I’ve recently seen some literature on choosing “power poses” and using other nonverbal communication techniques to achieve “personal success.” I believe these methods are dangerous for a few reasons.

First, cultural differences in body language meaning and interpretation can be crucial, especially since their effect is so subtle and difficult to control. In some cultures, for instance, looking someone in the eye when they admonish you is a sign of respect, in others, it’s a sign of insolence. Bear in mind that when someone’s yelling at you they probably won’t be thinking “maybe my interpretations of body language aren’t the same as this person’s” and even if it does cross their mind it might not overcome their first reaction.

Second, always choosing the power pose can be really innapropriate even if the intention is well-communicated. Consider the position of a dude leaning back with his legs crossed and his hands behind his head. Now imagine that you’re helping him look awesome for his boss. At this point I would strongly consider advising him to go to the command line and type “sudo rm -rf /”. I do not need anyone to grovel, but when people ask me for help but their body language says ”I’m dominant over you” I feel like their servant. I don’t like to feel that way, so they won’t be getting any more favors. I’m not saying this as a moral “please don’t do this!” - I’m saying it from a practical standpoint: if you want awesome people to help you, consider not going for the power pose each time.

Third, studies on the effectiveness of power poses are interesting, but they give great data on short-term interactions. Posing powerfully before you go into a short job interview can help you get the job. On the other hand, consider that over the long term you might alienate yourself from your colleagues by consistently going for the power pose. Yes, it’s a useful signal of confidence for an interview, but if you can’t back it up over the long-term, you’re going to be worse than someone who looks unconfident, you’re going to be labeled as a poser. Imagine leaning-back-dude smugly proclaiming that he’s an “uber-hacker-ninja” because he printed the contents of an array “yeah, that’s right, hackin’ into the c++ with the visual basic compiler!”. That only works when you actually know more than anyone else.

Even if these three concerns were addressed, focusing on appearing awesome rather than being awesome misses the point of being awesome in the first place. Moreover, if you are awesome, other awesome people will notice. The ones who don’t probably aren’t the ones that matter unless you’re in an image-driven environment.