How to Get What You Want... by Judi James

Q: The top directors in advertising are tall, I’m not. How can I appear 6ft 5?

Ben Liam Jones, director

Charisma makes giants of men and women. How many times do we meet our heroes in real life only to find that huge silverback alpha male or female is dinky pint-size in the flesh? I agree that advertising is riddled with Jurassic alphas the size of skyscrapers and that the ground literally shakes with their approaching footsteps, but work on your charismatic presence and I promise you actual size truly won’t matter a jot.

Use the power-pose to make great entrances: pull up to full height, roll your shoulders back and down and slap a confident smile of greeting on your face. Perfect your greeting rituals so that you are giving firm, confi dent handshakes and move about with serene energy. The one body language power advantage the tall guys have is their ability to splay all over the place.

Sprawled in their chairs, legs akimbo with one arm around the next chair they tend to dominate territorially but this doesn’t have to give them the advantage unless you self-diminish in response. Splaying might suggest authority but it also looks very stupid and unruly. Make your thing an air of cool, elegant charm.

Q: I’ve noticed in pitch meetings that where people sit around a table can really affect the dynamics of the meeting. If a director and production company don’t sit opposite the agency they are pitching to, will this significantly influence presenting their ideas effectively?

Leonie Ellis, creative development & production

As any fan of Game of Thrones will tell you, seating is all about power and status, from the positioning to the size of the chair, so you’re right to see it as a vital factor in the pitch process.

Unless they delight in being furtive and sneaky, head honchos tend to take one of two throne seats around the table. If they sit at the head of the table they’re into ‘Parental’ power dynamics, meaning they’re likely to be authoritative and prefer to call the shots. If they sit in the middle of the long side (think JC at the Last Supper) they might sound fl exible and amenable, but look for the use of an entire army of suck-ups sitting alongside to do their pickiness for them.

Either way it is pitchicide (pitch suicide) to sit directly opposite as this looks either over-confrontational or possibly like a cap-in-hand job interview with you in the grovel seat. You should be heading for a place that is opposite but at a slight angle to the key decision-taker as this makes you visible and assertive but not primed for a battle.

Try to create a bleed-over with your client and your team’s body language as the sooner they start to visualise you all working together the better. Instead of front-on prison mugshot sitting, try some moments of subtle mirroring and turning one shoulder towards the client so you’re sharing the view of the slides.

Q: We’ve been hired for a while now and although we haven’t won any awards we’ve made some nice pieces of work. We want to discuss a pay rise with our CD, what’s the best approach to take?

Anonymous, junior creative team

Nice? Your pitch for more dosh is going to be based around the word 'nice'? I don’t think so! Pay rises should never be approached on a saccharine basis; you need to walk into that negotiation armed with hard facts and persuaders that are based on the company’s values.

If you ran your own business what would make you put your hand in your pocket in terms of giving away more money? Assess your hard worth to the business. Good work pays dividends. What did you do that brought money into the business? What did the clients like? If the answer is ‘nothing’ then you’re going to need to display that your brilliance is a longer-term investment.

Be assertive and open in your delivery. Co-operative dialogue (“Look I know we missed out on that big pitch last week but I was told the client really liked our ideas...”) will work better than anything too passive or aggressive, and sit in a way that suggests confi dence but not arrogance, which means elbows on the arms of the chair and no self-comfort fiddling or foot-tapping.

Show active listening signals when they speak(eye contact, slow nodding) and subtly open gestures when it’s your turn to speak. And plan an exit for either outcome. This is often when guys panic and start throwing ultimatums about. If you don’t get what you want, ask when will be the best time to reapply and what you should be doing in the meantime to help you be successful.

Q: When kids and animals ruin a photo shoot and you haven’t got the shot you sold into the client, how do you let them know and still come off smelling like roses?

Anonymous, freelance photographer 

Since they banned the use of things like head clamps or tranquillising narcotics during photo shoots involving animals and small kids there is always a risk of tears or hyperactive friskiness, or even tantrums from the most professional posers. And life would be a lot easier if agencies were a bit more grown up and discussed with the client, pre-shoot, the possibility of a melt-down on the day so no-one has to go in taking personal blame if more snaps are needed.

Hopefully you used an agency and got the client to help with the selection, which will make them feel way more responsible if it does go tits-up. If you missed these proactive steps though, apologise with an emphasis on the solutions.

Never just present the problem as in, “The photo shoot was a bit of a disaster because the hamster dehydrated and died under the hot lights,” but lead them towards a possible positive: “As you can imagine there is always an incalculable risk when you’re working with children or animals and to get the look your product deserves I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep shooting a bit longer.

We might need to re-cast the child for one with more energy” (subtly landing blame on the kid). Imply you’re going for the highest spec possible and maybe take some shots along to show it was the model not the lighting that didn’t work on the day.

Q: If you work with your ex-girlfriend, what’s the bestway to go unnoticed throughout the day and make her think you’re invisible?

Anonymous, interactive art director, 

The big rule about making yourself invisible is that the more you try to avoid attention the more attention you end up drawing to yourself. We’ve all seen those people who tip-toe late into meetings and they not only stand out more, they stand out as looking like a complete turnip too.

So ̒brazen it out ̓ is the best advice I can give. Hopefully you ended it with some suitably corny but face-saving cliché about her being too good for you? That you’d fallen so much in love with her you found it unbearable? That she is so beautiful you couldn’t stand the suffocating feelings of jealousy every time you saw another man looking in her direction?

This bilge is vital if you work together as even though she might not fall for it intellectually, her ego will soak it up, negating any desire for revenge that involves torture. Then tell her if it looks as though you’re avoiding her it’s because it’s too painful for you to be around her right now. Then just act like normal around her, but no flirting with anyone else at work or posting incriminating shots of yourself having threesomes on Facebook.

Q: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get slightly nervous before a big presentation or a difficult conversation. Are there any tips or any particular body language you’d suggest to overcome this?

Britt Lippett, account director

Never try to overcome slight nerves before a presentation as it will be what gives your performance the edge. It’s right to feel anxious, all great professional performers do, but the trick is to surf your nerves rather than allowing them to overwhelm you.

Here are some of my favourite tips:

* Sell your message to yourself fi rst. You need to buy in before you can persuade your audience.

* Deal with all the ‘what ifs’. Don’t just worry about equipment or those killer questions, plan how to cope with them if problems do occur.

* Rehearse via exaggeration. Stomp around giving your talk in a shouty voice with loads of pitch and tone and over-emphatic gesticulation. It’s the best warm-up.

* Don’t be dominated by your slides. A deck of dull slides should never be the boss of you.

* Change your ‘state’. When we stand, sit or walk in a way that looks confident the intrapersonal effect means we start to feel more confident, too. The more your fear shows in your body language the more your brain thinks it must be under attack.

* Hit the ground running. Even when I’m not working from a script I still have a really tight start in my mind. If you begin by waffleing, and mumbling, and thanking people for coming etc., your brain will disengage.

* Breathe out to relax your body, voice and mind.

* Pause before you start. Get into your middle spot, get into your power pose and pause for a couple of seconds for your brain to catch up. Confidence starts with the feet, so stand with them slightly apart and your body weight evenly balanced between them.