Shot of stressed business woman working from home on laptop looking worried, tired and overwhelmed.
Are you worried, tired, frustrated, angry, or anxious? You don’t need to tell the person on the other side of the virtual meeting—they can see it almost instantly.
There are certainly times when it’s okay to reveal your true feelings, especially with family or friends. But in a professional virtual meeting or a remote job interview, you might want to show yourself at your best.
There are two things happening. First, it’s natural to feel stressed in this COVID-ravaged economy. Anxiety, frustration, pressure from increasing workloads—or the stress of having no work—are weighing on all of us in some way.
Second, emotional contagion means we, as social beings, are hardwired to pick up on another person’s emotions and to do it quickly. The most contagious emotions are the ones our species must be attuned to—fear and joy.
After speaking to trained negotiators in the FBI and the U.S. Defense Department, I can tell you that trying to mask your emotions is a losing strategy. Microexpressions on your face and small body language gestures will give you away. They are nearly impossible to control.
You might be thinking to yourself: “Well, even though I’m frustrated because this is my tenth virtual job interview, I’ll just smile and they won’t notice.”
Bad news. Your strategy won’t work. There’s a difference between a fake smile and a real smile coming from a place of joy. Our brains are wired to pick up on the differences. A roll of your eyes, a grimace, or a small shake of the head leaves subtle cues about what you’re really thinking.
You know that feeling when your “gut” says something isn’t right? Your gut is your brain’s ancient wiring mechanism. And it’s a well-tuned machine.
One solution is cognitive reappraisal—turning a negative emotion into a positive. By reframing your internal narrative, you won’t need to worry about microexpressions because your facial cues and body language will be sending out positive vibes.
“How we frame something effects not only our thinking but our emotional state,” writes psychology Ph.D. Maria Konnikova in The Biggest Bluff.
Konnikova is a writer who gave up a full-time assignment for a magazine to pursue learning the game of poker—from scratch. In two years she had won $300,000.
Konnikova told me her background in psychology certaintly helped, as did her training with a legendary poker champion.
Konnikova learned to be attuned to the small body language gestures that gave away a person’s inner thinking. In a poker tournament, she learned to keep eye on a person’s hands. How a person reached for cards or placed a bet communicated a lot of critical information about their state of mind.
Although she relied on hands more than facial expressions, the point is that small gestures act as ‘tells,’ that broadcast our inner thoughts to others.
Konnikova echoes what other psychologists and scholars have learned. Namely, that the internal words you use to frame your situation is the story that you show the world.
If you beat yourself up about an event that’s out of your control (a bad hand, a pandemic), people will see it played out in your expressions and gestures.
In my conversation with Konnikova, she said, “If you focus on bad things, you are going to be downtrodden and not a pleasure to be around. You will lose friends, opportunities, and not be able to see lucky things when they’re in your face.”
The thoughts you dwell on the most are the stories you put out to the world.
The seeds of resilience are planted when you acknowledge that, yes, the cards might have gone against you in the last hand—an event out of your control—but if you continue to make the right decisions and persist toward your vision, you will win more often than you lose.
People want to be around positive people. Check in with yourself before your next virtual meeting. Pay attention to your internal thoughts, words, and narratives. It will ‘tell’ others what you’re really thinking.
