Archive for December, 2006

How can you best make use of body language? The first step is to build up your powers of observation, gathering as much knowledge as possible when you interact with others.

Looking is the most noticeable way and almost certainly the channel through which you’ll gain most information.

Listen, too, not so much to people’s actual words but to the way those words are said, the way voices sound as people speak.

Your other three senses, touch, smell and taste, can also tell you a astonishing amount: the warmth and moisture of a colleague’s handshake can give you important clues as to how confident he is concerning the meeting; a friend’s body odor will essentially shift if she becomes scared during a horror film; a lover’s taste will change as he becomes aroused.

Don’t Use Body Language To Take Control of Others

Don’t think you can make use of body language to get others to do what you want. People aren’t fools.

If you try applying nonverbal techniques so as to manipulate someone into liking you, then of course they’ll respond to what you do - but they’ll also respond far more strongly to those of your actions that disclose your manipulation.

When you first meet up someone, you have just ten seconds to make an impression on them.

Or, to put it another way, in the first ten seconds after meeting a new person, you will be making a specific impression on them whether you like it or not.

Prior to opening your mouth to speak, you non-verbally imprint the other person with your character - the image you present to the world - coming across as effective or ineffectual, confident or nervous, friendly or unfriendly.

Even with someone you’ve met before, you can find out the whole tone of your contact by what your body language communicates at the very start.

How do you initially make contact?

Let’s Start, then, with the basics. How do you initially make contact? The most important way humans usually do so is with their eyes, so use yours efficiently.

Don’t use an off-putting look but do keep your eyes on the person you’re getting ready to greet so that, when they turn to you, you’re ready to meet their gaze.

If you open your eyes just slightly more widely than normal, this approximates the fleeting ‘eyebrow flash’ that humans give suddenly when they acknowledge another person, and which will automatically make your companion feel welcomed and respected.

when communicating by means of a conflict of sorts, many styles of contacts are there that people can have with one another.

Below we will demonstrate you two styles particularly. They are “Collaboration” and “Obliging.”

An individual with knowledge of these styles can select the style most apt for a specific conflict. During conflict, once a style is recognized, it is better understanding the probable motivations of others.

Collaboration

The collaborative style rallies people to find solutions to difficult issues. It is exceptional when people and the problem are clearly separate and usually fruitless when people really want to fight.

The collaborative style can be a positive motivator in brainstorming or problem-solving sessions. Just ensure everyone with an interest in the situation is included.

Collaboration is the win/win conflict management style. Individuals who prefer this style seek an exchange of information. There is a desire to look at the differences and reach a solution that is satisfactory to all parties.

This style is naturally associated with problem-solving and is useful when issues are complex.

The collaborative style supports creative thinking. One of the strengths of this style is developing alternatives. Its emphasis on all parties synthesizes information from different perspectives.

It’s clear that even infants have a great range of nonverbal behaviors - as they smile, crawl, and laugh their way into our hearts.

Further nonverbal behaviors evolve with the child’s development. For instance, babies expand their range of nonverbal skills when they start to walk.

Their new mobility allows for posture, position, and spatial relations to develop.

Childish Gestures

Gestures become part of a child’s nonverbal repertoire around one year of age. Pointing is a common response to new events.

It always involves the child observing her mother, standing still, and orienting her body and face halfway between her mother and the narrative object. When a year-old child waves spontaneously, she is usually signaling imminent interaction, not “Bye-bye.”

If you spend any time in accordance at the grocery store, you’ll also see toddlers engage in coy behavior. This naturally includes a child smiling, then looking at you and averting her eyes (alternating eye contact), turning her body away, and maybe burying her head in her mother’s legs or chest.

Sometimes males experience painful emotions since they do not know what to do to resolve things.

To improve on communication, men must learn to resist the urge to take the problem completely off a female counterpart’s shoulders.

Don’t offer additional solutions. Because women talk about problems does not mean they don’t know how to crack them. Women want men to pay attention to them.

you don’t have agreed always with women to have good communication. If you disagree, however, you’ll be better able to get your point across if you wait until they are finished talking.

Men often try to talk over each other when they differ. They raise their voices and disrupt each other. Women interpret these actions as power plays, and communication suffers.

The most efficient way a man can get better his communication skills with a woman is by listening to her feelings. Since he is coming from a different viewpoint, this may not be easy.

Unpleasant Feelings Affects Good Conversation

The first thing a man should do is to remember how quickly unpleasant feelings can arise in a conversation that he feels is going well.

Step 1: Learn to withstand distractions. In an ideal world, we could get rid of all physical and mental distractions. In the real world, however, this is not possible.

Since we think so much faster than a speaker can talk, it’s easy to let our attention wander while we listen.

Sometimes it’s very easy - when the room is too hot, when construction machinery is operating right outside the window, when the speaker is tiresome.

But our attention can wander away even in the best of circumstances - if for no other reason than a failure to stay alert and make ourselves concentrate.

Whenever you find this occurrence, make a conscious effort to pull your mind back to what the speaker is saying.

Then force it to stay there. One way to do this is to think a little earlier than the speaker - try to foresee what will come next. This is not the same as jumping to conclusions. When you jump to conclusions, you put words into the speaker’s mouth and don’t really listen to what is said.

There is no such thing as an ideal speech! At some point in every presentation, every speaker says or does something - no matter how minor - that does not come across precisely as he or she had planned.

Fortunately, as with one’s nerves, such moments are generally not apparent to the audience.

Why? Since the audience does not know what the speaker plans to say. It hears only what the speaker does say.

If you shortly lose your place, reverse the order of a couple statements, or not remember to pause at a certain spot, no one needs to know. When such moments occur, don’t be terrified of them. Just carry on as if nothing happened.

Even if you do make a noticeable mistake at some stage in a speech, that is no catastrophe. If you have ever listened to Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, you may remember that he stumbles over his words twice during the speech.

Most likely, however, you don’t remember. Why? Since you were focusing on King’s message rather than on the fine points of his delivery.

According to Research, women make more eye contact than men do.

Why should this be so? Given below are just a few of the possible reasons why:

Information Gathering

Since, women are often discarded from informative interactions with men, and men have a tendency to use the stone face to cover their feelings, women must be more attentive for the period of interactions so as to glean as much as they can.

They are often “checking in” with men for the suitability of their behavior. In one study, men and women were asked to suppress their feelings.

Interestingly, given these instructions, women looked more at their informal partner, but men looked less. The women were trying to perceive from the men’s reactions whether their emotions had leaked out.

Perhaps women have more reason to be “vigilant” when concealing or rejecting their true emotions.

Observation in Group Interactions

If ever there are group meetings, as the speaker is talking, you can monitor the women at the table glancing around the room, checking others’ facial expressions, and using eye contact and gaze behavior to collect information and gain a read on the group. This behavior is not as usual with men in a group-meeting setting.