By Dr. Daneen SkubeTribune Media Services
Q. How does nonverbal communication fit into the workplace? Is there a way to understand what people say with their bodies at work?
A. Western culture mostly associates the physical body with sex. When I teach nonverbal communication, people often squirm and giggle because bringing up the fact they have bodies makes them embarrassed.
However, the body is a powerful communication channel that is mostly ignored or dimly noticed at work, even though studies find body language carries 55 percent of the meaning during communication.
Being able to understand body language is more complicated than getting a guide that says if your boss scratches his nose he’s lying. Most body language is unique to the person using it.
The main problem my clients find in learning to listen when the body talks is that they can’t multitask and process both words and nonverbal signals. Being capable of paying attention to both information channels at once is an art learned through practice.
A good place to start practicing this two-channel awareness is to pay attention to what your body and others’ bodies do when you’re in boring situations (e.g., meetings). Since you’re bored anyway, you’ll have some extra attention to use in observing nonverbal communication.
In these meetings, experiment with imitating different postures or gestures you see people use. How do you feel when you pound your fist, drape your arms over the chair, or sit with legs and arms crossed. You can use the feelings that come up for you when you are in these postures to better understand what is going on inside of your coworkers.
Make sure you’re breathing deeply when you’re trying to notice nonverbal behavior. Breathing will prevent you from turning blue in meetings (always bad for your career) and breathing will hope you focus on your body. Leave the out of body experiences for your local psychics to explore.
If you see a repeated gesture by a coworker, try asking them what it means when they look at their watch, tap their foot or lean away. After a while, you’ll get a working physical vocabulary of people around you that will help you comprehend their nonverbal cues.
One of the most important points about using body language is to realize that the body never lies. If you’re getting one communication verbally and another from a person’s physical gestures – trust the body language.
The last word(s)
Q. I just got a new job and now have another offer double my current salary. Would it be wrong to take the job?
A. Ask yourself if your company would consider it wrong to let you go if it was in their best interests? Then take the job.
Daneen Skube, Ph.D., executive coach, trainer, therapist and speaker. She’s the author of “Interpersonal Edge: Breakthrough Tools for Talking to Anyone, Anywhere, About Anything” (Hay House, 2006). Contact her at www.interpersonaledge.com or 1420 NW Gilman Blvd., #2845, Issaquah, WA 98027. Sorry, no personal replies.
This was printed in the May 20, 2012 – June 2, 2012 Edition
