By Robert Phipps
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| Photo :Nikita Buida via Flickr of naiznanku.com |
I was in sales and management for some 20 years and
did literally dozens of different sales courses, managements courses,
leadership courses and they all had one thing in common, they dedicated a
little bit to the subject of body language.
When I say they little did a bit, I do mean a little bit, there was never enough !!! Whether it was a one day course or week long we’d
rarely spend more 20-60 mins on the Non Verbal Communication aspects of
these roles. 20-40 minutes, are you kidding me ? If you ever been on one of the above courses how much time did you spend on the body language of those roles ? And I can say without any hesitation that every
single course I went on threw up on flip charts, projectors and white
boards, the age old figures supposedly by Albert H Mehrabian, on how
much we communicate through the three different areas.
Those figures are 7% of the message is conveyed
through the words, 38% is down to the tonality in the delivery of your
chosen words leaving 55%, which is put down to body language. How many of you have seen those figures quoted on a course, in a book or advert, etc. They’ve become ingrained in communication mythology. I say mythology because they are not actually true
according in the sense that they have come to be known, watch this short
video.
OK so those particular figures aren’t the be all
and end all but most studies seem to agree that between 50-70% of
communication is Non Verbal. When in my opinion it is between 30-100%. You can give just a nod or a wink to someone and
they have 100% of your message, no words no tone of voice just a nod or a
wink and they understand. But how much time do most of the courses give it? Not enough full that’s for sure.
The truth is if you are in sales, management or a
leadership role you NEED to understand the Non Verbal messages you are
being sent all the time by your clients and staff for the simple reason
that understanding more about them, their moods and attitudes makes for a
more positive working environment, which leads to more rapport between
people, departments and companies. This ultimately produces more profit for the
organisation, cuts costs in terms of sickness absence as well as general
overhead costs because staff and clients will then cooperate more and
go that extra mile.
Why? Well we’ve all come across the express “People Buy
People” and every business is ultimately selling something, so it makes
sense does it not, to have staff who can sell themselves in whatever
their role? This is the true power of understanding body
language in sales, management and leadership roles. If you are in any of
them then your job is to produce profit for your Company and the
Shareholders.
The smoother your operation is the more likely you are to be able to achieve targets and even excel them. Get some training and don’t stop with just by
getting yourself trained, train your staff so they also understand
what’s truly going on in your business. This improves communication
between individual, departments and management chains.
You only have to keep up with the Business
magazines to read piece after piece where the top executives in some of
the world’s biggest companies are realising just how important the topic
is and are changing the way they do business. I’m signed up to Google Alerts, (I thoroughly
recommend this function) where I choose Keywords and Google very kindly
sends me an email every time they come up in stories, research papers
etc. I’ve been using this service for a few years now
and over the last year or so the amount of mentions of body language has
gone through the roof with regular pieces in Forbes, Washington Post,
The Times & Financial Times, Telegraph, Guardian and many, many
more.
So do yourself and your company a favour invest in
some training, get a trainer who specialises not one that just happens
to have a Module or two on body language in their portfolio of courses.
When you consider that human beings have more than
500,000 documented eye signals, facial expressions, hand and arm
movements, body postures that carry a meaning it’s worth knowing more
than you know now.
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