BODY LANGUAGE PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN COMMUNICATION, OFFERING VALUABLE INSIGHT INTO PEOPLES EMOTIONS AND INTENTIONS.
JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO INC. COM, SHARES PSYCHOLOGIST, JEFF BEATTY’S WORK, WHICH FINDS TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATIONS OF BODY LANGUAGE MAY NOT BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO UNDERSTAND NONVERBAL CUES.
“You read this advice all the time. If someone's crossing their arms, it means they're defensive. Or if someone is blinking a lot, they're lying. You have to think of body language, analyzing what is going in the whole environment.”
STILLMAN SAYS BY CONSIDERING THE BROADER CONTEXT IN WHICH BODY LANGUAGE OCCURS, WE GAIN A MORE ACCURATE UNDERSTANDING OF INTENTIONS.
“A showing of like sort of manly confidence…trying to show off, sort of maybe your hands behind your head. That means something very different than if someone is fidgeting in and out of that pose and otherwise looking anxious.”
“Someone's sort of fake smile fall away…if you look at what was being said at that moment, like who walked away, like what changed in the conversation, you can get a lot of insight about why that person was fake smiling, what there real feelings might be. When what you are saying and what you are doing with your hands and your arms don’t match it's usually the physical gesture// that's telling the truth."
WHETHER IT’S DECIPHERING EMOTIONS OF A MIFFED CUSTOMER, OR CONNECTING WITH A CO-WORKER, THE INABILITY TO GATHER BODY LANGUAGE CUES IN VIRTUAL MEETINGS UNDERSCORES THE ADVANTAGES OF FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTIONS.
"Whether it's with your boss, with your employee, with your wife, with your best friend, it really doesn’t matter. If you want to understand people, being able to read their body language is helpful."
THE BUSINESS REVIEW IS A PRODUCTION OF LIVINGSTON AND MCKAY AND THE HANKAMER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY
