Inside look at value and reliability of most common communication tool!
This is not new to anyone I know. But whenever I mention "verbal" communication skills in my seminars, there is always someone asking me "and what about body language?". OK, alright, we all know the value of body language. We all know it, all use it to influence others. One question remains: is body language an exact science? Can we have "reliable" dictionary that explains each and every move humans do? The obvious, and certainly short answer to this is "No".
However, one can never underestimate the power of the power of the non-verbal. How many times have we expressed anger, despair, joy, openness, closeness, approval...etc, etc, etc without using words? How many times we understood people just by looking into their faces, movements and body expressions? And finally, how many messages do we send "unintentionally" about ourselves?
In business or other daily life activities, body language plays an important in emphasizing messages we send and receive. Everybody has a certain level of observation that helps comprehend many signals sent from other parties. Women, in particular, have a greater awareness of reading messages. That is why men are often puzzled at quick female judgments such as: "he's a liar" or worse: "you're a liar".
With all this in place, one can not assume a dictionary for body language, thus making it an observable form of communication as opposed to an exact science. According to Allan & Barbara Pease, the most influential pre-twentieth-century work in this area was Charles Darwin's The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals (published in 1872). Researchers have noted and recorded almost a million non-verbal cues and signals. Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer researcher of body language in the 50's, found that the total impact of a message is about 7% verbal (words only), 38% vocal (including tone of voice, inflection and other sounds) and 55% nonverbal.
Anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell pioneered the original study of non-verbal communication - what he called "kinesics". Birdwhistell made some similar estimates of the amount of non-verbal communication that takes place between humans. He estimated that the average person actually speaks words for a total of about ten or eleven minutes a day, and that the average of sentence takes only about 2.5 seconds. Birdwhistell also estimated we can make and recognize around 250,000 facial expression!
Like Mehrabian, he found that the verbal component of a face-to-face conversation is less than 35% and that over 65% of communication is done non-verbally.
Allan & Barbara Pease analysis of thousands of sales interviews and negotiations during the 70's and 80's showed that, in business encounters, body language accounts for between 60 and 80% of the impact made around a negotiating table and that people from 60 to 80% of their initial opinion about a new person in less than four minutes.
A word of caution though: getting one message per signal could be dangerous! Look for several signals to get one message. Keep it in context and check if it is verified by the verbal, too. If it is just an article in the papers (or a site!) you have no chances of doing that, believe me!
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