Most people think you have to choose between being warm and being powerful. Watch White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre run a single briefing and you see the lie in that idea. In the space of a few minutes she moves from honouring a retiring colleague, to shutting down a reporter who talks over her, to grieving with a community after a shooting — and her body shifts cleanly with each register.

I want to walk you through the cues, because this is a masterclass in holding warmth and authority at the same time.

The warmth: honouring Dr Fauci

She opens the briefing introducing Dr Anthony Fauci on his last day at the podium. When she says "I'm honored, so honored to have him," she turns her head and makes deliberate eye contact with him as she repeats the word. That small move — speaking to the room but looking at the person — is one of the most effective ways to make someone feel genuinely respected. The words become personal rather than ceremonial.

Her hands are working for her here too. She uses open, illustrative gestures with both hands, a brief Namaste-style gesture, and she points to direct attention. None of it is fidgeting. As a spokesperson, this expressive, controlled hand language is exactly what you want: it tells the audience she is comfortable and in command of her material.

Earlier, greeting the press with Thanksgiving cookies, her smile reaches her eyes — the cheeks lift, the eyes crease. That is a genuine smile, not a social one pasted on for the cameras.

The authority: holding the podium

When Fauci begins speaking, watch how she stands. She grips the podium with one hand while gesturing with the other. Holding your space physically like that reads as a strong, settled stance. You are not perched, you are rooted.

Then a reporter starts shouting over the proceedings, and her whole register changes. Her face hardens. She raises a palm — the universal "stop" or "calm down" signal — and says, "Hold on one second, we have a process here." She is taking ownership of the room. She repeats variations of "I'm done," "I'm not getting into a back and forth with you," and "go ahead" to move past the interruption rather than feed it. The palm-out gesture appears again and again, each time cutting off the noise without her raising her voice to match theirs.

This is the part worth studying. She does not soften into the disruption, and she does not lose her composure either. She shuts the behaviour down while staying contained — dominant, but not flustered.

The compassion: switching gears

Minutes later she addresses the shooting in Colorado Springs. Her voice drops and slows, her facial expression settles into something softer, and she speaks about the victims with real care — naming Kelly Long, who had just turned 40. The empathy is visible in the face and audible in the voice. The same person who was firm with a heckler is now openly tender.

What this teaches the rest of us

Three different emotional registers, three matching sets of cues, all from one woman in one short appearance. The lesson is not to copy her gestures but to understand the principle underneath them.

  • Warmth lives in the eyes and open hands — turn towards people, look at them, let your hands stay open.
  • Authority lives in stillness and rootedness — hold your ground, use a clear palm signal, refuse to match a raised voice.
  • Compassion lives in pace — slow down, soften the face, let the voice carry the feeling.

Being respectful and being powerful are not opposites. To do both, you first have to know your own body language — what your hands do under pressure, what your face does when you are challenged. Watch yourself the way you would watch Karine Jean-Pierre, and you can choose which register you bring into the room.