During our training sessions Media Mentor emphasises the importance of body language and keeping your emotions under wraps – after all body language accounts for 55% of the message received by an audience (with voice tonality accounting for 38% and words a mere 7%).
So, we were thrilled to find this article in The Times illustrating the changing faces of Gordon Brown who is a man who, to say the least, has trouble with his body language and facial expressions. Enjoy (and learn from his mistakes).
Gordon’s US trip was nothing short of surreal. The contrast was striking between his genuine overseas triumphs (meeting the candidates, smoothing things over with Bush, setting a strong lead on Zimbabwe) with the accelerating stream of bad news from back home over the Labour 10p revolt.
The benefits of these trips for the travelling media is the exposure we have to the Prime Minister for extended periods of time. And what is fascinating about Brown is how hard he finds it to disguise his emotions at any point of the day. Nowhere is this more true than when he smiles. By my reckoning, he has three types of facial manoeuvre in his repertoire which sadly for him betray too much about his state of mind. They are:
The please like me smile: Painfully visible during the Good Morning America interview, just as it was the week before on American Idol. A widget inserted by aides into his brain has been activated, instructing his facial muscles to change position. It is a hopeless smile, one that doesn’t believe in itself, makes him look most like a machine. It doesn’t feel genuine, because there is also:
The genuinely happy smile: Rarely in evidence but visible on this trip after he returned from his lunch at Harvard where Larry Summers, the former President, praised his speech. Gordon looked so happy clambering on the plane and telling people about his day with the Boston liberal elite including the Kennedys. Tired but pleased. Seen in public after the birth of his children. It does exist.
The controlling his anger smile: There is a particular fixed grin Mr Brown uses when he is getting angry. The ease with which he became tetchy, particularly when asked about the Labour rebellion, was a big takeaway from this trip. I guess he starts to smile as a way of trying not to come across as riled. Unfortunately it only acts like a huge neon sign to indicate he is getting cross.
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