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It's Time to Sell Podcast: Strategies for 21st Century Selling


May 31, 2017

Quote/Excerpt:

“This whole psychological side of performance is so important; it’s half the game – it really is. Knowing the techniques behind what you need is certainly very important, but the psychological side is just as important.”

Today my very special guest is Laura Baxter, an American opera singer, performance coach and professional speaker who currently lives in Germany.

In her coaching, she uses innovative approaches to help her clients master having a strong inner presence, while owning the room and exuding a dynamic and exciting outer presence. In her keynotes, she combines leadership and music together in such talks as the Karman Effect: A Strong Woman for a Strong Leadership.

She has just released her latest book, Dealing with Divas: A Mindful Approach to Improving Relationships in Your Business or Organization, in which she helps the reader master two things: 1) to remain calm, centered and focused while dealing with difficult people and 2) to reach his or her goal.

I really enjoyed talking to Laura and I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation as well.

Laura’s work with Presence

My focus has become two things.

With presence, a very strong inner presence. How do you remain centered and calm and focused and absolutely confident in situations where you know you might either be attacked or you know that it could be a difficult situation where it really counts.

As well as the strong outer presence, so owning the room. How do you use your voice? How do you use the body language? How do you walk into the room and be noticed? That’s where my work has gone.

How to develop your inner presence

The main thing about that is you’ve got to be centered and focused. There are several different methods that are built into that, but one of which – and it’s probably the most well-known – is the deep breath.

One of the most important, most valuable things about the deep breath, one of the things that disables us to breathe deeply is our posture. In saying that – I mean everyone says, “Oh yeah, you’ve got to stand up straight,” but the problem is if you stand up straight like a military standing at attention, you actually cut off your breath.

The most important thing about the posture is being able to be in a more aerobic posture, as if you’re jogging, or as if you’re moving around because you can then release the abs to have a deep breath.

The 4 most powerful states

In the book I talk about having a strong physiology in order to be centered in focused, how do you bring yourself into a really strong physiology, how do you bring yourself into a strong mental state, how do you bring yourself into a very strong emotional state as well.

The four most powerful states are the state of love, of gratitude – which is super important if you want to be successful – forgiveness and of play.

How to own the room

The HeartMath Institute in California discovered that every one of us has an electromagnetic field that we emit from the solar plexus of our body, from the heart area.

Basically one of the things I train my clients to do is control that emotion or emoting of energy in the sense that you can make yourself very large, in other words, really little to fill the room with your energy, or you can make yourself small in order to be recognized, in order to have that outer presence.

As soon as you walk into a room, one of the key elements is that energetic field.

 

Mentions

Connect with Laura on Facebook and Twitter.

Visit Laura’s website at Voice4Leadership.com

Get Laura’s book here: Dealing with Divas and Other Difficult Personalities