Your most powerful presentation tool might not be your cutting-edge presentation graphics. It might not be your speaker’s notes or your spiffy new power suit. It might be something far simpler and far more universal. I’m assuming you read the title, so you probably already know what I’m getting at. It’s your smile.
Today, we’re going to examine a case study in smiling to see how it can apply to the world of presenting. The study examines server and customer interactions in the food industry and asks the question, “is service with a smile enough?” Published in the journal for Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, the study aimed to find out if smiles really mattered to customers. Here’s what they found.
Do Smiles Matter to Customers?
In a short answer, yes. But only under certain circumstances. The researchers discovered that they couldn’t measure smiling alone, because there were two things that affected how it was perceived. First, was whether or not the server was efficiently handling the rest of her job. The second was whether or not the customer believed the smile to be real.
If the server was having trouble meeting basic expectations like keeping drinks filled or bringing requested items to the table, it didn’t matter how much he or she smiled. The poor performance of the server is what the customer noticed most. So a genuine smile can add to the perceived competence of a server who is doing his job well. But it can’t make up for incompetence.
And if the server faked a smile, the customers knew. The research found that “when service providers do not seem sincere in their expressions it is less likely to create a positive impression in the customer; instead, a false smile may seem manipulative and the employee’s impression management attempt fails.”
Applying This Research to Your Presentation
While this study might seem to fall outside of our field, there are lots of parallels here that can give us helpful information when it comes to presenting. Just like restaurant servers, public speakers are often encouraged to smile even when they don’t feel like it. Or to fake it in order to win over their audience. So here are a few takeaways from this study that apply directly to presenting:
- A smile can’t make up for incompetence.
- If you are focused more on smiling than you are on speaking, it might negatively affect your performance.
- Fake smiles don’t often work because the audience is too good at identifying them.
- Authentically smiling at your audience can boost their impression of you. But only if you are doing the rest of your job well.
If you want your audience to have a positive impression of you, there are two things to keep in mind: competence and authenticity. Aim to present well and to do it with a genuine smile.
Need help mastering that genuine smile on top of all the other presentation do’s and don’ts? We’ve got you.
