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Your
Body Language Speaks so Loud I Can’t Hear What
You’re Saying
Most
successful business professionals would agree that “people
skills” are fundamental prerequisites to a successful
career. You can get by in life without knowing much
about calculus. You can survive and flourish without
a law degree. But if you can’t effectively communicate
with all sorts of people, you will have a very hard
time climbing up the corporate ladder.
Communication
starts before you even open your mouth. The way you
walk up to the front door of your building in the morning
says something about the tone you set for the entire
day. Are you whistling a tune as you bound up the steps,
or are you silently shuffling along and staring at your
feet? Are you giving a big hearty “good morning!”
to coworkers as you pass them in the halls or are you
already immersed in your own little world of deadlines,
email replies and other such minutia?
The
tone you set just by the way you hold yourself will
not only speak volumes to your superiors and your staff,
but it will even send strong signals to your own
brain that will dictate the type of experience you
will have that day. Most of us passively believe that
our circumstances dictate our emotions and thus our
experience. But it’s more likely the other way
around – our own body language dictates our emotions,
effecting our experience and thus our circumstances.
Passive
View
Circumstances
-> Emotions -> Experience
-> Body Language
Progressive View
Body
Language -> Emotions ->
Experience -> Circumstances
Let’s try a real-world situation to test this
theory. Most of us in business have difficult phone
calls to make. Maybe it’s a cold call. Maybe it’s
to give some bad news to a superior or a client. Whatever
the case may be for you, let’s see if your own
body language can make a difference in the way that
you experience that call.
The
key to this experiment is to have a plan set up before
you make your difficult call. You need to decide what
type of body language you will use to completely change
your experience. The following are some simple examples
that you can try individually or in combinations:
1.
Make the call while standing up rather than sitting.
Don’t just stand, stand very straight and tall.
2.
Have a silly grin painted on your face throughout
the conversation.
3.
Shadow box throughout the conversation as if you are
putting up a valiant fight.
4.
Use excessively grand hand gestures while speaking.
The key here is to understand the link between your
own body language and the way your mind perceives every-day
experiences. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll
find all sorts of ways to have fun and be more productive
at work. Most importantly, your communication with others
will improve too. People will pick up on your new energy
and enthusiasm, and will see you in an entirely new
light.
So
tomorrow on your way into work, bound up the stairs.
Give a huge smile and an excessive “good morning!”
to everyone you pass. Give high-fives to your staff.
Be bold. Be expressive. Be alive and watch your experience
entirely change just by speaking a new “body language.”
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