Mind Your Body Language!

Written Tuesday, April 06, 2010 by Trippin'

The month of March started with the 2010 MPI Cascadia Educational conference held at Tulalip Resort and Casino in Tulalip, Washington. Tulalip Casino is a phenominal place to host a conference. You can dine at five star restaurants, enjoy beautiful contemporary spacious rooms and boogie down at the Impulse Nightclub to the sounds of R&B and Top 40 Hits.

This year’s networking opportunities were outstanding. The education sessions were about social networking, selling in a down economy, and body language. On the first day of the conference, I attended the social media session.  What a plethora of information! My head was buzzing, my thoughts were flying like a thousand Twitter messages and all I could think about was “Whoa, I really don’t know the first thing about social media even though I’ve been using Facebook and My Space for over four years now.  As I left the session, I crossed over a tremendously long line of people getting autographs and books signed.  As I walked through I could see a few people were crying and everybody was so excited! I got the impression they would wait five hours for an autograph.  Could it be a movie star, rock star or superstar?

Later that afternoon, practicing a networking trick I had picked up, I had lunch with a group of women I didn’t know.  It’s a great way to meet new people.  The ladies I sat with were ranting and raving about Janine Driver and her session on body language. Body language, schmody language – a bunch of Sales 101 hooey! 

After that lunch and throughout the next day all I heard was, “Janine Driver said this and Janine Driver said that!” I felt a bit left out since I had missed her only session of the week. Now on the last day she was going to be the last keynote speaker at the last luncheon. Saving the best for last I see. Now, I was excited!

I sat facing the stage when they introduced her. All of sudden I hear a loud, booming voice coming from the back of the room.  A very tall woman with a thick Boston accent walked from the back of the room commenting on everybody’s body language.  She stopped next to me (I wonder how she spotted me since I’m only 6’6”) and immediately commented on my posture or um, my naughty bits as she put it. Ouch. That hurt. After that, I end up being one of her examples throughout the presentation much to the delight of everyone around me and well, ok, even me. It was fun!

What I learned that day has been very helpful. Did you know that 55% of what we say comes from our body language?  Culturally, we all have different mannerisms but when reading a person’s body language you need a baseline.  A baseline is how a person acts normally.  If you know someone talks with their hands it is a change in baseline if they start putting them in their pocket.  Interesting isn’t it? In her book – You Say More Than You Think - which I bought and recommend by the way - Janine speaks of seven myths of the old way of reading body language:
1) Reading body language signals help you read minds. Not true. For every rule there is an exception. You need to analyze more than one instance of a person in order to effectively read their body language clues.
2) You can use body language to cover up what you’re true feelings are.  Nice try but your body reacts anyway.  You maybe able to act confidant in a meeting but you can’t stop your hands from sweating.
3) Certain power gestures make people respect you. An example would be using the “Steeple Gesture” fingertips to fingertips like in a prayer. If this is used in a first date situation well, you’ve pretty much killed the mood. 
4) All body language is universal.  We all use the same facial expressions to show emotions but culturally things can differ completely such as the way we hold our hands or when we talk or even shaking our heads during a conversation.
5) Liars don’t make eye contact.  Actually, liars are usually experts at eye contact and often tend to look longer directly in the eye – “See how much I am telling you the truth?”
6) Our eyes go up and to the right when we are not telling the truth.  The fact is that people look up and to the right when they are thinking or have reflection.
7) Smile at everyone you meet people will respect you for that.  Studies show that people who smile more may actually appear weaker to those who don’t.

There’s a lot to learn when it comes to body language. I definitely recommend reading You Say More Than You Think! You’ll learn how to fix almost any situation by using body language cues for some of the situations below.

• Your new co-worker is confident and you want to build rapport
• You’re overworked and your child misbehaves
• You’re coming on too strong for him or her!
• You meet someone who thinks they are “all that” and you want to disappear fast!
• You’re trying to meet people and no one is approaching you
• You’re deathly shy
• You want to let people know how confident you are
• You messed up and your partner/boss/friend/spouse isn’t happy
• How to deal with a co-worker who is a jerk
• How to deal with a domineering subordinate
• Stop pushy salespeople
• Make a good first impression on a job interview

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog! I’m off to test a few things I learned after reading Janine’s book. Mind your naughty bits!

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