It’s no secret how much body language matters for public speaking and leadership. The real secret is this: leaders who want executive presence (and the people who coach them) have been working on the wrong problem. Here’s how fixing the right problem helped one CEO land a $6.3 billion deal.

When professionals stand up to speak and the stakes are high, they want to appear confident and authoritative. They want to project “leader energy” and so they focus on what they do with their bodies in the moment – gesture, movement, eye contact, posture vocal projection and so on.

But teaching your body to stand or move or speak in certain ways won’t help you come across as a leader. You can’t convincingly perform leadership traits like confidence or authenticity – you have to embody them. What your audience sees and hears is an expression of the underlying state of your nervous system. Regulate that, and your body language will take care of itself. Don’t treat the symptom – treat the deeper cau...