Add Silicon Canals to your Google Information feed. 
I’ll admit one thing that took me years to grasp about myself. For a very long time, folks instructed me I used to be intimidating. Not in the way in which that means risk or aggression. In the way in which that comes with a slight lean backward, a cautious recalibration of the dialog, a sudden consciousness of posture. I couldn’t make sense of it, as a result of I knew what was occurring inside me throughout these moments: normally nothing extra dramatic than paying consideration. Listening with out rehearsing my response. Sitting in silence when silence was acceptable. Over time, and after practically twenty years of constructing corporations throughout a number of international locations, I began to note that the folks most frequently labeled “intimidating” shared one thing particular. They weren’t hostile. They have been current. And presence, it seems, has a method of exposing the absence of it in everybody else.
The phrase “intimidating” is nearly all the time a misdiagnosis
Take into consideration the final time you heard somebody described as intimidating. The phrase carries an implication of hazard, of potential aggression, of somebody who may damage you. However whenever you press folks on what they really imply, the small print not often match. What they describe is somebody who holds eye contact. Somebody who doesn’t fill silence with nervous laughter. Somebody whose opinions appear thought of somewhat than improvised for approval.
Analysis helps this sample. Research on the traits that predict bodily and social aggression counsel that individuals who really interact in aggressive conduct have a tendency to point out particular character patterns. These should not the traits individuals are describing after they name a quiet colleague “intimidating.” The genuinely harmful people in a social setting are sometimes charming, heat on the floor, and expert at making others really feel comfortable, no less than initially. The particular person sitting calmly and asking direct questions? That’s a distinct animal solely.
What the phrase “intimidating” usually captures is a sense of publicity. The particular person on the receiving finish senses that their traditional social scripts aren’t working, they usually don’t know why. That discomfort will get filed underneath “risk” as a result of our nervous methods haven’t developed separate labels for “I really feel seen” and “I really feel unsafe.”
Why presence disrupts efficiency
A couple of months in the past, I used to be having espresso close to Tanjong Pagar with Geoffrey, 58, a classical cellist who additionally runs a recording studio. He instructed me about a cocktail party the place a brand new visitor, a lady he’d by no means met, stated nearly nothing for the primary hour. She listened, requested a number of exact questions, and smiled when one thing genuinely amused her. By the second hour, Geoffrey stated, three folks had independently described her as “intense” or “rather a lot.”
“She wasn’t rather a lot,” Geoffrey instructed me. “She was simply there. Totally. And the remainder of us have been performing, and all of the sudden we may really feel it.”
That statement has stayed with me. There’s a helpful framework for understanding it in what psychologist Wendy T. Behary has written about narcissistic patterns, the place she describes how individuals who function from a constructed self could expertise real authenticity as a sort of risk. The genuine particular person doesn’t should say something essential. Their mere consistency, the way in which they don’t shift their character relying on the viewers, features as an implicit problem to everybody who does.
That is what Geoffrey’s dinner visitor was doing. She wasn’t judging anybody. She was simply occupying herself absolutely, and that fullness created a distinction that made the social efficiency occurring round her all of the sudden seen. As soon as you’ll be able to see that you simply’re performing, you’ll be able to’t unsee it. And the tradition of fabricated self-importance that many people swim in every day signifies that encounter with the real article lands laborious.
The anatomy of social efficiency
Most of us carry out greater than we notice. We alter our snigger relying on who’s telling the joke. We curate opinions based mostly on the room. We mirror power, amplify enthusiasm we don’t really feel, and deal with small discuss as a cooperative fiction the place each events agree to not say something actual. These aren’t indicators of pathology. They’re social lubrication. They preserve issues transferring.
The issue surfaces when somebody enters the room who merely doesn’t take part within the fiction. They reply “How are you?” with an actual reply. They don’t snigger at issues that aren’t humorous. They ask follow-up questions that counsel they have been really listening somewhat than ready for his or her flip to talk.
I’ve written earlier than about how individuals who have been by no means requested their opinion as youngsters usually develop into adults who deal with their very own preferences as inconveniences. The inverse additionally holds: individuals who have been taught early that their real self was acceptable, or who fought their method again to that perception via remedy or laborious expertise, develop a high quality of presence that reads as confrontational to anybody nonetheless hiding behind a curated model of themselves.
The confrontation is solely inside. The “intimidating” particular person hasn’t stated something provocative. They’ve merely proven, by instance, that it’s doable to take a seat in a room and not using a masks. For anybody nonetheless sporting one, that’s insufferable.
What the analysis really factors to
Psychological observations on what makes somebody perceived as intimidating reveal a constant cluster of traits: directness, consolation with silence, emotional steadiness, and a low tolerance for superficiality. These traits usually overlap with these related to psychological well being and safe functioning, and infrequently align with traits related to aggression or hostility.
What’s occurring is a perceptual error pushed by the observer’s personal discomfort. Psychoanalytic thinkers have a helpful time period for this: projective identification. When somebody’s calm, grounded presence triggers nervousness in one other particular person, that nervousness will get attributed to the calm particular person as a high quality they possess somewhat than a response occurring contained in the anxious observer. “You’re intimidating” actually means “I really feel one thing uncomfortable round you and I’m going to make that your accountability.”
That is additionally why girls are disproportionately known as intimidating for behaviors that may be described as “assured” or “decisive” in males. The label carries a gendered cost as a result of social efficiency expectations are greater for girls. A girl who opts out of emotional labor, who doesn’t soften her statements or carry out heat she doesn’t really feel, violates a script so deeply embedded that many individuals can’t articulate what’s bothering them. In order that they attain for “intimidating” as a catch-all.
The price of being the mirror
There’s an actual value to being this particular person, and I don’t wish to romanticize it. People who find themselves persistently current, who don’t modulate themselves for social consolation, usually discover their social circles smaller than they’d like. They get invited locations much less incessantly. They discover folks being cautious round them, selecting phrases with uncommon precision, laughing barely too shortly.
Catherine, 53, a monetary controller I’ve identified for about seven years, described this expertise to me as soon as in a method I discovered exact. “Individuals deal with me like I’m retaining rating,” she stated. “I’m not. I’m simply paying consideration. However apparently paying consideration seems like surveillance to individuals who aren’t used to being seen.”
That sentence lodged itself someplace I haven’t been capable of shake. As a result of it names the precise mechanism: consideration itself, undivided and real, has turn out to be so uncommon that when somebody presents it, the recipient’s first intuition is suspicion somewhat than gratitude. We’ve been conditioned by a long time of partial listening, ambient distraction, and social media’s model of connection (which is usually broadcast) to expertise actual consideration as irregular. And irregular, in social contexts, will get reclassified as threatening.
Writers on this web site have explored how presence with out analysis is likely one of the causes folks discover animal companionship so comforting. Canines don’t carry out, they usually don’t require efficiency from you. The irony is that the people who provide one thing near that very same high quality of presence are those almost certainly to be known as intimidating.
What authenticity really appears like from the within
I wish to watch out right here, as a result of “authenticity” has turn out to be a kind of phrases that’s been so completely consumed by advertising and marketing and self-help tradition that it barely means something anymore. After I use it, I’m not speaking a few model technique or an Instagram caption. I’m speaking about one thing quieter: the choice to let your inside match your exterior, even when the room is rewarding you for pretending.
That call isn’t dramatic. It appears like ordering what you really need as a substitute of scanning the desk to see what everybody else selected. It appears like saying “I don’t know” whenever you don’t know, as a substitute of developing a believable opinion on the spot. It appears like permitting a pause to exist between somebody’s query and your reply, since you’re really fascinated by it somewhat than producing a pre-approved response.
And sure, it appears like sitting in a room with the sort of self-acceptance that doesn’t want exterior validation to stay secure. That stability is what folks really feel. And after they’re not secure themselves, they name it intimidating.
Through the years, residing throughout Melbourne, London, Bangkok, New York, Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, and now Singapore, I’ve watched this sample repeat in each tradition I’ve moved via. The precise social scripts differ. The mechanism is common. People who find themselves genuinely current expose the hole between who we’re and who we’re pretending to be. That hole is the place the discomfort lives.
Should you’ve been known as intimidating by individuals who couldn’t level to a single aggressive factor you probably did, you most likely already know this. The phrase was by no means about you. It was about what your presence revealed in them. And the truth that you stored displaying up as your self, regardless of the label, is the very high quality that made them uncomfortable within the first place.
From the editors
Undercurrent — our weekly publication. The sharpest writing from Silicon Canals, curated reads from throughout the net, and an editorial connecting what others cowl in isolation. Each Sunday.
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
