When I talk about body language with my clients, many of
them find the subject fascinating and it seems that my readers do too, judging
from the incredible amount of hits my previous Body Language series is still
attracting. With this in mind, I thought
I’d write a new, more in depth series based on what I’ve learned though my own
studies and through watching and modelling others.
In this series I will cover:
·
How to Spot a Liar (part 2)
·
How to Win
·
Power
·
Attraction
·
Love
·
Humour
·
Personal Branding
Our body language tells other people everything they need to
know about us (whether we mean it to or not) and therefore, if we can learn to read others effectively, it can greatly increase our influencing skills.
We aren’t always conscious of what our body language is telling the
world about us, because even when we try to conceal our true feelings, they do
have a way of slipping out without us realising – the technical term for that is body
language ‘leakage’.
Our body language is largely driven by our subconscious and
therefore, unless we concentrate consciously on what we are doing with
our physiology ie our body/face/how we say things - the intonation/tone etc - we have very little control over the signals we are giving out and even when we do try to conceal our real feelings, there will always be a
certain amount of leakage.
We know instinctively if someone is lying, if someone is
unhappy or happy without them even having to say anything. It’s an evolutionary, inbuilt mechanism that
we have for protecting ourselves. Often
what we say and what we do are not congruent and that’s where mistrust can surface. We may not even be consciously aware of why we don't trust someone, or don't like what they're saying but it will usually be down to incongruence between words and physiology.
A great example of this is when we
see politicians giving a speech, generally they are trained/coached to within
an inch of their lives on how to avoid giving away incongruent messages due to
mismatches ie what comes out of their mouths’ doesn’t match what
they are doing with their bodies.
However, we simply cannot sustain trying to consciously control our body
language for any length of time and that’s where, if you study body language, it
becomes quite easy to tell what’s really going on with that person based on
their ‘leakage’.
It’s an interesting fact that only a very small percentage (7%
in fact) of a message that we give out is down to the actual words we use. 7%, that’s tiny! The rest is made up of what we do with our
bodies and the way in which we say
something (the paralinguistics). Here’s
a chart which explains it clearly:
When I’m delivering workshops on communication, this is
always one of the most surprising facts for delegates. We generally think that our words are the
most important thing, however, we can say exactly the same thing in a number
of different ways and each one has a different meaning. For example:
Similarly, what we do with our bodies says so much about
what we really mean – we can take any of the above statements, place the same stresses on the words and use the same paralinguistics, but they would mean something completely different again based on what we did with our bodies whilst we are saying the words. For example, moving forward and into
someone’s personal space could be seen intimidating, whereas leaning back with our
hands behind our head could mean that we think we are in control.
It’s the nuances in our physiology that tell us everything
we need to know about whether someone is being congruent or not and if you can
get into the habit of really trying to read and understand body language, it
will massively contribute to your influencing skills and your overall emotional
intelligence. You’ll be able to ‘read’
what the other person is thinking which will allow you to adjust your response
in order to get the result you require.
That’s not being manipulative (as some of my clients tell me when I
first start to delve into this subject with them) it’s being smart!
Unfortunately, we do tend to overrule our innate ability to
read people and go with their words rather than what we observe,however, if we did
start to tune into that ability, it really would make dealing with people a lot
easier. We usually get ‘gut feelings’
about someone/what they are saying and whether we consider it to be true or false, sadly we often
override those feelings and take more notice of what someone is saying.
However, our gut feelings are very rarely wrong; they are an inbuilt, evolutionary
defence mechanism to keep us out of danger.
So the next time you are trying to decide what to do based
on something someone has told you, or the next time you have to make any kind
of decision, go with your gut feeling – it won’t let you down!
Influencing others is such a critical skill, not only in business but in our everyday lives. If you would like to know more about how you can increase your influencing skills, please contact me for a free, no obligation conversation on how I can help you.
Jo
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