Linda Johnson (Master Body Language)
Linda is a certified executive coach, management trainer and diversity trainer with credentials as a master business coach and organisational development coach. As an organisationa...
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How can you get better at non-verbal communication?
The good news is we can all become better at this. We can become more self-aware. We can look at ourselves in the mirror when we're speaking. We can listen to feedback and solicit feedback from people, ask people for stories of what they thought we meant based on how we said things. Be mindful of what you're saying because it's much more than the words that are conveyed.
What are some practical examples of non-verbal power?
There is a power in it, and the power has to do with, number one, your self-awareness, and number two, using your nonverbals strategically. A smile can say a lot of things, and open body posture can foster warmth and approachability. Sometimes people have closed body postures, not because they're blocking other people. Sometimes that's just comfortable for them. Nodding or leaning forward can communicate something without saying a word.
What are the key elements of non-verbal communication?
Now, what are some of the key elements of nonverbal communication? There's body language. Profilers are always looking at body language and they say, it may not mean what we think it does. People have their own built baseline, but they decide who might be lying, who is opening themselves up by just looking at how people walk, how they enter a room, how they command the space, how they use the space around them. What do employers say about nonverbal communication? Many employers decide whether or not to even give a person a job based on their nonverbals, how they say things, how they're holding their bodies. Do they seem like they're withholding information? What do therapists say? Therapists actually pay more attention to the nonverbal communication than to what is actually said when they're trying to figure out how is a person feeling? What is most important to the person? What are the values? What are they going through now? There's posture, there's gestures, there's physicality, how people use their bodies, how people use or don't use distance between them and other people. There's the pace of communication. If you ever watch people, regardless of where they are in the world, using the sign language of their culture, you'll notice that despite what they do with their fingers, which is the actual words, what they do with their face is really conveying the meaning. Different cultures look at things like eye contact in different ways. In some places, making direct eye contact when you're speaking is conveying respect. In other places, it's disrespectful If you're looking at the person when they're the ones speaking, and it actually conveys respect when that other person is looking away. What is the typical way that eye contact is used in your context? There's the tone. There's the pitch of the voice. Some people, their voices get very loud or their pitch gets higher depending on what the emotion is involved, and vocal qualities add emotional depth to our words. Even though the vocal qualities themselves are not the word, there's some different ways that you can say something like, I didn't say she missed the meeting. Or you can say, I didn't say she missed the meeting, or I didn't say she missed the meeting. Those are three different ways of saying the same words that have very different meanings. Another part of nonverbal communication is how someone uses the space around them. We notice when we do experiments that men and women may use the space around them very differently. Some people have large personal bubbles. Some may have smaller ones. Some people may gesture more than other people. Others may hold their gestures close to their body.