Communication Break-Down

Lawyer jokes aside, I am going to assume that if you are practicing law you have a degree of intelligence. But are you nonverbally intelligent?

What I’m asking is, are you aware of what you are communicating nonverbally? What about what others are communicating? Do you know how to adjust your nonverbal communication to assist you during a trial? With a client? Nonverbal communication translates the majority of any message: Ignore it at your peril.

Here are three tips to increase your nonverbal intelligence.

1. Learn the difference between credible and approachable body language and voice patterns.

Use credible nonverbals when sending information, and approachable nonverbals when seeking information. Incongruent nonverbals send a mixed message. Using an approachable voice pattern to deliver an opening statement is just as ineffective as using a credible voice pattern to draw more input from a potential juror. Neither works. Knowing when to use one set of nonverbals versus another will increase your effectiveness in the courtroom or with clients.

2. Get your gestures under control.

Do you have any idea how powerful gesturing is? Gesture to your client while saying the words “manslaughter,” “murder” or “felony” and you might as well pack up and go home. You’ve attached the negative information to the client nonverbally. (On the flip side, prosecutors will want to do this.) Willy-nilly gesturing is not only ineffective, it is dangerous. Learn effective gesturing or reap the consequences.

3. Unlearn everything you know (or think you know) about eye contact.

We’ve all been taught that eye contact equals respect. Growing up, many of us heard, “Look at me when I talk to you!” Yet incorrect use of eye contact can potentially kill your case. As with gesturing, eye contact can attach the negative message to you or your client. The next time the judge interrupts you, don’t lock eye contact with the jurors. Instead, look down and wait. The jurors will look at the judge and associate the objection with him or her, not you. You come out clean.

Commit to increasing your nonverbal intelligence. Your case depends on it.

It pains me to say this, but this sentence is written in passive voice. Passive is about the last word anyone would associate with me, but there it is.

For my readers who are not currently in 8th grade, writing in passive voice should be avoided. This according to my best friend, who was a writing tutor in college, and about a billion other writing instructors. Here is a popular example: Why did the chicken cross the road? That sentence uses active voice. Passive voice sounds like this: Why was the road crossed by the chicken?

It has something to do with objects and subjects and who is acting on who, but I can’t seem to keep it straight.

It took me three weeks to write my first post. And I don’t mean three weeks of deciding what to write or not finding time to write, I mean three weeks and 83 drafts later I finally, nervously, posted the final product.

Although I’m not sure why I’m nervous. This being a new blog, I don’t know who (if anyone) is reading it. I know my mom isn’t. But a girl can dream big, and I just know that once I’m horribly famous someone will write in and attack me for my use of passive voice. At that point I’ll be too rich to care, but still.

I really did try to get the passive voice thing down. I went to Powell’s Books and bought Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, On Writing Well, Eats, Shoots and Leaves and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. And I’m reading them. A little. I leafed through. Kind of.

Ok, so I don’t care about passive voice. Yet that didn’t stop me from obsessing over it for three weeks. So much so that after the 75th draft I read my husband the 76th and he said, “Where did you go?” I had completely lost my own voice in an attempt to stamp out any evidence of passive voice. My chiropractor asked me what the new bulge in my neck was all about. “Passive voice,” I replied.

So here’s the deal, before I become famous. I know that most of my blog is written in passive voice, and there are semi-colons where there should be commas, and I probably have sentence fragments, incorrect abbreviations and start sentences with conjunctions. Writing is something I want to get good at, and my hope is to get better as I write this blog. But my primary purpose is to deconstruct nonverbal communication in a way that makes sense to my readers and to dispense useable, practical information. Without losing my voice in the process. So please be kind and try and overlook my grammar. I can’t afford the chiropractic bills.

I am not a body language expert. And I’d very much appreciate it if you didn’t lump me in with those people. They drive me nuts.

For example, because I work in nonverbal communication, I always have to put people at ease when we first meet. People assume I read their body language and feel vulnerable and nervous. It’s no secret as to why: body language experts are everywhere these days, determining if, years ago, Bill Clinton really did have “sexual relations with that woman,” or if Katie Holmes wants out of her marriage with Tom Cruise. Even President Obama isn’t immune. A recent article claimed that a careful analysis of his body language reveals that he doesn’t care about old people. (See photo below.)

Leading the way or uncaring?

Why the fascination with body language? Can it really give us insight into the hidden motivations of others?

To understand this fascination we don’t need to look any further than our own experiences. When someone says, “I do not have a problem with you!” while avoiding eye contact, using closed body language, and appearing anxious, we don’t believe the words. What someone does always trumps what someone says. The ability to read nonverbal cues is hard-wired. We subconsciously do it all the time. So when we pick up a magazine at the gym and a body language expert is dissecting the celebrity du jour we accept it as natural, assuming we too could read the minds of celebrities if we only knew what to look for. Wouldn’t it be great if you could read the body language of your boss and find out what he or she was really thinking?

It reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is dating a woman who can read lips. Once his friends find out, they all beg him to allow them to “borrow” her for an evening so they can spy on other people and find out what they are saying. Jerry agrees, only to have his hearing-impaired date misread “sweeping together” for “sleeping together.” You can imagine the outcome.

Just like lip-reading, body language can be misread. Take lying, for example. A recent Google search of “how to tell if someone is lying” returned 104,000,000 hits. FOX’s television program Lie To Me is incredibly popular with viewers, and books on lying such as, Never Be Lied to Again: How to Get the Truth in 5 minutes or Less in Any Conversation or Situation are in demand. Yet research shows that we’re not so good at being able to detect lying in others, even if we know what to look for. Robert Feldman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, did extensive study on the role of deception in human relationships. In a recent Time magazine article, he discussed his book, The Liar in Your Life: How Lies Work and What They Tell Us About Ourselves and answered the question, “Why do we believe so many lies?” His answer: “We are not very good at detecting deception in other people. When we are trying to detect honesty, we look at the wrong kinds of nonverbal behaviors, and we misinterpret them. The problem is that there is no direct correlation between someone’s nonverbal behavior and their honesty. “Shiftiness” could also be the result of being nervous, angry, distracted or sad. Even trained interrogators [aren't] able to detect deception at [high] rates. You might as well flip a coin to determine if someone is being honest.”

So why do body language experts drive me nuts? Because they oversimplify. We cannot determine what someone thinks or feels by reading body language alone. Body language does give us insight but it doesn’t tell us everything. When making an observation we must include words, tone of voice and most importantly, context. Anything else is guessing at best, reckless at worst.

I am not a body language expert because…People magazine hasn’t agreed to the terms of my contract. Kidding, of course. I believe the real magic happens when we work with our own nonverbal communication, and strive to become more congruent, clear and effective. That’s not to say that learning to read nonverbal cues is pointless; it can be incredibly helpful as one of the skills in our communication toolbox. But I can’t say it enough: we must take all aspects of communication into consideration when evaluating and observing any interaction.

Finally, any analysis of whether or not reading body language is helpful must include a look at our motivation for wanting to do so. Here is my criteria: if having that information assists us in adapting our approach so we can accommodate the needs of others, that’s the right reason. If we’re looking for ways to manipulate or control, that’s the wrong reason.

And what about if we just want to read the minds of celebrities? I say leave that to the body language experts.