What you communicate through your body language and nonverbal signals affects how others see you, how well they like and respect you, and whether or not they trust you. Unfortunately, many people send confusing or negative nonverbal signals without even knowing it.
Nonverbal communication can play five roles: Repetition: It repeats and often strengthens the message you’re making verbally. Contradiction: It can contradict the message you’re trying to convey, thus indicating to your listener that you may not be telling the truth. Substitution: It can substitute for a verbal message.
Develop your emotional awareness. In order to send accurate nonverbal cues, you need to be aware of your emotions and how they influence you. You also need to be able to recognize the emotions of others and the true feelings behind the cues they are sending. This is where emotional awareness comes in.
All of your nonverbal behaviors—the gestures you make, your posture, your tone of voice, how much eye contact you make—send strong messages. They can put people at ease, build trust, and draw others towards you, or they can offend, confuse, and undermine what you’re trying to convey.
While the key to success in both personal and professional relationships lies in your ability to communicate well, it’s not the words that you use but your nonverbal cues or “body language” that speak the loudest.
Body language is the use of physical behavior, expressions, and mannerisms to communicate nonverbally, often done instinctively rather than consciously. Whether you’re aware of it or not, when you interact with others, you’re continuously giving and receiving wordless signals. All of your nonverbal behaviors—the gestures you make, your posture, ...
Your nonverbal communication cues—the way you listen, look, move, and react—tell the person you’re communicating with whether or not you care, if you’re being truthful, and how well you’re listening . When your nonverbal signals match up with the words you’re saying, they increase trust, clarity, and rapport.
Nonverbal signals can help you gain an accurate reading of others' unspoken feelings and underlying messages, create feelings of trust through the transparency they create and demonstrate understanding and interest, reports Help Guide.
Effects of Nonverbal Communication. Your facial expressions, body posture, gestures, tone of voice and eye contact are a few ways in which you engage in nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication can be used alone or alongside verbal communication.
Nonverbal signals can place the verbal message in a context that provides a basis for how the message should be interpreted. In addition, nonverbal cues help you to clarify what the other person is trying to say by responding to their words with your nonverbal signals, suggests Ting-Toomey.
Adding Value. Nonverbal communication can add valuable information to the verbal messages that you are sending. According to Stella Ting-Toomey, writing in “Communicating Across Cultures,” nonverbal signals can be used to complement, emphasize, substitute, and even contradict what you are saying through your verbal communication.
The use of multiple nonverbal cues displayed with each message can create confusion, and factors of gender, personality, socioeconomic status and situation can cause the meaning behind the nonverbal signals to vary greatly. Nonverbal communication can be powerful, but when used among non-homogeneous groups the effects can cause confusion and miscommunication.
Lewicki, Barry, and Saunders, writing in “Essentials of Negotiation,” describe attending behaviors as nonverbal communication techniques that affect how you connect with others. These behaviors allow others to know you are listening and help them to receive your message.
The most obvious forms of nonverbal communication are body language and gestures, and we will look specifically at these. Additionally, physical appearance, touching, and even design choices can be used to communicate a number of things about a person.
One of the common phrases used when talking about nonverbal communication is "body language.". Body language can include gestures, movements, and even posture, ...
In fact, it has been estimated that as much as 80 percent of communication is about what is not being said. Rather, it's based on perceptions of a person's gestures, eye contact, clothing, and environment. Being tuned into someone's nonverbal communication cues can help you determine what is truly being said beyond just the words being spoken.
As we've already stated, nonverbal cues may differ from culture to culture. On the other hand, studies have repeatedly shown that there are seven facial expressions that are actually universal throughout the human race. These include anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.
Although written communication should always be tailored to your audience, your own personal writing style is an important part of making your writing effective. If you typically write brief, matter-of-fact memos, because that is your personal style, there is no reason why you should be forced to adopt a more flowery style. In fact, switching from one style to another can actually create more problems, since your audience may read more into the sudden change, than they would if you had remained consistent.
Written communication is much more permanent that verbal or nonverbal communication. When you write something down – whether it's on paper, email, or a napkin you found at a bar – there is no taking it back. This is why legally binding contracts are almost always restricted to writing: It's the one place where you cannot pretend you "said" something other than what's there. This is why you should always write with the knowledge that the words you choose today can have repercussions in the future.
Personal space, eye contact, and touching are just a few of the nonverbal tools that mean different things in different cultures. In the United States, for example, it is considered polite to maintain quite a bit of eye contact when speaking to a superior. In many Asian cultures, however, this would be seen as disrespectful.
As a Learners Edge Curriculum & Instruction Specialist, I’m constantly prompted to reflect on my classroom teaching career. And, I’m very happy to report, the low moments fade from memory and you get to keep the joy and carry it with you forever. How great is that?
As a Learners Edge Curriculum & Instruction Specialist, I’m constantly prompted to reflect on my classroom teaching career. And, I’m very happy to report, the low moments fade from memory and you get to keep the joy and carry it with you forever. How great is that?