How You Can Benefit by Understanding Gestures (2)
Posted on December 10, 2008 - Filed Under Uncategorized
The folded-arms gesture can be understood and utilized in another way: While trying to communicate with someone, we may notice him taking this position like some bygone cigar-store Indian. This is one of the gestures that indicate he is not going to listen and is very adamant about it. In many conversations, rather than recognizing this and coping with it by trying alternative methods and courses open to us, we proceed in the same conversational pattern and talk a blue streak. Therefore, instead of helping the individual to cooperate in the communication, we tend to drive him further away.
Feedback plays a major role in the full communication process, and gesture-clusters are an important feedback. They indicate from moment to moment and movement to movement exactly how individuals or groups are reacting nonverbally. We can learn whether what we are saying is being received in a positive manner or a negative one, whether the audience is open or defensive, self- controlled or bored. Speakers call this audience-awareness, or relating to a group. Nonverbal feedback can warn you that you must
change, withdraw, or do something different in order to bring about the result that you desire. If you are not aware of feedback, then there is a strong possibility that you will fail to communicate your believability or sincerity to an individual or to an audience.
An attorney who attended one of our seminars sent us a letter in which he explained the benefits he had derived from consciously considering nonverbal communication. He said in the course of an office visit his client crossed his arms and legs “in a defensive position” and proceeded to spend the next hour admonishing him. Noticing the nonverbal implications of the client’s gestures, he let his client talk it out of his system. Only after this did the lawyer offer professional advice on how to handle the difficult situation the client found himself in. The attorney stated that had he not attended our seminar he would not have given his client a chance to be receptive to him, since he would not have read his client’s needs and would probably have attempted immediately to give him unheeded advice.
A common observation seminar attendees make is, “I feel frustrated because despite the fact that I’m aware that gestures exist, I find myself tuned out for periods of as long as fifteen minutes where I’m absolutely unaware of what’s going on.” The art of thoroughly seeing nonverbal communications is a learning process almost as difficult as acquiring fluency in a foreign language. In addition to maintaining a conscious awareness of your own gestures and the meaning you are conveying to your audience, we recommend that you set aside at least ten minutes a day during which you consciously “read” the gestures of others. Anywhere that people gather is an excellent “reading” ground. Social and business gatherings
that permit freely expressed emotions and the possibility of polarization of attitudes are especially well-suited for doing thorough research. The attitudes of people attending these functions are usually so intense that each tends to be “wearing his feelings on his sleeve.” However, you do not have to leave your home to do homework. Television offers a fertile field for reading nonverbal communication, particularly the interview and discussion programs. Try to understand what is happening by just watching the picture. Turn on the sound at five-minute intervals to check the verbal ommunication against your reading of the gestures. Be sure to watch for congruency and gesture-clusters.
Taken From : How To Read A Person Like a Book
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