What’s better…to conduct a media call at your desk or to conduct the phone interview while standing up and pacing around your office?

You need the privacy of your space for the interview, but it’s important to stand up and break out of your usual seated ‘box,’  to energize yourself and your message.

Now, this classic bit of MediaSkills advice is reinforced by another bit of academic research. As recently reported in the Wall St. Journal, a  committee of university researchers examined the underlying assumptions of the metaphor “outside the box.” They gave students some brainteasers and had some work on the puzzles inside a five-foot-square box, and others tackle the puzzles in open space.

Those outside the box were able to solve the puzzles more quickly.  The new term for this is ’embodied metaphors,’ which makes us wonder what other metaphors the researchers will take on. Meanwhile, it’s enough to know that  you’ll be able to rise to an interview more creatively and confidently when you take command of your space. Moving and gesturing throughout the phone interview will, in the words of the researchers, ” physically and psychologically embodying creative metaphors promote fluency, flexibility, and/or originality in problem-solving.”

Right. What they said.