February 19, 2023
One way to reduce conflict between people and groups is to observe the body language. We communicate much more with our body language than we do with the words we utter. Pay attention, and you can get vital information before people boil over.
My long history with body language
I have studied body language in the work setting since my wife bought me the book How to Read a Person Like a Book by Nierenberg and Calero in the late 1970s. In 2020 I wrote a series of 100 articles on observations about body language. If you would like to browse the topics, here is an index with links to use. https://thetrustambassador.com/2020/11/15/body-language-100-final-thoughts-and-index/
Once you become adept at reading body language and controlling your own, you can reduce conflict in your world. We will explore some of the points to look for in this brief article.
The role of facial expression in body language
You can get most of the information you need by just observing facial expressions. Be alert for changes in expression. If a person normally has a pleasant expression but switches to a scowl after something you just said, that is a signal.
The eyebrows tell much of the story. A raised eyebrow signals skepticism while a furrowed brow indicates irritation.
Another facial feature to look for is a clenched jaw. You can see the muscles on the side of the face start to bulge out when the other person is getting upset. This is often accompanied by a slight reddening of the skin tone around the jaw.
Watch the hand gestures
When hand gestures switch from open hands with palms up to rigid fists, the person is getting ready for a fight. Another telltale sign is when people start pointing at each other. Again, the important thing is to look for stimulus and response.
A change is rather easy to pick up. You want to cool things down while there is still some level of control. Often a Socratic Question can get to the root of the irritation. You need to use questions with judgment to not pour gasoline on the flame.
Make sure your tone of voice is calm and soothing. If you deliver your comments with an edgy tone, you will deepen rather than reduce the conflict.
Be alert for body stiffness
When we change state to one of more irritation, we usually stiffen up our spine. This rigidity is often accompanied with some arm gestures like folding of the arms. When you see this kind of change, you should suspect something negative is happening with the person.
These are the common changes that go along with enhanced agitation
There are many other signals to look for as well. I like to view clusters of signals. If you see many different signs that are all pointing in the same direction, you can be more sure. Look into the source of agitation, but do so in a loving and gentle way. That way you can de-escalate the conflict in that situation.
Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust. He is the author of The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind. Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations.
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Posted by trustambassador
October 22, 2021
We all know that trust is impacted by what people say, but is trust equally impacted by the body language between people? The answer is “of course.” In this brief article, I will address how sensitive we are to body language and how the wrong body language can destroy hard-earned trust.
Some research
Way back in 1967, a scientist at UCLA named Albert Mehrabian did a series of experiments trying to measure how much meaning people derive from the words, tone of voice, and body language when they are discussing their feelings or attitudes face to face. His research showed that only 7% of the meaning comes from the actual words used, 38% of meaning came from the tone of voice, and a whopping 55% of meaning is derived from the observed body language.
Implication
If we are interested in maintaining the trust we have with people, we should be at least as interested in our body language as we are in the words we select when talking with another person. The sad truth is that the majority of body language is done involuntarily. We give off hundreds of tiny signals all the time that are reflexive and done without any thought.
Examples
We are more conscious of facial expressions than other types of body language. That means we may choose to show anger by furrowing our eyebrows and clenching our teeth. We do these things and are conscious of them, but there are many expressions with the face that we are generally unaware of.
We might roll our eyes slightly to show exasperation and we might not be conscious of it. Likewise, if we are skeptical about what someone is saying, we may pull our mouth slightly to one side.
If we are uncomfortable with the discussion, our blinking rate will increase significantly. The other person can see this, but usually, we are not aware of it. If we are aroused, our pupils will dilate without our being aware of it.
All these reactions will have an impact on how much another person trusts us at any particular moment.
Best defense
The best way to prevent trust withdrawals with our body language is to strive to be consistent and authentic with our thoughts and actions. If we are being duplicitous in any way, it will show in various things that our body does without our knowledge. Those actions will destroy trust.
When we send mixed signals with body language it shows a problem with consistency that usually has a big negative impact on trust.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow, Inc. an organization dedicated to growing leaders. Website www.leadergrow.com BLOG www.thetrustambassador.com He is author of the following books: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind
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Posted by trustambassador
April 14, 2021
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Read Body Language
Body language is extremely important when communicating with others and reading their emotions. This skill is critical for leaders to master. There is a ton of data on body language, and I have been studying the topic since 1977. I still have much to learn. The purpose of this article is to highlight some key ideas about body language in the hope that it will stimulate you to read more about it.
Last year I wrote 100 blog articles on this topic. Here is a list of the articles on Body Language. The list also has links to each individual article in case a particular title catches your interest.
Body Language is Ubiquitous
All people show body language in hundreds of ways all day long. We reveal our emotions in ways we do not even realize ourselves. For example, the dilation of your pupils has a wealth of information about your mental state, yet without a mirror, you have no way of knowing how dilated your pupils are.
In fact, most body language we display is subconscious, yet it is in plain sight for other people to see at all times. Reading the various signals accurately is a skill that is extremely helpful in all types of interfaces, especially for leaders.
Body Language is More Powerful Than Your Words
Albert Mehrabian did a series of measurements over 50 years ago indicating that only 7% of the meaning we get in face-to-face conversation with another individual comes from our words. The remaining 93% of meaning comes from tone of voice and body language. Mehrabian’s research focused on people who were speaking about their feelings or emotions.
When the words and body language do not agree, we always interpret meaning consistent with the body language rather than the words we use.
Body Language is Culture Specific
It is a mistake to rely heavily on body language cues when dealing with a person from a different culture. Each culture has its own set of signals, and sometimes they are actually opposite. You need to be very careful when working in a mixed culture atmosphere that you are getting an accurate read of another person’s emotions. For example, if you are Inuit, shaking your head from side-to-side means “yes” and nodding it up and down means “no.” There are some good reference books that are helpful on this topic. One of my favorites is “How to Read a Person Like a Book,” by Gerard Nierenberg.
Look for a Cluster of Signals
One specific bit of body language is not enough to decode the meaning accurately. It may be an indication, but to get a firm reading on the emotion, you need to see more than two synergistic signals indicating the same emotion. If you pick up a signal, check it out carefully before ascribing specific meaning.
Avoid sending mixed signals. When body language is incongruent, it confuses and often annoys people. Trying to force a particular expression is dangerous because some of your natural signals will be fighting the opposing signals. For example, if you try to look happy when you really are not, it will show in many detectable ways. Sending mixed signals also works against trust. Try to never put on a specific body language pose.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations. He can be reached at bwhipple@leadergrow.com or 585-392-7763.
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Posted by trustambassador
November 21, 2020
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly. You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Listens Deeply
It is said that managers have the worst hearing in the world. Many employees lament that trying to talk to the boss is like trying to reason with a rock. Yet most managers would put “listening skills” as one of their stronger traits. How come there is often such a wide gap between perception and reality? I believe leaders do not recognize that listening is a very complicated and multi-step process that starts in the mind of the speaker. Here are the steps.
1. Speaker’s mind has a thought
2. Speaker translates the thought into words
3. Speaker says the words
4. Words are conveyed to the ear of the listener
5. Words are heard or not heard as sent
6. Tone of voice and body language of the speaker are factored in
7. The message that was heard is translated into thought
8. The thought is translated into the listener’s mind
If any one of those eight elements is corrupted in any way, then the message has not been received accurately. Of those eight steps, which ones cause the most trouble in communication? It is steps 5 and 6. Reason: While most people are “listening” they are actually occupying their mind preparing to speak. So what actually enters the ear is not what the listener actually believes has been said.
The interpretation of the tone of voice and body language is a huge area of miscommunication. With a slight movement of the eyebrows, mouth or a tilt of the head, the meaning of the entire message can be misinterpreted.
Why the problem happens
The culprit here is that we have a disconnect between how fast a person can talk versus how fast we can think. We can think many times faster then we can talk, so the brain has excess time to process other things while waiting for the words to arrive.
We actually multi-task, and our thoughts zoom in and out of the stream of words heading toward our ears. We believe that we have caught all of the content, but in reality we only grasp part of it because we are occupied thinking up our response or trying to interpret why the speakers pupils were dilated.
The best defense for poor listening habits is what is called “reflective listening” or sometimes called “active listening.” This is where we force our brain to slow down and focus on the incoming words in order to give the speaker visual and verbal cues that we really understood the message.
The art of reflective listening is an acquired skill, and it takes a lot of practice and effort to be good at it. If you doubt that, just try listening to someone for 5 minutes straight and concentrate on absorbing every word such that you can reflect small parts of the conversation throughout the 5 minutes. It is exhausting.
For leaders, the need for listening is even more of a challenge. We have to not only hear and interpret the words, we have to understand the full meaning. This means not only must we take in the verbal input but also properly interpret the vast amount of body language that comes along with it. Since there is more meaning in body language than in words, it makes listening an even more daunting task.
Most leaders do not take the time and energy to internalize what is being conveyed to them because they are so preoccupied with getting their message out to others. This leaves them totally vulnerable to misunderstandings that cripple the ability to build trust.
When you add the ego response which most leaders have an ample supply of, it is no wonder employees feel they are not being heard. James O’Toole had a great line for this in the book Transparency. He said, “…it is often the presence of excessive amounts of testosterone that leads to a loss of hearing.”
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
Leave a Comment » | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Trust, Trust and respect | Tagged: body language, listen, meaning, multitask, reflective listening, tone of voice, translate, Trust | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
November 15, 2020
I sized this series of articles on Body Language to be 100 articles. This will be the final installment. It took me two years to complete the project by publishing one article in the series per week.
If you would like to scan the various topics I have written about on body language, the best way to do it is to go to the index at the end of this blog. Each article is presented as a link, so you just click on whatever interests you, and you will immediately be able to see the original blog.
I started studying Body Language in 1978, when my bride bought me a fascinating book on the topic. It was “How To Read a Person Like a Book,” by Gerard Nierenberg. The book was first published in the 1960s, and the current release was done in 2010.
I have been studying the subject of Body Language for over 40 years. There is no end to the learning, because the topic is truly endless, and new insights come along on a regular basis.
The Importance of Body Language
Way back in 1967, Albert Mehrabian did a series of experiments at UCLA. He wanted to determine what percentage of meaning came from the words being used when two people were face to face discussing their feelings or attitudes. He measured that only 7% came from the spoken words, 38% came from the tone of voice, and a whopping 55% of meaning came from body language.
If we knew all along that the majority of information was contained in body language, I wonder why there were no courses in grade school or high school to teach us how to interpret the body language of others and how to control our own. Most of us learned the skill by trial and error through our formative years.
The errors we made in interpreting the meaning of body language set us all back a huge amount in terms of building strong relationships of trust with other people. That is why all my leadership courses over the years have been heavily laced with content and practice on body language.
Most Body Language is Subconscious
What most people don’t realize is that the vast majority of signals we send to other people with our Body Language are completely subconscious. Some signals, such as facial expressions, are done consciously, but most body language is hidden from our own view. For example, you have no idea the dilation of your pupils at any point in time, unless you are looking in a mirror.
The thought patterns in our subconscious mind have major impact on how we communicate to others with our bodies.
Likewise, when we are anxious, our adrenal glands and a small number of neurons in the medulla oblongata instantly secrete the hormone Adrenaline, which causes all kinds of unconscious changes in our body reactions. It creates the famous “fight or flight” response to a stimulus. This all happens automatically, and we have little control over it, but other people can easily observe it in us.
Sending Conflicting Signals
The most vexing problem with body language is when we send conflicting signals about how we are feeling. We may be anxious about a new job possibility but trying to hide that anxiety with BL that exudes confidence. In doing so, we send an incongruent set of Body Language signals that the other person will pick up on. He or she may not know exactly what is going on with us, but for sure something is wrong.
The more you know about Body Language, the better you will be able to accurately decode the actions of others and control your own signals. That is why I wrote this series. It is a gift of some basic knowledge of how this complex science works with human beings. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed it and can use it to enhance the quality of your life.
Links to Chapters in Body Language Series
1. Starting New Series
2. Five C’s of BL
3. Body Position
4. Facial Expressions
5. Steepling
6. Folding Arms
7. Finger to Side Of Nose
8. Chin Gestures
9. Finger In Collar
10. Scratching Head
11. Drumming Fingers
12. Pulling on the Ear
13. Wringing Hands
14. Hand Gestures
15. Pinching Bridge Of Nose
16. Looking Over Glasses
17. Playing With Hair
18. Head In Hands
19. The Eyes
20. Language of the Eyes
21. The Mouth
22. The Forehead
23. Micro Expressions
24. Jaw & Chin
25. Ears & Hearing
26. The Nose
27. Sitting Positions
28. Arm Movements
29. Verifying What You See
30. False Signals
31. Silence
32. Using Volume
33. Mirroring
34. Proximity
35. Head Tilting
36. Crossing Ankles
37. Head Nodding
38. Sour Face
39. Rolling Eyes
40. Double Point
41. Strange Handshake
42. Animals
43. The Bully
44. Comfort
45. Children
46. Clenched Teeth
47. Conflict
48. Concentration
49. Babies
50. Clothing
51. Slouching
52. Winking
53. The Tongue
54. Doubt
55. Evasion
56. Thumbs Up
57. Time Out
58. Embarrassment
59. Okay
60. Behind Your Back
61. Air Kissing
62. Victory
63. Fist In The Air
64. Hand Slap
65. Fist Bump
66. Mirroring 2
67. Afraid
68. Shock
69. Worried
70. Talking With Your Hands
71. Guilt
72. Exasperation or Rage
73. Coy
74. Pondering
75. Pride
76. Contempt
77. Compassion
78. Faking Emotions
79. Skeptical
80. Bored
81. Search Me
82. Shy
83. Handshake Post COVID-19
84. Zoom Eye Contact
85. Zoom Lighting
86. Zoom Distractions
87. Zoom Administration
88. Conscious and Unconscious Bias
89. Clusters
90. Blinking Rate
91. Ready to Make a Deal
92. Plastic People
93. Small Hand Gestures
94. Head Nodding
95. Liars
96. Lasting Relationships
97. Twelve Layers
98. Head Shaking Side to Side
99. Overacting
100. Final Thoughts
This is a part in a series of articles on “Body Language” by Bob Whipple “The Trust Ambassador.”
4 Comments | Candor creates trust, Communications, Enabling Actions, HR, leadership, Organization | Tagged: Albert Mehrabian, body language, conflicting, subconscious | Permalink
Posted by trustambassador
November 1, 2020
Section 2.7 in the CPTD Certification program for ATD is Coaching. Section B reads, “Skill in coaching supervisors and managers on methods and approaches for supporting employee development.”
I have always had a keen interest in coaching of supervisors and managers. I believe their role is pivotal, and their situation is often challenging. Throughout my career, I spent roughly 40% of my time actually working with supervisors in groups and individually to develop and sharpen their skills.
Successful Supervisor Series
From 2016 to 2018 I wrote a series of 100 blog articles specifically aimed at creating more successful supervisors. I am sharing an index of the entire program here so you can view the topics covered. The index has a link to each article on my blog in case you may be interested in reading up on certain topics. Note: After you call up the document, you will need to click on “enable editing” at the top of the page in order to open the links below.
Use for Training
You may wish to select articles at random or as a function of your interest, or an alternative would be to view one article a day for 100 days. You could use the series as a training program for supervisors.
In that case, I recommend having periodic review sessions to have open discussion on the points that are made. There will likely be counter points to some of my ideas that apply to your situation.
Some examples relating to Employee Development
Most of this series deals with the development of the supervisors themselves, but many of the articles deal with supervisors supporting employee development. I will share links to 10 specific articles here as examples from the series:
9. Motivation
40. Engaging People
47. Coaching People on Money Problems
57. Building a High Performance Team
70. Reduce Drama
78. Trust and the Development of People
82. Trust Improves Productivity
88. Better Team Building
89. Repairing Damaged Trust
93. Creating Your Own Development Plan
I hope this information has been helpful to you. Best of luck on your journey toward outstanding Supervision and Leadership.
Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust. He is the author of: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind, and Trust in Transition: Navigating Organizational Change. Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations.
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Posted by trustambassador
October 24, 2020
Section 3.3 in the CPTD Certification program for ATD is Organization Development and Culture. Section F reads, “Skill in designing and implementing employee engagement strategy.”
I have seen many engagement efforts that were highly effective. I have also witnessed some that were complete failures. In this brief article I will describe the things that cause success or failure.
I appreciate the way this item is worded, because ATD has avoided calling it an “Engagement Program.” When you use the name “Program” to describe an effort to create higher engagement, it shows a poor understanding of how engagement is created, maintained, and improved.
I once inherited a production department of about 150 people. The incumbent Department Manager was an ex-Industrial Engineer who had a reputation of being a “people oriented” manager.
As I got to know the people and the manager, I was impressed that they had an “Engagement Room” where various teams would meet to work on their “Program.” There were fancy charts all over the walls and there was a facilitator hired to run the “Program.”
They had slogans and symbols for the effort. After a while I got the impression that this effort was a text book application to Organization Development that was done by the book. All the trappings were there, but I sensed something phony about the whole deal.
I recall meeting one of the senior employees in the hallway one day, and when I asked him about how the “Engagement Program” was going, his body language was not good.
I took the time to sit with this employee, and he told me in confidence, “To tell you the truth, Bob, we all think it is a bunch of B.S. We do a bunch of mickey mouse exercises and the entire effort is all hat and no cattle.”
As I looked into the situation more closely, I realized this was an effort by the Department Manager and the facilitator to drive “Engagement,” whether the real people wanted it or not. The effort was costing money rather than having the impact the manager desired, and it was doing more harm than good.
I searched for a different manager for the department and found an excellent people-oriented woman who had a better track record. I explained to her that the mechanical approach was not working and suggested she work to develop a culture of high trust and scrap the “Engagement Program.”
She went to work on this and gained substantial stake from the production workers, who were happy to participate in an effort to change the culture permanently to one of much higher trust. The new Department Head worked on creating Psychological Safety in the department and got rid of the signage and slogans.
Within six months the manager had turned the situation completely around. Productivity had doubled, and the entire group of employees were as engaged as I have ever seen a group. The contrast between a mechanical approach and a genuine shift in the culture was simply amazing.
Never think of employee engagement as something you can “do to” the workforce. Instead think of engagement as an outcome of a brilliant culture. Work on trust and building an honest environment where it is safe to voice your truth, and the workforce will choose to become engaged.
Bob Whipple, MBA, CPTD, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust. He is the author of: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind, and Trust in Transition: Navigating Organizational Change. Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations.
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Posted by trustambassador
October 20, 2020
For the final few articles in this series on body language, I am highlighting some of the excellent content in a program entitled “Advanced Body Language” by Bill Acheson of the University of Pittsburgh.
In this article, I will summarize his Thinking on how we pick up twelve layers of information when we interface with another person. Most of the time the signals are processed by us unconsciously, but that does not mean they don’t matter to us.
The body language is most important when we are meeting someone for the first time. According to Bill, what we can observe in the other person is ten times more important than what we say.
The 12 layers are the management of:
1. Time
2. Space
3. Appearance
4. Posture
5. Gesture
6. Voice
7. Eye Contact
8. Facial Expression
9. Breathing
10. Touch
11. Smell
12. Congruence
Actually, in his recording he left off the 12th item, so I added the concept of congruence, because when one part of body language is out of step with the others, it sends a warning signal that something is wrong here, even if we cannot put our finger on it consciously.
When we see conflicting signals, the caution flag goes up in our mind, and we have a much more difficult time establishing a relationship of trust. That caution flag, even if it is subconscious means it will take substantially longer to trust the other person than if all signals were consistent.
According to Malcolm Gladwell in the book “Blink,” human beings have a remarkable ability to size each other up in a heartbeat. He estimates that we form a first impression of another person within the first three seconds. He calls the phenomenon “thin slices” after the analogy that if you slice something, like a cucumber, thin enough, you can actually see through it.
Near the start of his program, Bill shares some data he took when working with a group of 600 business woman. His question was, “In a business setting, how do you know when a man cheats on his wife?” The top 7 responses were all body language.
In the video Bill shares the top two responses. The first was if a man wears too much cologne or aftershave. The second giveaway, mentioned by 70% of the women, is if the man is wearing a pinky ring. What male would have guessed those two responses?
Another fascinating statistic has to do with trust. The research shows that 97% of the women he polled said they do not trust a man who wears more jewelry than they do. I suppose that one seems pretty obvious.
In his program, he makes several general observations comparing men and women. Bill is always careful to point out that these observations do not hold in every case, but there is enough of a trend to make them a valuable tool.
For example, he has measured that of out of all the emotions, there is only one emotion that men project with far greater accuracy than women. That emotion is guilt. He suggests that if women experience guilt, they usually do it to themselves.
I hope you have enjoyed these few articles summarizing the entertaining and sometimes startling research of Bill Acheson. I hope that you are interested enough to pick up a copy of his program. You will find it fun, entertaining, and insightful.
This is a part in a series of articles on “Body Language” by Bob Whipple “The Trust Ambassador.”
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Posted by trustambassador
October 9, 2020
There are hundreds of assessments for leaders. The content and quality of these assessments vary greatly.
You can spend a lot of time and money taking surveys to tell you the quality of your leadership.
There are a few leading indicators that can be used to give a pretty good picture of the overall quality of your leadership. These are not good for diagnosing problems or specifying corrective action, but they can tell you where you stand quickly. Here is one of my favorite measures.
Connects Well with People
A good way to evaluate the quality of a leader is to watch the way he or she connects with people both upward and downward. Great leaders are known for being real rather than phony.
People describe the great ones as being “a nice guy” or “an approachable woman” or “like a friend.” The idea is the leader does not act aloof and talk down to people. There is no pedestal separating the leader from people in the organization.
There are numerous ways a leader can demonstrate the genuine connection with people. For example, John chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems, worked from a 12X12 foot cubicle and answered his own phone. There was no executive washroom and no corporate plane.
Other leaders dress more like the workers in jeans and polo shirt rather than suit and tie.
Probably the most helpful way to be connected to people is to walk the deck often. There is a way you can tell if you are getting enough face time with people.
When you approach a group of workers on the shop floor, watch their body language.
If they stiffen up and change their posture, you know that your visit it too much of a special event. If the group continues with the same body language, but just welcomes you into the conversation, then you are doing enough walking of the deck.
They used to call this habit MBWA – short for “Management By Wandering Around.” It is, by far, the easiest way to stay connected with people. I tried to find at least an hour each day to do this, and I found it to be the most enjoyable hour of my day.
Being close to people has the added benefit of helping to build trust and improve teamwork. By sharing news or getting people’s opinions you show that you care about them. That works wonders for building higher engagement in the work,
Likewise, great leaders know how to stay connected with the people above them. In this case MBWA does not work too well because there is no real “shop floor” for upper management. Being accessible helps, so know the layout and drop by on occasion to check in. Do not be a pest – there is a fine line.
One suggestion is to experiment with the preferred modes of communication of your superiors. For example, I can recall the best way to keep in touch with one of my managers was through voice mail. Another supervisor would rarely reply to voice mail or e-mail, so I would make sure to stop by to see her physically.
One tip that was helpful to me was to arrive very early in the morning – before any of the upper leaders were present. Most executives arrive at work before the general population to prepare for the day and get some quiet work done before the masses arrive.
I would always be in my office working when my leader arrived. There were many occasions when something had to be done to help her very early in the morning. Since I was the only one around, I had the opportunity to do little favors to help her out. Over time that builds up a kind of bond. It is not being a suck up. It is just being available to help.
Beating the leaders in to work consistently demonstrates a kind of dedication. The manager has no way of knowing when you arrived. You could have gotten there just 5 minutes before her or already been hard at work for an hour. I always enjoyed having my car make the first set of tracks in the snow of the parking lot. Over time, that built up a helpful reputation for me that paid off.
Bob Whipple is CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a company dedicated to growing leaders. He speaks and conducts seminars on building trust in organizations.
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Posted by trustambassador
August 24, 2020
Body Language is relevant in all aspects of our life. The topic is particularly useful in the field of sales. Highly skilled sales professionals are trained to look for many different body language shifts that indicate the prospect has crossed the mental chasm from skeptical to sold.
This article highlights a few of the signs you can observe in this dynamic.
Deep Breath
If a person has been breathing shallow slow breaths and all of a sudden takes in a huge breath and lets it out slowly, that signals a change in mental attitude. It is likely that the person is expressing the lowering of overall tension.
The technique is known as a cleansing breath because the impact is to acknowledge the tension going out of the body.
Feet to Floor
If the buyer is sitting with crossed legs suddenly uncrosses his or her legs and puts both feet on the floor, it is usually a sign the person is ready to sign on the dotted line.
Unbutton Jacket
If a man in a business suit that has been buttoned suddenly unbuttons it and pushes it out to the sides, thus exposing the solar plexus, it is a very good sign. You are scoring points.
Open Palms
If a person who has been sitting at a table or desk with closed fists and knuckles on the surface, turns hands over with palms upward, it shows a transition from being resistant to being open.
Dilated Pupils
If you observe the pupils of the person are larger than normal, you have an indication of anticipation that is generally a good indication of a deal. Note, the other person has no way of observing his or her own pupils, so you have a significant advantage by checking for that clue.
Increased Blinking Rate
This signal can go either way, so be careful. If the other person is irritated by the negotiation, the result may be an increase in blinking rate.
However, an increase in blinking rate could also signal anticipation of closing the deal. If you observe increased blinking rate, check for other signs to understand which direction is operational.
Inward Lean
If a person who has been sitting back in the chair suddenly leans in, that is a signal that the person is ready to close the deal.
Increased Eye Contact
If a person who has had difficulty maintaining good eye contact, all of a sudden increases eye contact to the level of 60% to 70%, you have likely made the sale.
The Opposite Signal
If a person has his or her notebook open on the table in front of him, then suddenly closes his book and folds his hands on top of it, that gesture means no sale is likely today. The person has just shut down the negotiation for this session.
There are many other body language gestures that can help you identify when a person is ready to make a deal. Many of these have to do with facial expressions, such as skeptical versus a satisfied smile. Stay alert when negotiating for another person over anything, from which food to order to buying a house. Knowing these signals will help you come out with a better result.
This is a part in a series of articles on “Body Language” by Bob Whipple “The Trust Ambassador.”
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Posted by trustambassador