Interviews, Power Plays, and Office Politics

Overview

Job interviews are decided less by the curriculum vitae than by impression. Studies show a strong correlation between how much the interviewer likes the candidate and whether the candidate is hired, and Professor Frank Bernieri's research found that observers who watched only the first fifteen seconds of a twenty-minute interview formed impressions almost identical to those of the interviewers. People form up to 90 percent of their opinion about you in the first four minutes, and 60 to 80 percent of that impact is nonverbal. This topic turns that finding into a playbook: how to enter, shake hands, sit, gesture, and exit so the impression is read as confident and high-status — and how to recognize when someone is engineering the room to lower your status instead.

The second half is structural. Offices are status machines. Three variables — chair size, chair height, and chair location — let an interviewer feel large while a visitor feels small, and the same variables let you redesign a room to read as friendly or formal at will. This topic closes with a worked case study of a manager whose office geometry was sabotaging his relationships, and the specific rearrangements that fixed it.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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First impressions are the love-at-first-sight of business

Most interviews are nonproductive in the worst sense: the factual information from the CV — the real predictor of performance — is forgotten, and what remains is the impression the candidate made. Bernieri's University of Toledo study is the headline evidence. Applicants of various ages and backgrounds were rated by interviewers on ambition, intelligence, and competence over twenty-minute interviews; a separate group of observers then watched only the first fifteen seconds of footage. Their snap impressions almost paralleled the interviewers' considered ratings. You do not get a second chance to make a first impression, and your approach, handshake, and overall body language are the deciding factors.

The working numbers: others form up to 90 percent of their opinion of you in the first four minutes, and 60 to 80 percent of your impact is nonverbal.

Why James Bond looked cool, calm, and collected

Linguistics research shows a direct relationship between the status, power, or prestige a person commands and the range of their vocabulary — the higher up the ladder, the better they communicate in words. Body-language research adds the complement: there is a correlation between command of the spoken word and the number of gestures used. The high-status person uses words to carry meaning; the lower-status person, lacking the words, substitutes gestures. As a general rule, the higher a person sits on the socioeconomic scale, the less gesticulation and body movement they use.

James Bond exploited this. Under pressure — intimidated, insulted, or shot at — he stayed relatively motionless and spoke in short, monotone sentences. High-status people "keep their cool," revealing as little emotion as possible. Animated, highly mobile performers (the book names Jim Carrey) read as the opposite: their roles emphasize a lack of power.

The nine golden keys to a great first impression

Assume you are walking into an interview and want the best possible first impression. The nine keys map the encounter from reception to exit.

Arriving and entering

1. In the reception area. Remove your outerwear and hand it to the receptionist if possible; never enter with arms full of clutter that makes you fumble and look inept. Always stand — never sit. Receptionists urge you to "take a seat" because once seated you are out of sight and no longer their problem. Stand with Hand-in-Hand behind your back (confidence), slowly rocking on your feet, or use the Steeple gesture — a constant reminder you are present and waiting. (The book adds the wry caveat: never do this at the Tax Office.)
2. The entry. Your entry tells others how you expect to be treated. Once given the green light, walk in without hesitation; do not hover in the doorway like a schoolchild outside the headmaster's office. Keep the same speed crossing the threshold — people who lack confidence change gears and shuffle as they enter.
3. The approach. Even if the person is on the phone or tying a shoelace, walk in directly and smoothly, put down whatever is in your hands, shake the person's hand, and immediately take a seat. Let them see you are accustomed to walking confidently into offices and do not expect to be kept waiting. Slow walkers and long, leisurely strides signal you have time to kill; influential people walk briskly at a medium pace with medium-length strides.

Handshake, sitting, and gestures

4. The handshake. Keep your palm straight and return the pressure you receive; let the other person decide when to end it. Step to the left of a rectangular desk as you approach to avoid being given a Palm-Down handshake, and never shake directly across a desk. Use the person's name twice in the first fifteen seconds, and never talk for more than thirty seconds at a stretch.
5. When you sit. If you are forced into a low chair directly facing the other person, turn it forty-five degrees away to escape the "reprimand" position. If the chair will not angle, angle your body instead.
6. Seating areas. An invitation to an informal coffee table is a positive sign — 95 percent of business rejections are delivered from behind a desk. Never sink into a low sofa that turns you into a giant pair of legs topped by a small head; if you must, perch upright on the edge so you can control your gestures, and angle your body forty-five degrees away.
7. Your gestures. People in control of their emotions use clear, uncomplicated, deliberate movements, and high-status individuals use fewer gestures than low-status ones — an ancient negotiating ploy, since people with power do not have to move much. Note the cultural calibration: Eastern Europeans gesture more from the elbow down, Southern Europeans with the whole arm and shoulders. Mirror the other person's gestures and expressions when appropriate.

Distance and exit

8. Distance. Respect the other person's Personal Space, which is largest in the opening minutes. Move too close and they sit back, lean away, or drum their fingers. Move closer to familiar people, farther from new ones; closer to those of similar age, farther from much older or younger ones. (The book notes a gendered pattern: men tend to move closer to women they work with, women tend to move farther back from men.)
9. Your exit. Pack up calmly and deliberately, not in a frenzy; shake hands, turn, and walk out. If the door was closed when you entered, close it behind you. People watch you from behind as you leave — men should shine the backs of their shoes, an area many neglect and women notice. A departing woman often points a foot toward the door and adjusts her hair and clothing for a good rear-view impression. At the door, turn slowly and smile, so they recall your face rather than your back.

When someone keeps you waiting

A wait of more than twenty minutes means the person is either disorganized or running a power play. Keeping someone waiting is an effective way to reduce their status and raise the waiter's — the same effect that makes a restaurant or cinema line feel worthwhile simply because everyone is waiting in it.

The counter-move is to refuse the loss of status by staying conspicuously busy. Always carry a book, PDA, laptop, or office work, signaling you too are busy and will not be inconvenienced. When they finally appear, let them speak first; lift your head slowly from your work, greet them, then pack up smoothly. A sharper variant is to take out financial papers and a calculator and run figures — when called, reply, "I'll be ready in a moment, I'll just finish these calculations." Or work through your phone calls.

Escalation tactics

If you suspect a deliberate game, the book offers a theatrical counter: arrange for an urgent call to be put through during the meeting, take it, loudly mention large sums of money, drop a well-known name or two, tell the caller you never settle for second best and they should report back immediately, hang up, apologize for the interruption, and continue as if nothing happened. If the other person takes a call or lets a third party start a long conversation, take out your own reading or homework — this gives them privacy while demonstrating you do not waste time. If it seems intentional, make your own follow-up calls about the ventures you were discussing. The principle throughout: never absorb the status hit idle.

Fake it till you make it

Open, palm-up body language is not a license to lie convincingly. If you adopt open positions while knowingly lying, your palms sweat, your cheeks twitch, and your pupils constrict. The most competent liars are those who can inhabit the role and act as if they believe the lie — the best of them win Oscars.

The book grounds this in a study on birds. In many species the more dominant bird has darker plumage, and darker birds eat and mate first. Researchers dyed weaker birds dark so they would "lie" about being dominant — but the real dominant birds attacked them, because the dyed birds still moved with weak, submissive body language. Only when the weaker birds were also injected with testosterone, so they strutted and acted superior, did the deception succeed. The lesson for an interview is not to lie but to cast yourself into a believable role and mentally rehearse in advance how you will behave, so that practiced positive skills become second nature.

Seven strategies for the extra edge

These tactics extend the status logic beyond the interview into everyday office interaction.

1. Stand up for meetings. Standing conversations are significantly shorter than seated ones, and whoever conducts a standing meeting is perceived as higher-status. Standing whenever others enter your workspace saves time — consider keeping no visitors' chairs in your own area, so decisions stay quick and to the point.
2. Sit competitors with their backs to the door. When our backs face open space we become stressed — blood pressure and heart rate rise, brainwave output and breathing speed up as the body readies for a rear attack. An excellent place to seat an opponent.
3. Keep your fingers together. People who keep their fingers closed and their hands below chin level command the most attention; open fingers or hands above the chin read as less powerful.
4. Keep your elbows out. Sitting with elbows out or on the chair arms reads as confident; submissive, timid people tuck their elbows in to protect themselves and are seen as fearful.
5. Use power words. A University of California study found the most persuasive spoken words are discovery, guarantee, love, proven, results, save, easy, health, money, new, safety, and you. Practice working them in.
6. Carry a slim briefcase. A slim case with a combination lock reads as belonging to an important person focused on the bottom line; large, bulky cases read as belonging to those who do all the work and are not organized enough to finish on time.
7. Watch their coat buttons. Analysis of videotaped confrontations between unions and corporations shows agreement is reached more often when coats are unbuttoned. Arm-crossers tend to keep jackets buttoned and stay negative; when someone suddenly unbuttons a jacket mid-meeting, you can reasonably assume they have also just opened their mind.

Before any important interview, the book advises sitting quietly for five minutes and mentally rehearsing these behaviors — when the mind sees them clearly, the body can carry them out.

Office power politics — the three chair variables

The felt sense of being overwhelmed in a visitor's chair, while the interviewer seems huge and you feel insignificant, is usually engineered. Three factors raise perceived status and power using chairs.

The power-play tactics and their counter-moves

| Power-play variable | Tactic used to dominate you | Counter-move | | --- | --- | --- | | Chair size & accessories | Executive takes a high-backed leather chair; visitor gets a low-backed one. Swivel chairs, armrests, recline, and wheels all add power; fixed chairs deny movement. | Sit upright on the edge to control your posture and gestures; angle your body 45° away from the reprimand line. | | Chair height | Visitor's chair adjusted (or built) lower than the interviewer's, so the visitor's eyes sit level with the desktop. | Recognize the geometry; raise your own seating where you can, or use erect posture and deliberate gestures to reclaim presence. | | Chair location | Visitor placed in the Competitive Position directly opposite, often pushed far back into the social/public zone to further reduce status. | Request the Corner or Cooperative Position; if denied, angle your body 45° to soften the competitive line. | | Keeping you waiting | A 20-minute-plus wait lowers your status and raises theirs. | Stay visibly busy — read, calculate, take calls — and let them speak first when they appear. |

The higher the back of a chair, the more status its occupant is perceived to have — kings, queens, and popes use thrones as high as eight feet, while the senior executive keeps a high-backed chair and gives the visitor a low one. Swivel chairs outrank fixed chairs because movement relieves pressure; fixed chairs force the sitter to leak feelings through gestures. Height adds status independently: some advertising executives sit on maximally raised high-backed chairs while visitors sink onto a low sofa or chair with their eyes at desk level. Location is the third lever — the Competitive Position exerts the most pressure, and pushing the visitor's chair into public distance compounds it.

How to switch table territories

When two people sit directly opposite across a table, they unconsciously split it into two equal territories, each claiming half and resenting encroachment. When you cannot take the corner position to present, place your object — a folder, quotation, or sample — on the dividing line and read the response.

• He leans forward to look but does not pick it up → he does not want you on his side; present from where you sit, angling your body 45° away.
• He takes it onto his side → nonverbal permission; ask to move into the Corner or Cooperative Position.
• He pushes it back toward you → stay on your side. Never encroach without verbal or nonverbal permission, or you put the person offside.

Seated body pointing

Picture counseling a subordinate whose performance is lacking: the session is in your office, the subordinate sits in a fixed, armless chair (forcing revealing gestures), and you sit in an armed swivel chair (letting you suppress your own gestures and move). Three angle positions control the pressure of the conversation.

• Forty-five degrees gives an informal, relaxed feel — the right opening for a counseling session. From here you show agreement by mirroring, your bodies pointing to a shared third point to form a triangle.
• Body squared directly at the person nonverbally signals you want direct answers to direct questions — it keeps things serious.
• Forty-five degrees turned away takes the pressure off, the best position for delicate or embarrassing questions, drawing out open answers without the subordinate feeling cornered.

How to rearrange an office — the case study

John, newly promoted to manager at a finance company, found employees disliked dealing with him, especially inside his office, where communication broke down worst. Setting aside his management skills, the nonverbal diagnosis of his original layout was damning:

• The visitor's chair sat in the Competitive Position opposite John.
• A clear glass partition let the rest of the staff see in, lowering John's status and effectively placing the whole office on the subordinate's side of the table.
• John's solid-fronted desk hid his lower body, denying subordinates the chance to read his lower gestures.
• The visitor's chair put the visitor's back to the open door.
• John habitually sat in the Catapult or Leg-Over-the-Arm-of-Chair postures when a subordinate was present.
• John's chair was high-backed with armrests and wheels; the visitor's was a plain, low-backed, fixed chair with no arms.

The rearrangement and the result

The fixes were precise. John's desk was moved in front of the glass partition, making the office look bigger and letting visitors be greeted by John personally rather than by his desk. The "hot seat" was moved to the Corner Position, opening communication while the corner acted as a partial barrier for insecure staff. The glass partition was given a mirror finish — John could see out but no one could see in — raising his status by securing his territory and creating intimacy. A low round table with three identical swivel chairs went at the far end for informal meetings, and the revised layout returned the entire desktop to John instead of ceding half to the visitor. John also practiced open positions, subtle Steeple gestures, and conscious use of his palms.

The result: significantly improved manager–staff relationships, with some staff newly describing John as "easygoing" and relaxed to work with. This topic's closing point is that most executive offices are arranged like John's original — because they are designed by office designers, not by people who understand human interaction — and that a little thought about nonverbal geometry is all it takes to raise your status and effectiveness.

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