Page 135 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

116 • CEO Material: How to Be a Leader in Any Organization

Good posture exudes self-confidence, positive energy, and makes you
appear more fit and attractive.

Caroline Creager, president of Executive Physical Therapies, gives
posture improvement advice:

■ “While you steadily continue to breath, lift your rib cage up and
away from your pelvis.”
■ “Roll back your shoulders, and relax them down (ears and shoulders
and hips should be in a straight line with knees bent slightly).”
■ “Pull your belly button in toward your spine to elongate your
midsection and tighten your abdominal muscles—as you steadily
continue to breathe.”

Not that it’s fair, but taller people earn more money and reach
higher levels in organizations, according to a CNN report—on average,
$789 per inch per year more. (Fortune reports that 58 percent of Fortune
500 CEOs are over six feet tall.) Regardless of your height, you need to
be an erect executive to fit the image of a leader.
The stance also helps you to develop core physical strength as you
breathe more fully through an open chest with aligned internal organs.
Every day you take around 20,000 breaths (according to Mayo Clinic pul-
monary clinical research). To do it healthily, breathe in through your nose
while your abdomen expands, and then breathe out forcefully through
your lips with a silent “Ha!”—done whether sitting or standing.
The alignment relieves chronic aches and pains, migraines, aching
wrists, sore neck, and a stiff lower back. “Good posture fights the natu-
ral dehydration of the spinal column as you age and instead pumps a
steady flow of oxygen to the disks,” says Vijay Vad, M.D. “Hold your head
up high—unbought, unbossed,” said the late Congresswoman Shirley
Chisholm. And even Oprah Winfrey says, “Boobs to the sky, ladies.”
If you don’t stand tall, you look like you have the weight of the world
on your shoulders. That’s a look that started in grade school when you
rounded your shoulders hunched over a desk and carried backpacks, and
then it continued in adult life with laptops, heavy purses, diaper bags, and
today, “your burdens.”