At start of the year meetings, Dean of Faculty shared a humorous article on the “Kindly Brontosaurus pose” that will apparently get you whatever you want. While the article had some intriguing insights into the power of body language, I initially dismissed its marginal applicability to my life working at a boarding school.



However, four weeks into the school year, the article’s message keeps coming back to me in my interactions with my own young children, my wife, my advisees, my team and my classes. The way I present myself through body language has a significant impact on those around me. I need to be aware of this. We all need to be aware of this, even students! 



The perfect example occurred last weekend at our team’s soccer game. After a frustrating first half, I realized my body language was incredibly negative. I was shutting off interactions with my players simply because of the way I postured due to my frustration with how we were playing. The irony was I was frustrated with THEM for not approaching me to talk about what they could do better! Who in their right mind would have approached me given that body language?



How many times does this happen in our lives? Maybe we’ve had a long morning before even stepping foot in the classroom and our body language exudes frustration or exhaustion. Maybe we haven’t exercised in far too long and are feeling tired. Have we sealed the fate for how our class will go before saying a single word to our students? How different does a class feel when your body language going in is engaged, excited and enthusiastic?



On the other side, as a student, what are you communicating to your teacher when you step foot in her classroom? Do you walk in, sit at a table and begin checking status updates on Facebook or Twitter on your iPhone? Or do you make eye contact with the teacher and engage in face to face communication with your peers before looking at technology?



Certainly there are moments in all of our days when we simply need to be alone. We need to regroup and handle our stress in our own way. However, my suggestion to all of us, as this blog post notes, is to be keenly aware of the power of body language. No, we do not need to walk around campus like a kindly brontosaurus at all times, but maybe we can be a little more cognizant of how we portray ourselves to others. And maybe, just maybe, it will impact our classrooms, student learning, and our collaborative exploration of this thing we call school.

As Amy Cuddy notes in the Ted Talk below, your body language shapes who you are, so be actively engaged in that shaping, don’t let it shape you.