Natalie Jobity: Hello, my name is Natalie Jobity, and I am the President of Elan Image Management, an image consulting company. Today we are talking about the six ways you can revamp your image, and we are onto step four, which is making sure you have an effective professional presence. Professional presence is really important, because people form impressions about you in the first 30 seconds of the interaction with you, yeah, 30 seconds. Those impressions can be indelible in their minds. So, you want to make sure that whatever you do, and how you present yourself when you meet someone new is favorable, credible, and trustworthy, so that you can have an effective and positive impression in their minds. Some of the things that are really important that you want to pay attention to is when you meet someone, how do you come across? What do you do? So, I want to just show, using Catherine as my model, I want to show what it's like to do a proper greeting when you meet someone. Essentially, what you want to do is you want to make sure you have the handshake and maintain eye contact with that person for the first time -- when you meet them for the first time for as long as until you determine the color of their eyes. I know that sounds kind of bizarre, but this gives you a kind of cue as to how long you hold that eye contact for. It means a good three or four seconds. It's not just like a switch and bait thing, you want to be definitely holding the eye contact, because once you look away first or too early, it can give an often impression of untrustworthiness or lack of confidence. So, you want to make sure that you're holding eye contact. So, let's just demonstrate with Catherine for a second. So, I'm going to simulate like I am meeting Catherine the first time. Hello Catherine, my name is Natalie Jobity, nice to meet you. Catherine: Nice to meet you too.

Natalie Jobity: So, what we have just done is we have both smiled and we did the handshake and we maintained eye contact, I don't know if you saw both of our eyes, but we maintained eye contact for the whole time we both introduced ourselves. That's the way you're supposed to do it. The way not to it is what I am going to show you right now, which is. Hi Catherine, nice to meet you. I have just kind of like broken the eye contact really quickly, and actually when she looked at me, she almost looked like what just happened there, because it's almost like an insecure person does that, and that's what you don't want to come across as is insecure. So, you want make sure to be confident you are like, Hi, my name is Natalie Jobity, nice to meet you.

Catherine: Nice to meet you too.

Natalie Jobity: We are engaged, because what that eye contact does is, it locks us -- it creates a subtle bond between us, now we have just met, and that eye contact is key. What's also key is actually the handshake. So, a good handshake would be, you hold not too tight, you pump a couple of times. Again, we are maintaining eye contact and we are smiling, and we release. That's pretty much a good handshake. Here are some handshakes don'ts. One is the overeager handshake, that's a little bit to aggressive. The other one is the bone crushing handshake, and I'm not going to do it because it will actually hurt her. If I held the grip so tight that it actually was painful to her, that's a don't. The other one is the opposite, one that's too weak, where it's like you are using a finger, which have had happened to me actually, or it's like this, it's a limp fish, the wrists are all floppy. Those are all very bad handshakes, it diminishes your professional presence. You want to make sure your handshake and your eye contact, that goes hand in hand, they are firm, it's proper, and it's really solid, because that immediately is a sense of how confident you are and how commanding you are. The other thing is posture, and I want Catherine to demonstrate poor posture and then good posture. So, give us an example of poor posture. Poor posture is you are slumping, you are slouching. It actually makes the middle look fatter, and it actually has been proven that poor posture actually adds ten pounds, and makes you look ten years older. So, there is Catherine, she looks like something is wrong with her. Okay, Catherine, let's show them the good posture. Good posture means you are standing erect and tall, almost like if you are -- but your shoulders have to be relaxed, like hers are, they are not up like this. You don't want to be like that, that's uncomfortable. You want to be erect, tall and commanding, and command, so when you enter a room, you walk into a room, and you are commanding. That's the impact of good posture, it makes you look visually appealing, but it also says I am confident. So, those are some of the things you want to remember with professional presence when revamping your image.