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Early in my improv training, I took a workshop called “Statuses”, which spoke of how to maintain a status in scenes. If you were a person with authority, you usually held a high status. If you were a follower or servant, you usually held low status. But what distinguishes a person with high status to a person with low status?
Here are some traits of people with low and high statuses:

A High Status person:

• Walks upright with good posture.
• Looks people in the eyes.
• Speaks with a still head.
• Has a calculated pace of speech.
• Speaks clearly and confidently.
• Rarely fidgets or shows any signs of nervousness.
• Stands with his or her feet firmly planted to the ground, with a neutral stance: not too wide, not too narrow.
• Smiles with confidence.
• Rarely deviates from his or her values.
• Is independent, and independently validated.
• Is in control of his or her emotions.

A Low Status person:

• Avoids eye contact.
• Has bad posture.
• Moves their head a lot while talking.
• Touches their face when talking.
• Never knows what to do with his or her hands in neutral positions.
• Sits with his or her toes pointing each other.
• Apologizes for his or her existence.
• Easily and quickly admits defeat.
• Speaks with a lower volume to avoid disturbing anything.
• Is high strung, tightly wound, or cannot relax.

This isn’t to say that you are constantly a high status or low status person. It’s all relative, and depends on how your status relates to another person’s. In the presence of a high status person, you might show signs of lower status, and vice-versa. It’s a metaphorical seesaw.

And that seesaw is something that can dynamically change depending on each situation. Watch in the near future for a post about leveraging your status and manipulating the status seesaw.

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