only have two arms, but your arms as far out as they go where you're about to make a snow angel. That's not what open means. But it means that your body is communicating in such a way where you're not closing yourself off from the audience. These, this part of the posture is more attractive when people actually can see that you want to be there. But what most people do is they do the closed posture or defensive posture, which features everything closed up, slugging your shoulders, slouching your shoulders, head down, not looking up, right? All of those things. Now, with posture, there's some general rules of thumb. Number one, if you're standing, you want your feet to be shoulder width apart or a little bit just slightly wider. And if you're worried about the swaying back and forth, and this is hard to illustrate. If I was coaching you, you'd be able to see how I'm doing this. But if you're worried about swaying and you're like, oh, I sway naturally, you could turn your ankles just slightly out. And what it does, it solidifies your feet to the ground. So it's harder to move, but you're also more stable in how you appear. You want to think about with your stability, leaning forward a little bit, not where you're like doing Michael Jackson and Smooth Criminal coming all the way forward, but you want to put a little bit more weight on the front parts of your feet so that you're coming forward a little bit. So again, you're more like, I want to be here with the audience. I'm not afraid to be here. I do belong here. This is great for me. You want to show that you're intentionally there with them. Now, the question comes down to hands. And my coaching clients, I will go over this ad nauseum. But in general, and I got this from a Dale Carnegie trainer that I love. She uh told me one time when you're not using your hands, you have a couple options, not the least of which that no one hardly ever takes, is keep them at your sides. Like bananas hanging there. They're tools. You don't want your hands to always be doing something. Some people have constant hands. Um, I don't want to get political, but uh President Trump, uh, he's got the hands constantly going. It's a really big, we have a really big deal, really big deal. That's that's a really bad Trump impression, but oh, it's maybe the best deal, maybe the best deal anyone's ever seen. Somebody said, Wow, what a deal. So his hands are always moving. Like he's is, you know, there's I've seen gifts and memes of him almost like he's playing an invisible accordion. Like his hands are moving. So he's not necessarily, and they're not necessarily congruent with what it is that he's saying either, which makes it distracting. So people are like, well, he's got good body. Now, don't get me wrong, when you're Donald Trump or when you're uh, you know, President Obama, people aren't going to analyze your body language and be like, oh, I don't think this person has any chance of having influence. No, they have influence for other reasons. But if you and I, who are trying to make a connection with an audience, doesn't have the kind of buy-in that they might have, we need our body to be that tool. So you want your hands to emphasize. You want them to be what we call congruent with your messaging, to make sure that what you see lines up with what you say so that you're using your hands to emphasize. And if you're not wanting to put them at their sides, you put them in the power position, which is like the center of your body, you know, almost like where your fingers are touching. And, you know, that that's a common thing. I tend to go to my sides more. I'd love to see how you do it, but you want them to be where you are ready to use them only as they are needed, not always, and not too much and not too little. They're visual aids. So you want your hands to make sure that they're adding to what your message is saying and not distracting. All right. So that's just posture. Keep your make eye contact. We could talk about this, but making sure I don't recommend that you just stare up. I've seen people that'll do that, they're staring up or they're staring down. You want to make sure that people feel that you're wanting to connect to them. And if you're speaking to a rude, like I, I usually speak to rooms of hundreds of people. And when I go into those rooms, I can't make eye contact with hundreds of people. But I have something that I do to make eye contact called playing the room. And I don't know who taught me this. This might have been uh, I think I learned this when I was in high school drama class, believe it or not. But it's where when you're speaking, you break the room up into quarters, like the picture like a square and you break it into four quarters, and you take time focusing on each quarter. So you go back, right, back, left, front, left, front, right. And you keep working that room with eye contact. So this way people are noticing, oh, he's not just looking at his friend, or he's not just looking at the sound person. He's looking at the whole room. So people feel like you're making eye contact with them. If you can make eye contact with people and take your time, it is a humongous asset because you're gonna make people feel like you're connecting with them because you are making eye contact. Okay, so again, we could talk about this over and over ad nauseum, but that's just posture, the command triangle. So that's your body language and what you do with your body. Now, the next two areas of the triangle are less about body language, more about essentially how you're saying what you say, but it still goes into your body. This is how what you are saying is going to be perceived, right? And the second area that will give you the greatest bang for your buck concerning your executive presence is pacing. Oh my goodness, pacing. I when with my clients, I spend an entire session on pacing because pacing is one of those things where it's almost impossible to master unless you practice it. Pacing is how essentially, when I'm talking about pacing, how fast you talk and how slow you talk. It's the way that you're essentially delivering your information. And so movement creates energy, and the speed by which you're pacing creates momentum. So your pacing is very, very important. Now, pacing has two different types of meaning in the command triangle. We could dissect these a little bit better. But pacing, I want you to think about pacing in two ways. Number one, pacing is how fast you talk, how slow you talk, or also when you're moving deliberately. Because I might be meaning both. But with your posture, if you're moving, I'd recommend move, but it has to be deliberate. Everything has to be deliberate. And I know we're inside baseball, and this is to be honest, this is the most important chapter and the most important component of maybe the elevated communicator, but at the same time, it's the most difficult to s teach you in an auditory way. So I could talk to you about pacing, how fast you talk, you're going really, really fast to make a point, and you slow down to bring the energy in, right? And then the pacing of where you stand. And if you stand somewhere, make a point to stand and then stop. Make a point to stand and then stop. If you're constantly moving, it's almost like you're not moving. So it would be better that you are deliberate about your movement and not absent. Because if you're not thinking through exactly why you're doing what you're doing, and if it's adding to your message, then most likely it's taking away from your message, right? So movement creates energy, that pacing, that ability to move, but also the pacing in terms of how fast you talk, how slow you talk. We're gonna talk more about energy in the next session. We're gonna talk more about how your energy goes with your volume, your tone, and volume. We're gonna get into that. But right now, just know pacing is a big part of it. Uh finally, and this is the most underutilized, but again, I'm giving you all of the secrets here. One of the most underutilized and yet one of the most powerful tools in an executive's arsenal is pausing.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

You don't have to be talking so much. Just stop and let your audience process what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

When I was in, and this is my second theater reference, I'm not a theater kid. I was only ever in one production when I was a kid. And it was the production of 1776. It was a musical. I was the villain, one of the villains in the musical, believe it or not. I know you're like, how could you be a villain? You're so likable. I know, right? I was really, really good at it. I was good at being the villain. And when I was in the musical, the director, there was a moment where I had this huge solo and I was singing, and it was like very dramatic, very tense, very, very crazy. And it ended with this massive crescendo of a note and this big high note. And then the audience erupted invariably in applause. And I, the it was a great moment. And what I wanted to do, more than anything, was get out of that spotlight. I wanted to wrap up the performance, get back behind stage, get ready for the next scene. Like I did not want to stay out there. And he told me, I'll never forget this. He told me that when you're communicating and when you're speaking, when you land something that is of importance, or when you're in a musical and you land a scene that has this emotional weight and gravity, you stand there and you shut your mouth and you take in whatever it is that your audience is taking in, or whatever it is that they're experiencing. So when I performed that song, I stood there for what felt like an eternity. And I stood there not moving, not apologizing, not condoning the applause, but I stood there to own that spot. And most executives, they get this completely wrong. They want every single moment to be filled with words. And I, when I'm coaching them, desperately want to say, just take a beat and shut that hole in your face. Just take a beat. You don't, the air is going to exist, whether you speak into it or not. It doesn't, you're gonna be okay. It's gonna, we're all gonna be okay as long as you breathe. But you're doing a couple things. Number one, you're giving yourself when you pause, you're giving yourself an opportunity to catch your mental breath. I I've talked about this a little bit, but most of the common things that we talk about with my clients are filler words. How do I get rid of the filler words? Where do the ums and the oohs and the likes and all of those things? How do I get rid of them? Take a pause. Almost always, just pausing eliminates filler words. I have a whole episode dedicated to filler words, but that pausing gives your brain the opportunity to catch up with your gum flapping. So when you pause, you're giving your brain a break. The second thing that you're doing is you are showing absolute and total control and command. If you can pause, if you can take a beat, if you let them hear what you just said and process it, it's actually often more effective than if you keep hammering the same points over. I'd rather less words and more pause than all the words and no pause. So pausing, commanding silences, sometimes just a look, facial expression. We can talk all about that when it comes to posture, like your face. All this comes down to body language, how you appear, how you say what you say. It's such an important topic, and it's so much so that it deserves more than just one glance. This is why I do coaching, because every single person is different. Some people, they have a completely different way that they communicate using their body language. Others, they have a very, very similar style. I gave you generalities, but in all sincerity, it just depends. But the key is you have to focus with intentionality. You have to be aware that your body is communicating. And unfortunately, sometimes it's a communicating in a message that you simply don't want to say.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

That's the scary part. Good news.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

With some intention and practice, you can master the command triangle really easy. If you know what your body's doing, you know why it's doing it, if you know how you are making connections with your audience without actually touching them, then you're gonna be 10 times further ahead than just about any executive communicator on the planet. However, if you ignore these things, you do so at your own peril. That's Bain's voice. I don't know if Bain ever said that, but that's how I felt like saying it. If you ignore what's going on with your body, it's to your own detriment. Because if you're not paying attention to your body language, trust me, your audience, your team, your prospective clients are. That's why I do coaching. I love getting people to win with this stuff because I've noticed the level of confidence that is achieved when leaders know how to finally communicate at the level of their competence. It's just about more rapid than any type of drug you could ever take. Just about. It's really that immediate. Once you start to connect how you communicate with really owning your space, it changes everything about how you lead. And I believe one of the reasons why I serve leaders this way is because I believe, as um one of the biggest leaders that I follow, Craig Groschelle, says, I believe that when a leader gets better, the whole organization gets better. And if you become a better speaker and a leader to your team, it's gonna, I mean, I'm not trying to make too big of a deal about this, but it can change the world. Your people need a leader that can command the room. Your people need a leader that knows how to master their body. Your people need a leader who feel that they are entitled to be there because they've worked hard and they have value to bring. And if your body is communicating an altogether different message, you're not that leader.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

But you can be. Let me know if I could help you.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Podcast at SamuelLinton.com. Podcast at SamuelLinton.com. I'd love to do a quick strategy session with you, could book some time with me. Also, you've been hearing, you know, the little ads I've been giving, but the uh confidence, or I'm sorry, the competence communication gap audit is live. If you want to know where you stand in all of these areas that we're going through, just take that quick communication audit. It's at samuellinton.com/slash audit. You probably already heard an ad in this, but again, we want to help you as best as we can. And I'm trying to give you all of the cookies without you ever having to come into the bakery. But I'd love for you to come into the bakery because we have more in store for you if you're willing to do the work. So, with that said, thank you for joining this podcast, The Sam Linton Show. Find your voice, change your world. We'll see you soon.