Colleagues find barefaced flattery hard to resist

If it works with cynical journalists, whose job it is to spot false notes, it will work with anyone, writes LUCY KELLAWAY

I AM writing this with my feet up on the desk and my keyboard balanced on my thighs. Because the position isn't terribly comfortable, I had better be quick.

The reason for sitting in this curious way is to test a new scientific theory that states that by assuming a powerful position you become more powerful. To sit legs up does not merely make you more impressive in the eyes of the world it makes you more impressive in your own eyes too.

According to research done at Harvard Business School, striking a "power pose" raises testosterone levels by an average of 20 per cent and lowers cortisol (the stress hormone) by a similar amount.

Equally, sitting in a powerless way, legs and arms crossed, does just the reverse. Just as forcing yourself to smile all day has been proved to make you happier, strutting your stuff is now proven to make you more powerful.

The study, snappily entitled Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance, is not merely interesting in itself; it restores one's faith in the utility of the work being carried out at HBS.

Here is a dead easy way of being more successful that doesn't involve putting your career on hold for a year while you spend more than $100,000 on an MBA. To make it, you simply have to fake it.

It is a study that the unhappy elder Miliband brother would have done well to have read before he decided to run for the Labour leadership. What could have been more testosterone sapping than to pose, as David famously did, holding a banana? Meanwhile, a picture on the front of the Financial Timeslast week showed the victorious Ed Miliband wholeheartedly faking it, gesturing expansively, while his poor big brother looked on from the front row, arms and legs crossed in a study of powerlessness.

This study answers a question I have been puzzling over for 30 years. When I was at university, there was a man I knew faintly who was neither terribly bright nor hardworking nor obviously special in any way.

The only thing that was remarkable about him was that even though he was thin and his feet were small, he used to walk as if he were enormous.

The fact that this man now runs a well-known company used to astound me, but now I understand: he got into power posing early.

The theory also explains why women don't do so well at work. It's not so easy to sit legs on the desk if you are wearing a skirt. We aren't good at gestures of power. And even though we might be skilled at fooling others, we are less good at fooling ourselves.

However, there is another, even more interesting, piece of research that I stumbled on recently that concerns something that women are excellent at: flattery.

A recent article in the Economist described a study done by Jennifer Chatman at the University of California, Berkeley. She set out to discover whether there was a level at which flattery stops working - and found that there wasn't one. You can lay flattery on with a trowel - or even with a spade or a wheelbarrow - and it still does the job.

I was pretty sceptical about this, as I had always thought shameless crawling was not merely undignified but ineffective, too.

So last week I decided to put this theory to the test. I picked on six colleagues, each of whom had recently written something I admired, and plied them with praise in increasing quantity.

I waylaid my subject, and started: "I much enjoyed your piece on 'xx'," and then proceeded to phase two: "I mean it was incredibly clever/original/funny/fascinating," and from there to: "In fact it was by far the best thing that I've read in the newspaper - or anywhere - ever." I finished off with: "I just don't know how you do it. You are a total genius."

In each case the smile got wider as the dose increased, and by phase four there was a flush of pleasure across the face. In three of the cases the subject told me in return that I was also a genius, an observation that I found myself inexplicably willing to take at face value.

I can, therefore, confirm that the theory is resoundingly, astoundingly true. If it works with cynical journalists, whose job it is to spot false notes, it will work with anyone.

Of course, dispensing flattery so calculatingly does not feel entirely comfortable. But at least it doesn't give you pins and needles. I can now confirm that sitting with your feet up for prolonged periods may make you more powerful, but it also makes you lose sensation in your legs. - (Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2010)