Communication Break-Down

Why is it that every time they tell us to expect snow it doesn’t happen, and then when they tell us we’ll just get a dusting, we get 6 inches?

I guess predicting the weather is a pretty complicated business.

I was thinking about that this week and how similar it is to the ability to read someone’s nonverbals.

In both cases you can have sophisticated equipment -radar and satellite in the case of weather predicting, machines that monitor heart rate, sweating and other physiological responses in the case of predicting if someone is lying- and in both cases you can be wrong.

TV shows like Lie to Me or The Mentalist rarely show the times a “read” is wrong, and so we continue to get the impression that if we just knew what to look for, we could predict how someone might act or what they might say based on their nonverbal behavior.

It reminds me of the first time I met two graduate teaching assistants I would be teaching a year-long class with at Portland State University. One exhibited closed nonverbals. She rarely offered her thoughts up in the classes we had together, she didn’t often smile, she looked down as you passed her in the hall. The other was friendly, participated in class, and smiled a lot. I immediately assumed it would be difficult to start a friendship with the first but a breeze with the second. Over the year the three of us forged a solid friendship, and I found that in the first case my fellow graduate teaching assistant was merely shy. Once you got to know her, she was friendly, chatty, and warm. The second graduate teaching assistant was friendly and outgoing, but took much longer to warm up to people. I made incorrect assumptions based on their nonverbals and first impressions.

Which really teaches us two things: 1) how powerful first impressions really are and 2) reading nonverbals in an attempt to interpret someone’s thoughts or feelings is a slippery slope.

Nonverbal communication does assist us in reading what other people need so we can better accommodate them. I’ve spent so much time warning you about the pitfalls of reading the nonverbal communication of others, you might be wondering if there’s any reason to read other people at all. A future post will focus on how to sensitively interpret what others are sending us nonverbally and what to do with that information. It’s when we pigeon-hole people based on their nonverbal behavior that we get into trouble.

For example, when lawyers hire me to assist them during jury selection, I always give the caveat that I can provide a nonverbal read of prospective jurors, but to compare it with all the other information they have. If it bolsters the case for or against a juror, great. If all information points the other way, then throw it out. More importantly, I focus on working with the lawyer. We have the most control over our own communication, and focusing there will create the biggest impact.

So the next time I hear it’s going to snow (or not snow) I’m going to take it with a grain of salt. Just like when I meet someone new. I’ll take in what they are communicating nonverbally but keep an open mind, just in case I miss something.

My assistant Val attended a poetry reading a few months ago and was asked by a woman what type of work she did. Val said she worked for Nonverbal Solutions, and that we train people to use nonverbal communication systematically.

The woman interrupted her and said, “Oh, so you manipulate people.”

Sigh.

I can’t say I’m surprised, although I’d love to start a workshop sometime without having to explain that what we do is nothing close to what people think we do. No, we can’t read your mind by watching your nonverbal behavior. No, we don’t train people in how to tell if someone is lying. And no, we don’t show you how to manipulate others by using secret, wildly influential nonverbal “tricks.”

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I can’t stand being called a body language expert, and you also know that I still struggle with explaining just exactly what it is that we do.

But I’m getting better.

A little over a year ago I was asked to speak for Portland Female Executives. I attended an event prior to my speaking engagement to check out the venue. The speaker spoke about passion, and at one point asked us to turn to our neighbor and share our passion. The woman I was seated next to asked me if I was passionate about nonverbal communication. Imagine my surprise when I realized my answer was…no. I left behind my career in music to devote myself full-time to nonverbal communication. How on earth could I not be passionate about it?

When I attended my first nonverbal communication workshop years ago I was surprised -just like many of my attendees now- that the information wasn’t anything like what I expected. Instead of learning isolated nonverbal cues and what they mean, we learned how nonverbal communication assists us in creating high-quality relationships. Relationships are the key to success both in the personal and professional realm, and clear, effective communication is essential for attracting, establishing and preserving relationships.

There are several ways to ensure clear communication occurs, but most programs work only with the verbal level- ignoring the nonverbal. This is unfortunate, because although it’s important to know what to say, research shows that how we say it makes a much bigger impact.

More importantly, nonverbal communication gives us insight into how others wish to be treated. Once we have that information, we can adapt our approach and meet people where they are. One of our greatest needs as humans is to be understood. Striving to understand others and communicate clearly is respectful and considerate, not manipulative.

So forgive me if my feathers get a bit ruffled when people assume we manipulate people. What we do is the exact opposite. Helping people create strong, quality relationships is what I am really passionate about. Nonverbal communication is how I choose to get there.

I recently received my first piece of hate-mail. It was actually pretty cool. I’ve been kind of down about my recent television interview. It was very short, and nothing came of it. No excited phone calls from prospective clients, no offers to appear on Oprah, so getting hate-mail made me feel kinda…famous.

I really shouldn’t call it hate-mail. It wasn’t “hateful” really, and it was an email, not the type of letter you think of when you think of hate-mail: cut-out letters from magazines pasted onto a piece of paper. It’s also pretty difficult to get offended by someone who can’t put together a well-constructed sentence. But ever since receiving it Val and I have been affectionately calling it the “hate-mail.”

Basically the writer expressed amazement that someone would be so “simplistic” to “try and reduce human non-verbal behavior to that of a cat or dog.” He or she (there wasn’t a signature) is referencing -I can only guess- my recent interview with Willamette Week, in which I discuss the cats and dogs analogy I use in my work.

Receiving the email made me realize two things: 1) what I’m doing is getting attention, and that’s cool no matter how you slice it, and 2) what I do is not easily explained in a one-page article or even a three-minute television interview.

I’m still trying to find a way to talk about what I do in a way that makes sense to people. Just this morning the receptionist at my chiropractor’s office asked what I did. I said I was a nonverbal communications consultant which resulted in a blank stare, and the more I tried to explain, the more confused she became.

Yesterday I presented an all-day workshop in which at least a half-dozen participants said, “I was not looking forward to coming to this workshop, but I’m so glad I came. It wasn’t what I expected at all.” This isn’t unusual. And although I am delighted that people find my work useful and practical, there has to be a better way of explaining it.

For now I’ll just keep plugging along knowing that the media attention is nice but I can’t expect it to sell my services. All of my work up until this point has come from word of mouth. We’ve never purchased advertising and I don’t have a publicist. People who attend workshops tell other people and that’s why Nonverbal Solutions is here and thriving, even after a recession.

So to my clients and supporters out there, thank you. And to my anonymous email writer: thank you as well. You can’t know how fun it was to feel famous.