Impro

Johnstone treats status as something played out in every interaction, mostly through the body. Words barely matter. You can play high or low regardless of your actual position, and most people have a reflexive default they never notice.

High status reads as security: a still head, eye contact held a beat after you stop speaking, complete sentences without “um”, comfort with silence, no reflexive apologies. None of this requires coldness. A warm king is still a king.

Most people have two or three signature low-status tells they repeat constantly: the “er”, the nervous laugh, the trailing sentence, the reflex apology, the head-bob. Removing one of them does more than adding ten high-status moves on top.

The goal is to have the choice. Low status has real power too: it’s disarming and makes others feel safe. What matters is whether you play your status on purpose or by reflex.

Status behaves like a see-saw. When one person goes up, the other tends to go down. Every conversation runs a continuous, tiny status negotiation underneath the words.

The exercise: in a low-stakes conversation, shift the status once on purpose. Hold eye contact longer, let a silence sit, or defer and let the other person correct you. Then watch the other side of the see-saw move. Feeling the mechanism teaches more than reading about it.