‘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:

• acceptance and rejection
• liking and disliking
• interest and boredom
• truth and deception.

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.

Communicating with the silent language

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 communicate with our:

• dress
• posture
• facial expression
• eye contact
• hand, arm and leg movements
• body tension
• spatial distance
• touch
• voice (tone, pace and inflection).

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:

• 55 per cent of the meaning in any message comes from the visual body language (gestures, posture, facial expressions).
• 38 per cent of the meaning is vocal, derived from the non-verbal element of speech – in other words the way in which the words are delivered – tone, pitch, pace.
• 7 per cent of the meaning comes from the actual words (content).

This leads to a startling conclusion:

• This means that in those vital 20 seconds to 3 minutes that we have when people form a first impression, this is determined mainly from how we present ourselves and how we say things rather than what we say.
• If there is a mismatch between the words and the way they are delivered, we tend to believe the delivery rather than the words (i.e. the highest figure in the list above).
• Therefore, body language enables us to look beyond the words that are being used and get to the hidden silent message that is being conveyed (often through the subconscious).

So Mehrabian’s classic research tells us that your impact boils down to three factors:

1. HOW YOU LOOK
2. HOW YOU SOUND
3. WHAT YOU SAY.

In short – body language speaks louder than words!

What did the research reveal? Well – essentially it was this:

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:

• words are used to communicate information
• body language (or non-verbals) conveys attitudes, feelings and emotions.

(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:

• whether they like you or not
• whether they trust you or not
• whether to go on a date with you or not
• whether to do ‘business’ with you or not.

Bluntly – whether to have anything to do with you at all!

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.

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.

Kinesics

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.

1 Illustrators

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.

2 Emblems

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:

• a village bride
• a pack of mules
• a black eye
• or all three – if you’re on a roll!

3 Affect displays

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.

4 Adaptors

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).

5 Regulators

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.

Always ask yourself two questions:

1. What signals are people sending out (that I need to decode)?
2. What signals am I sending out (are they what I intended)?

Let’s just accept from the start that:

• what people say is quite often at odds with what they really think or feel
• as a receiver of information, it’s up to you to interpret the body signals to ascertain the true meaning of the message.

This can significantly affect the outcome.

When you communicate with others you need to know:

• if you are sending out good positive body signals
• that as a sender of information, you have the self-awareness to recognise and eliminate any negative body language that delivers the wrong message.

This can significantly affect the outcome.

Conscious or subconscious?

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:

• Some of these gestures are deliberate (and therefore conscious).
• Many gestures are beyond our control and are due to our physiology (and therefore subconscious).

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.

What to look for – the Big Two

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:

• comfort or discomfort (or anxiety)
• open body language or closed body language.

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:

• Do I detect comfort in this person’s demeanour – or discomfort?
• Is their body language open – or is it closed?

Open or closed?

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.

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!’?

• Open body language is welcoming, relaxed and attentive. It signifies a lack of barriers of any sort, be they physical or extending from your own body. Your body is open and exposed and you’re suggesting that you’re vulnerable to others but you’re comfortable about it. Your hands are usually in view, possibly with exposed palms, which signifies submissiveness, and your legs and posture are free and easy, and eye contact is good. Everything indicates a positive state of affairs.
• Closed body language is a cluster of gestures, movements and posture that brings the body in on itself. If you’re experiencing the ‘fight or flight’ situation when you’re threatened in some way, the tendency is to make the body appear smaller and to look for barriers to shield you from the threat.

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.

Displacement activities and self-comfort gestures

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.

BODYtalk

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.

Coffee break ...

• Since body language is a window to a person’s mind, we need to have empathy to enable us to be aware of their feelings, as well as sincerity and perceptivity.
• We have to be aware of three essentials in order to read people accurately: context, clusters and congruence.
• Failure to interpret these correctly will always result in an ID 10T error.
• It is essential to control and be aware of your own emotions as well as assessing the emotions of others.
• If you’re trying to get inside the mind of the other person by observing what’s happening on the outside, remember they’re doing the same to you.
• Be aware that your own gestures might be provoking a reciprocal gesture from the other person (not good if it’s negative).
• The science of body language – not surprisingly when you’re dealing with human beings – is not an exact science.
• Feelings are communicated more by non-verbal language than with words.
• It’s no exaggeration to say that we go around in life either attracting people or repelling them through our display of body language.
• Body language will always be the most trusted indicator for displaying our feelings, attitudes and emotions.
• If your words are not congruent with your body language, even though it might just be a bad habit (rather than an indication of your feelings), it’s the fact that you might be misunderstood that’s important.
• Research surveys consistently show that body language powerfully communicates the following:
  • acceptance and rejection
  • liking and disliking
  • interest and boredom
  • truth and deception.
• These are just some of the ways that we communicate:
  • vocal
  • facial expression
  • spatial distance
  • eye contact
  • posture
  • touch
  • dress
  • hand, arm and leg movements
  • body tension.
• Over 90 per cent of meaning in any communication comes from visual body language and vocal elements, with the rest from the actual words.
• So you have to be aware of:
  • how you look
  • how you sound
  • what you say.
• If there’s a ‘mismatch’ or lack of ‘congruence’ we’ll believe the higher figure.
• In reading body language you should always be looking for signs of comfort and discomfort and observing whether the body is open or closed. These are the foundation stones of your interaction.