‘I speak two languages. Body and English.’
Anonymous
No doubt over the years you’ve picked up on the various ways we all communicate – facial expressions, the way we stand or sit, gestures such as crossing our arms in a particular way, the position or tilt of the head or direction of the eyes. All these movements express something – even without accompanying speech. How you perform these movements contributes to creating the image that you present and will determine people’s perceptions of you.
It’s very rare for any of us, when we’re talking to people, to believe that our words alone can convey the right message.
We may smile or grimace, avert our gaze at times, stand close or at a distance, touch (or not) and use other non-verbal communication to add weight to our message. A number of surveys over the past 50 years have provided a body of evidence (did I say ‘body’? – it’s crept in again) to show that it is body language – or non-verbal messages – that powerfully communicate the following:
Wouldn’t it be good to be able to identify all of these in your interactions with other people? It would certainly save a lot of time and heartache, and also provide you with feedback that might enable you to salvage a situation in some cases.
So, a good awareness of body language provides practical insights into improving your interactions with other people in most situations. Friends, family, work colleagues, customers and clients, at job interviews, with strangers – it’s an endless list.
Quite naturally, because of our daily interactions with people involving the spoken word, we’ve been educated to believe that language skills – or, more precisely, words – are of paramount importance. They are important, but the ‘silent’ language is of equal importance – if not more.
We all pick up the subtle clues that others are sending out – even though we may not be conscious of it. And of course other people are doing this with us. We’re sending cues that indicate either ‘keep away from me’ or ‘I’m an approachable sort of person’.
We communicate with our:
Because we communicate in this ‘silent’ language from the subconscious, it follows that as a true indicator of our feelings it conveys more than the spoken word.
Gestures are very effective in delivering messages in the form of images in a way that speech is unable to do. So it follows that when gestures and words are used simultaneously this is the most effective method of communication. We choose gestures to communicate our message but our body throws out signals that are beyond our conscious awareness (and that’s where the trouble starts).
It’s time to haul out the statistics relating to the groundbreaking – and still highly influential – study conducted in 1971 by social psychologist Professor Albert Mehrabian of the University of Los Angeles (UCLA). He looked at the relative strengths of verbal and non-verbal messages in face-to-face encounters and devised a communication model which has stood the test of time. It has come to be regarded almost as a template for understanding how people derive meaning from another person’s message.
However, it has come to be misinterpreted over time as the topic of body language has gradually become more and more popular and extends its reach into the world of ‘celebrity’ and consumer magazines.
Nonetheless, the broad percentages have been confirmed through subsequent research over the last few decades. What is indisputable is that ‘looking and listening’ (to the non-verbals) – as mentioned earlier – is the key to deciphering the true meaning in any face-to-face communication with another person.
Mehrabian’s research revealed three elements in any communication message – body language, voice and words. He came up with the famous ‘55, 38 and 7’ model, which reveals that:
This leads to a startling conclusion:
93 per cent of our message is conveyed by the language of the body (including voice).
So Mehrabian’s classic research tells us that your impact boils down to three factors:
In short – body language speaks louder than words!
Over the decades, some people, after learning about the 55, 38, 7 study (and other more recent studies that broadly confirm these figures), have misinterpreted these groundbreaking findings. They’ve concluded that words are not that important and that as long as you look confident, project the right impression, dress to kill and then deliver your ill-construed words with the right seductive pitch and tone of voice then the world’s your oyster. (A classic illustration of the maxim that ‘no information is better than misinformation’.)
So they’ve concluded that if words are worth less than 10 per cent in your interactions in terms of successfully engaging with people then actual words are not that important.
Incorrect. That’s not what the study showed. When you read this in the future – and you’re bound to come across it in a magazine in some guise or another – take a deep breath.
What did the research reveal? Well – essentially it was this:
If your 55 per cent – visual body language – is not good, they’re not even going to stick around (excuse the vernacular) to listen to the 45 per cent!
Even if your audience ‘sticks around’, if your 38 per cent (the way you speak) turns them off, they won’t take in or comprehend the 7 per cent (the actual words) and they’re off – mentally if not physically.
That’s what the research findings showed.
How many times have you thought (or said) – at a party, at work, on a date – that things were looking good ‘until he opened his mouth’. (Have you ever seen any of those TV programmes on ‘speed dating’?).
Make no mistake – the words are important. Our objective is to get the person to want to listen to us in the first place. Even if you consider yourself to be oozing with charisma without saying a word – words are still important. But of course how you say them is equally as important.
It’s generally accepted by most researchers that:
(We’ll discuss the way words are voiced along with how attitudes, feelings and emotions are displayed, in Lesson 3 when we look at the non-verbal aspect of speech – paralanguage.)
Sometimes body language is used as an alternative medium for verbal messages (think about Norma Desmond’s ‘With one look I put words to shame...’ from Sunset Boulevard).
So, on the basis of how you score in the three factors listed above, people will make decisions as to:
Bluntly – whether to have anything to do with you at all!
Many people spend time trying to become expert in decoding the body language of other people, and they still don’t improve their own personal and work relationships. Why? Because they forget to look at their own body language.
A lot of ‘relationships’ are formed or ‘dissolved’ in the first three minutes of an encounter. It’s the ‘gut instinct’ or intuition from the subconscious that is picking up on the non-verbals to decide whether it’s a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
Your amicable words mean nothing if your body seems to be saying something different. We’re constantly making impressions (as sender) for other people to receive as well as receiving impressions (as receiver) about other people. It’s two-way traffic.
We’ll evaluate, through our ‘sixth sense’, how we feel about a person by the way they express themselves through their body. It’s not even a rational decision on our part. Call it intuition. This quote sums it up beautifully:
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
GK Chesterton
Quit the navel-gazing as to why you do something with your body (facial expression, eyes, gesture). Think – from a visual viewpoint – how it appears to other people and, more importantly: is that what I wanted to convey?
The first impression sticks – for better or worse. You may remember the shampoo commercial on television many years ago – ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression.’ Never was there a truer maxim.
As with toothpaste, it’s easier to let negative first impressions out of the tube than to squeeze them back in.
So make sure that people are reading you correctly. If you look the part and your non-verbal display is consistent, your words will be reinforced and your ‘audience’ will have confidence and trust in what you’re saying and will want to hear more.
Way back in 1872 Charles Darwin, known for his theory of evolution, wrote his groundbreaking The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. It wasn’t until the middle half of the following century that further serious scientific research started again.
One of the early pioneers of body language was Ray Birdwhistell, an American anthropologist who worked in the 1950s. He called this silent communication ‘kinesics’ because of its study of the way that various body parts or the entire body play a key role in communicating a message.
Our ‘gestures’, which broadly include movement, postures and expressions, transmit messages while the mouth is busily sending out the carefully crafted (or otherwise) words. The other ‘giant’ of the body language movement, zoologist Dr Desmond Morris, has defined a gesture as ‘any action that sends a visual signal to an onlooker... and communicates some piece information to them’. This can be either deliberate or incidental. Many of our incidental gestures are ones that we would prefer to conceal. For example, the head-on-hands during a less than exciting training session or the second half of a dull play. Quite often we may not be consciously aware of adopting a gesture (it is not deliberate), but this indicator of mood information sends out a signal to the onlooker, and the meaning of it is read.
The kinesic model was further developed by Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen (University of California, 1970) – we shall be referring to some of their research on facial expressions in Lesson 2 – who subdivided kinesics into five broad areas that provide a convenient shorthand for us.
These tend to be gestures that accompany speech to create a visual supporting message that describes or reinforces your message – and more often than not are subconscious in their origin. For example, you might gesture with a rising upward movement of your upturned palm as you describe how house prices have gone up in the past two decades.
These usually replace words – an obvious one is the thumbs-up. In the relevant contexts and in the various cultures they are easily understood by the receiver. A little cautionary note. You are more likely to come unstuck with these in different parts of the world where, if the emblem exists, it can mean something completely different from what you intended. You could end up with:
These are movements that tend to give away your emotions, positive or negative, and are usually subconscious. These include facial expressions, gestures associated with the limbs, body posture and movement. We’ll be talking a lot about these as they reveal much about how we are feeling – to other people and also to ourselves. They constitute the ‘leakage’ that in many cases we’d rather hide.
Similar to affect displays, adaptors are a mood indicator and are difficult to consciously control, making them a good barometer of someone’s true feelings, be they positive or negative. They indicate whether the person is telling lies or engaging in a more serious form of deception. Adaptors include switches in posture and movements (alter-adaptors), actions that are directed towards the body such as rubbing or touching the face (self-adaptors) and actions like chewing a pencil, removing spectacles or fiddling with jewellery (object-adaptors).
These are movements related to our function of speaking or listening and also indicators of our intentions (we’ll discuss ‘intention movements’ later). Head nods, eye contact and shifts of body position come under this category.
As you work through the other Lessons please remember to interpret everything from two angles – with both ‘hats’ on. Don’t forget – you’re a receiver and a transmitter of body language.
Always ask yourself two questions:
Let’s just accept from the start that:
This can significantly affect the outcome.
When you communicate with others you need to know:
This can significantly affect the outcome.
So, before we carry on, just a recap about the role of body language in our personal interactions with other people. As well as spontaneous behaviour, body language is something that we can use purposefully to influence an interaction.
All of us go about our daily lives transmitting messages to the world through our body language. But remember these two points as you go along:
Therefore, when we look at some body language movements we can see that they fall into the category of voluntary and involuntary movements that are governed by our thoughts – which produce emotions.
In some instances they give us valuable information relating to a person’s thinking and, therefore, the feeling being displayed through a bodily movement. However, not being an exact science, as we shall see through the 7 Lessons, sometimes these non-verbal gestures and movements may just be responses to a stressful situation. That alone, in many instances, is also valuable information from a communication point of view.
Let’s simplify things right at the outset with some key points. These are the two things you want to be aware of at all times during any interaction – you want to know whether the people you are with are showing signs of:
Use this as a ‘shorthand’ for reading body language from now on – and for ever! Please commit it to memory.
This shorthand process will help you immensely because whenever you’re with people, your newly trained eye will immediately focus on these two points, which validate each other:
The clues as to whether a person is comfortable or not would be validated by open body language. Discomfort, meaning any kind of negative state such as anxiety, fear, nervousness or hostility, would be validated by closed body language.
So already we’ve taken a huge stride in recognising a person’s emotional state. Of course, it’s not the difficulty of being able to decode this state that’s the problem for most people. It’s usually laziness or lack of awareness – or both.
From today make a point of sharpening up your mind-reading skills by looking to really see and listening to really hear. Begin by trying to recognise open and closed body language with everybody you come into contact with.
We’ve spoken about gestures and the need to base interpretation on clusters rather than trying to work things out from one solitary signal. In virtually every encounter you have with other people it’s of immense importance to observe the clusters that signify either open or closed body language.
Of course the terminology speaks for itself when we consider our everyday language. Who’s more welcoming? The person who says, ‘I’m open to offers,’ or the one who says, ‘This is non-negotiable’? The boss who says, ‘Pop in anytime if you have a problem, my door is always open,’ or ‘... my door is always closed!’?
Bringing the limbs close in to the body achieves the closed effect and a barrier can be put up by crossing the arms. This closed position is often used when you want to show that you’re not a threat to the other person (some people of a more introverted nature may adopt this pose) as well as showing when you are uncomfortable in the situation you are in, or being with a particular person. Little eye contact and tense shoulders and limbs that are crossed (folded arms and legs) typify this negative situation.
Take a moment to consider what we’ve just discussed. What’s your ‘signature’ position. Do you exhibit these two types of body position in different situations? Bet you do.
Put yourself in a closed body position. Note how it changes your mood. The mind affects the body – but the body also affects the mind. Now adopt an open position. See how your mood changes.
Observe other people in these two positions and note how you perceive them – and their message. Is it deliberate or subconscious? Can you think of people in your life (work or personal) who display these two types of position? Does it affect how you respond to them?
‘Open’ body language is welcoming and relaxed, whereas ‘closed’ brings the limbs close in to the body.
These are the main sources in our quest to be able to read people better. We look for activities that reveal the clues to a person’s state of mind – and accordingly how the ‘relationship’ may develop. But we cannot take single gestures in isolation: this is where people often come unstuck.
Gestures have been likened to a single word in a sentence. You can’t make meaning or sense from a single word, but when words are put together with others to form a sentence then we have meaning. It’s like that with body language. We piece together a number of clues that may point to the same thing. This is why we talk of clusters. Identifying these leads us to a certain conclusion.
So can we really say just because a person touches their nose when asked a certain question that they’re lying? That when someone shifts position while sitting that they’re feeling nervous? That folded arms indicate boredom with the listener? Or that interlocking ankles are hiding aggression? Of course not. As single, isolated gestures they indicate nothing. If all of these actions occur during an interaction with someone (a cluster of signals) then there’s a good chance that there is a negative attitude in this person and so it might be a good time to change tack and/or try to get to the root of the dissatisfaction.
It could be you, your message or the environment (context) that is causing the problem. Many people mistakenly go through life thinking that they’re good at reading people’s non-verbal signals. They’ll take a single action by another person and, lacking the requisite empathy to dig further, they’ll ascribe it to a particular feeling – with no back-up information. Needless to say, these people may end up antagonising others (‘No I’m not bored with what you’re telling me; I’m just tired’ ... ‘No you’re not – you’re bored, I can tell’ ... ‘Will you just leave it for now...’).
So you need a lot of information to make a judgement about a person’s attitudes. It’s one step along a path on which you’re looking for clues. Hasty and incomplete information leads to poor readings.
Q I’d just like to ask a general question before we move on through the Lessons. You know when you meet somebody for the first time and they appear trustworthy and friendly. And then with someone else you get the opposite – you don’t trust the person as soon as you begin a conversation. Is that because of body language?
It may not be consciously apparent to you at the time, but your ‘gut feeling’ or intuition is telling you that whatever is being said by both people may be perfectly okay, it’s just that with the second person you’re getting mixed messages. Their verbal and body language signals don’t ‘mesh’. Some kind of involuntary signal, from their face, their posture or a gesture, sends you a subconscious message that you don’t feel comfortable about them. We’ll explore all this later.
Q Are we saying that the brain is capable of seeing beyond the reach of the traditional five senses, into people’s minds?
Let’s put it this way. In any interaction with another person, your brain takes in a vast amount of information from both their body language and the vocal aspect of body language – ‘paralanguage’. The senses send back this information to your subconscious where it manipulates ‘data’ (for want of a better term) received from your life experiences, to form that ‘gut feeling’ or intuition we just spoke about. It then sends this to your conscious brain which makes a decision as to how you feel and respond. It all happens in an instant.
Q Are some people naturally better at picking up signals and ‘reading’ people?
Yes. Just like some of us are naturally better at playing a sport or a musical instrument, or singing or dancing. But it doesn’t mean we can’t learn these skills. We may not match up to the ‘gifted’ few, but we can certainly be proficient – we may just have to practise more. And of course you know what happens the more we practise something – suddenly we’re good.
Q Does that mean we’re all going to be ‘body language wizards’ at the end of these 7 Lessons?
Of course you can be – and I hope that’s what the outcome is. If you start really seeing and really listening – backed up with everything that we’ll have covered – you will sharpen up your own self-awareness, and then you’ll certainly see the magic.
Q So we’ve got to remember some figures at all times, is that right? 54 ... 30 something ... ?
Don’t worry – it’s okay. It’s 55, 38, 7. You will remember these, I guarantee, by the end of the final Lesson. Just be aware of the reason why many of us ‘fall by the wayside’ in our relationships with other people. By the way, when we talk about relationships we’re not just talking about social and ‘affairs of the heart’. We’re talking about any relationship whether it’s with acquaintances, working relationships, service providers or business clients – you name it. We all have the capacity to attract or repel people.
Q So this ‘first impression’ phenomenon that we’re always being told about is something we should take seriously?
Well it’s not a phenomenon – it’s an instinctive dislike and distrust between one person and another, and the information that decides this is communicated in a very short space of time. Your brain computes an awful lot of information in an instant.
Q I think we’ve got the message. Body language is all about picking up information on a subconscious level, and that tells the truth better than any words. Is that it?
Couldn’t have put it better myself.