You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
You cannot not communicate.
These are two of my favorite quotes when encouraging leaders to become aware of the non-verbal messages they transmit.
Dr. Albert Mehrabian is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He did a study which has become one of the most quoted in the field of interpersonal communication over the past 40 years. It is perhaps no surprise that it is also one of the most misquoted.
Mehrabian studied what affected the conveyance of emotions and attitudes from one person to another. So he had people say words which had positive, neutral or negative connotations, with absolutely flat intonation vs with inflection and also with supporting body language. For example, what happens when a person says “no” with no emotion in the voice vs with a strong negative tone vs with a negative gesture. He found that intonation produced 5.5 times as many negative feelings as just the word said matter-of-factly and the supporting gesture further enhanced that negative feeling. Similar findings occurred with positive words, intonation and gesture.
This resulted in a formula that 7% of the emotional content comes through the words themselves, 38% through the way they are said and 55% through the body language.
For more information about the 7-38-55 studies go to http://www.businessballs.com/mehrabiancommunications.htm
Look at his book Silent Messages here: http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html
But the most significant finding of Mehrabian, in my opinion, is what happens if the words say one thing and the voice and/or body language say another. This often happens when sarcasm is used and also by people behaving in a passive-aggressive manner. This is called INCONGRUENCE. Overwhelmingly, during episodes of incongruent communication, the word are believed the least. Tone of voice trumps words and body language trumps them all.
So it behooves us all to be aware, whether we are motivating a team, selling a product or service or negotiating terms or conditions, to not let our voice or body language reveal things we want to keep hidden.
The best book I know on body language is Alan Pease’, The Definitive Book of Body Language . You can read a pdf version of his first version at http://www.secret-solutions.com/download/other/BodyLanguagebyAllanPease.pdf
For those interested in exploring body language in the German language, turn to the irrepressible Sammy Molcho http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samy_Molcho.
One German language book by Molcho to look at is Körpersprache des Erfolgs. Read more here.
Get your body language under control and you’ll be surprised at how much more you will be seen as having the solutions to the problems in your environment.
- Herb Nestler