body language

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Season 1 Summary: Relationships

Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay.

Human beings have evolved to be social creatures. In fact, it’s this social nature that has kept our species alive for millennia.

Today, our social instincts must ride to the rescue once more. This time, the threats are not predators or enemy tribes, but a deteriorating ecosystem and billions of rightfully angry disadvantaged people feeling its effects. 

We will need all our social cooperation prowess to build a sustainable and just society over the 21st century. And it all starts with making each other feel good 🙂

Bucket filling

The bucket analogy is a great tool for improving any relationship. It states that each of us has an emotional bucket and dipper. If our buckets are filled, we feel great. If they’re emptied, less so. 

Our mission is simply to add at least a few drops to the other person’s bucket in every interaction. And the best thing is that filling another bucket also fills our own. 

To make this more tangible, here are three posts delving a little deeper into bucket filling and bucket dipping. 

Personal relationships

The most direct application of bucket filling is in our close personal relationships. Although such relationships no longer have much direct practical value, they are essential for our health and happiness. 

Here are some tips for maintaining sound personal relationships:

  • Be sure to prioritize quality over quantity. You can get all the benefits from only a few great relationships. Poor relationships harm health and happiness, while average relationships dilute life. 
  • Know a quality relationship when you see one. Do you feel good when thinking of the other person? Do you experience joy when they’re happy and discomfort when they’re sad? Do you trust them completely? Three yesses mean you should treasure that relationship!
  • Three keys to smooth relationships: Fill buckets (even if you don’t feel like it) and refuse to empty buckets (even if they deserve it). Avoid getting defensive to keep arguments rare and undramatic. Respect each other’s time to allow space for the rest of life. 

Professional relationships

Getting important things done in today’s complex world requires multidisciplinary teams. And such teams are built on sound professional relationships. 

Good professional relationships arise from the following four steps:

  1. Establish “win-win more” relationships. When gathering collaborators for your initiative, try to ensure that they get even more from the deal than you. 
  2. Collaborate like true pros. Be open to feedback – both the constructive and destructive kinds. Make sure your communication is crystal clear (misunderstandings happen all too easily). 
  3. Take pride in being the dumbest person in the room. Learn from experts by offering to do all the work in return for their guidance. Get a mentor team, either by reading works from best-selling non-fiction authors or by getting real-life mentors. 
  4. Find your networking style. If you’re a natural networker, you could make a career out of bringing the right people together. If not, rather build close relationships with one or two natural networkers and focus more on online networking. 

But no discussion on relationships would be complete without the glue that holds it all together:

Communication

Most people equate more communication with more talking. This is a serious fallacy. In fact, body language and voice tone are much more important.

If these two key communication elements are not in place, your words quickly become worthless or even harmful. These three posts explored the art of communication in more detail: 

  1. Body language: the core of communication. The most important body language signals are those conveying an open or closed attitude. Learning how to unravel defensiveness through open body language can make you a much better communicator. 
  2. Voice tone: more than words. A deep and engaging voice tone is the emotional glue that makes your words stick. Conscious control of voice tone can also help to keep negative emotions from ruining your communication.   
  3. Words: less is more. If you want people to like you and/or take your message to heart, use fewer words, not more. Try to concentrate as much goodness and insight into as few words as possible. 

Team Human faces many intimidating challenges today. We’ll need heaps of bucket filling, emotional nourishment, effective collaboration, and true communication to emerge victorious. 

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Recap: Verbal Communication

Excellent communication is a cornerstone of any good relationship. We all know this. The problem is that most people would interpret “better communication” as “more talking.”

Fixing this troublesome misconception was our mission over the past week. 

The checklist

  1. Understand the importance of body language and voice tone.
    • A common breakdown of importance is 55% body language, 38% voice tone, and 7% words.
    • Poor body language and voice tone can make your words worthless or even harmful.
  2. Body language: the core of communication. 
    • The most important body language signals are those conveying an open or closed attitude. 
    • Learning how to unravel defensiveness through open body language can make you a much better communicator. 
  3. Voice tone: more than words. 
    • A deep and engaging voice tone is the emotional glue that makes your words stick.
    • Conscious control of voice tone can also help to keep negative emotions from ruining your communication.   
  4. Words: less is more. 
    • If you want people to like you and/or take your message to heart, use fewer words, not more. 
    • Effective communicators concentrate as much goodness and insight into as few words as possible. 

Our modern world has many complex problems. Solving these problems will require many minds to work together. And verbal communication is the best way of connecting all these minds. 

But we often fail to see verbal communication as the full-body exercise it is. Hence, most of the words we exchange have little (or even negative) impact. 

Better communication can make the world a better place. So, let’s stop talking and start communicating 🙂

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Body Language: The Core of Communication

Yesterday’s post discussed how body language and voice tone are more important than words in verbal communication. Today, we’ll take a closer look at body language. 

Open or closed

Body language can be broken down in endless detail, but most of it is used to communicate an open or closed (defensive) attitude. 

Here are some common open/closed body gestures I extracted from “The Definitive Book of Body Language,” all the way head to toe:

  • Raised/lowered eyebrows
  • Dilated/constricted pupils (subconscious gesture)
  • Smile with/without showing teeth
  • Infrequent/frequent hand-to-face gestures
  • Shoulders and chest turned toward/away
  • Leaning in/away
  • Arms Uncrossed/crossed in front of the torso (one or both arms)
  • Palms turned up/down
  • Palms visible/hidden
  • Uncrossed/crossed legs
  • Still/restless feet

Gesture clusters and context

One or two of these gestures in isolation don’t mean anything. There can be all sorts of contextual reasons for open people to display seemingly closed body language. 

Tightly crossed arms and legs might just signal that someone is cold. A frequent nose rub might be nothing but an itch. And someone tapping his foot to music is certainly not defensive. 

That’s why we need a cluster of at least three congruent body language signals to discern a given attitude. 

For example, if someone is displaying three or more of the defensive gestures outlined above and there is no other contextual explanation, you can just as well stop talking. Your words are not getting through and, if anything, they’re having the opposite of the intended effect. 

Defusing defensiveness

We have already discussed the importance of not getting defensive in relationships. Defensiveness makes it almost impossible to reach a good compromise or win-win solution. 

If you see a strong cluster of defensive body language, shift your focus to restoring an open mindset. 

Start with opening up your own body language.

If you are sending out defensive signals, you’ll also put the other person on the defensive. Opening up in all the ways outlined above can completely change the tone of the conversation. 

If your body language is open, but the other person remains closed, you have several options: 

  1. Stop the conversation or move to another topic, planning to try again at a later time when the other person is more receptive.
  2. Trick them into more open body language. For example, giving them something to hold is a good way to open crossed arms. 
  3. Ask them (with completely open body language) to share what is bothering them. 
  4. When talking to someone close to you, you could even ask them directly to open up their body language. This strange request by itself will already shift the mood. 

Openness to new ideas

Open body language not only makes you more approachable; it opens your entire thought process. This makes a positive outcome from any conversation much more likely.

Try it next time you feel yourself getting defensive. It’s a fascinating experience!

Such openness to new ideas, even those that go against your preconceived notions, will serve you well in life. Openness is particularly valuable when working in the multidisciplinary teams required to do exciting things in today’s complex world.

Closed body language is rarely needed

There are some circumstances when closed body language is the right response. 

For example, if someone is acting really poorly or displaying great prejudice, closed body language is useful for signaling your disapproval. Often, the better option is simply to leave. 

Also, being artificially open to someone you strongly disagree with or dislike can send the wrong signals, causing all sorts of awkward misunderstandings. 

But in the majority of cases, open body language is the way to go. 

Try it out! I think you’ll like it 🙂 

Schalk
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Communication: Words, Voice, and Body

Our final week of Supermorning Relationships will delve a little deeper into the science of communication.

The main theme this week will be that words are a surprisingly minor part of our conversations; voice tone and body language matter much more. 

Only 7%?

The most often quoted breakdown of verbal communication looks like this: 

  • Words: 7%
  • Voice tone: 38%
  • Body language: 55%

It seems impossible that words can be such a small fraction of the total message. And yes, when things sound impossible, it’s often because they are. 

But the accuracy of the 7% figure is not the point. The point is that voice tone and body language are critical elements of communication that are often neglected. 

Why the voice and body matter

Humans are not robots. We don’t emit and receive audio signals with the logic and efficiency of a computer. Instead, both the emission (talking) and reception (listening) of audio signals go through a wide array of emotional filters, massively affecting the efficiency at which the message is transferred. 

Maximizing the efficiency of communication is the role of voice tone and body language.

If everything lines up perfectly, we can transfer abstract ideas between each other’s minds with ease. This is crucial in our modern world where progress requires many minds to work together. 

On the other hand, if body language and voice tone are all wrong, our words quickly become useless. In some cases, they can even have the direct opposite effect to what we intended. 

A shift in focus

We often obsess over what we say in conversations. However, the smarter approach is to focus on three other areas. Here they are in order of priority:

  1. What you do with your body
  2. The tone of your voice
  3. How much you speak relative to others

The actual words you use only come in fourth. In fact, word selection and sentence construction, being mainly subconscious processes, are greatly influenced by these three elements. 

Over the next three days, we’ll cover these three crucial communication avenues in more detail.