People at Work & Play

Good communication skills can help you in both your personal and professional life. While verbal and written communication skills are important, research has shown that nonverbal behaviors make up a large percentage of our daily interpersonal communication.

How can you improve your nonverbal communication skills? Look at the following top 10 tips for nonverbal communication from Kendra Van Wagner.

1. Pay Attention to Nonverbal Signals: People can communicate information in numerous ways; so pay attention to things like eye contact, gestures, posture, body movements, and tone of voice. All of these signals can convey important information that isn’t put into words. By paying closer attention to other people’s nonverbal behaviors, you will improve your own ability to communicate nonverbally.

2. Look for Incongruent Behaviors If someone’s words do not match their nonverbal behaviors, you should pay careful attention. For example, someone might tell you they are happy while frowning and staring at the ground. Research has shown that when words fail to match up with nonverbal signals, people tend to ignore what has been said and focus instead on nonverbal expressions of moods, thoughts, and emotions.

3. Concentrate on Your Tone of Voice When Speaking : Your tone of voice can convey a wealth of information, ranging from enthusiasm to disinterest to anger. Start noticing how your tone of voice affects how others respond to you and try using tone of voice to emphasize ideas that you want to communicate. For example, if you want to show genuine interest in something, express your enthusiasm by using an animated tone of voice.

4. Use Good Eye Contact : When people fail to look others in the eye, it can seem as if they are evading or trying to hide something. On the other hand, too much eye contact can seem confrontational or intimidating. While eye contact is an important part of communication, it’s important to remember that good eye contact does not mean staring fixedly into someone’s eyes. How can you tell how much eye contact is correct? Some communication experts recommend intervals of eye contact lasting four to five seconds.

5. Ask Questions About Nonverbal Signals: If you are confused about another person’s nonverbal signals, don’t be afraid to ask questions. A good idea is to repeat back your interpretation of what has been said and ask for clarification. An example of this might be, “So what you are saying is that…”

6. Use Signals to Make Communication More Effective and Meaningful : Remember that verbal and nonverbal communication work together to convey a message. You can improve your spoken communication by using nonverbal signals and gestures that reinforce and support what you are saying. This can be especially useful when making presentations or when speaking to a large group of people.

7. Look at Signals as a Group: A single gesture can mean any number of things, or maybe even nothing at all. The key to accurately reading nonverbal behavior is to look for groups of signals that reinforce a common point. If you place too much emphasis on just one signal out of many, you might come to an inaccurate conclusion about what a person is trying to communicate.

8. Consider Context: When you are communicating with others, always consider the situation and the context in which the communication occurs. Some situations require more formal behaviors that might be interpreted very differently in any other setting. Consider whether or not nonverbal behaviors are appropriate for the context. If you are trying to improve your own nonverbal communication, concentrate on ways to make your signals match the level of formality necessitated by the situation.

9. Be Aware That Signals Can be Misread: According to some, a firm handshake indicates a strong personality while a weak handshake is taken as a lack of fortitude. This example illustrates an important point about the possibility of misreading nonverbal signals. A limp handshake might actually indicate something else entirely, such as arthritis. Always remember to look for groups of behavior. A person’s overall demeanor is far more telling than a single gesture viewed in isolation.

10. Practice, Practice, Practice: Some people just seem to have a knack for using nonverbal communication effectively and correctly interpreting signals from others. These people are often described as being able to “read people.” In reality, you can build this skill by paying careful attention to nonverbal behavior and practicing different types of nonverbal communication with others. By noticing nonverbal behavior and practicing your own skills, you can dramatically improve your communication abilities.

Emails are very much a part of our work life. We can no longer imagine a world without email.

Researchers at Glasgow University and Paisley University in the UK, found that 34% of the workers questioned as part of their study admitted to checking their inbox every 15 minutes.

Though 64% of the workers said they looked at their emails more than once an hour, monitoring software showed that it was more like 40 times an hour. At least 34% of the workers also said that they were stressed by the sheer number of emails that come in, and the need for a speedy reply. Another 28% admitted that they were “driven” after checking their mails because of the pressure to respond.

“Our survey indicates the astonishing extent to which email is embedded in our day-to-day lives,” the researchers, are quoted as saying. “Females, in particular, tended to feel more pressure to respond than males,” they added.

Some figures about stress inducing emails:

• 6 trillion business email messages sent worldwide in 2006
• 49 minutes spent managing emails each day by the average office worker
• 4 hours spent managing emails per day by senior management worker
• 80 % of emails sent are actually ’spam’ - unsolicited adverts, many of which are fraudulent or otherwise illegal
• 62 % of workers check business emails while at home or on holiday

Use email as a productivity and convenience tool. Don’t become a slave to it!

“Meetings, Bloody Meetings” was the title of an old John Cleese video which showed how terrible meetings could be and how we could make them more effective.

Meetings are an inescapable part of business today. We attend many types of meetings:Formal, informal, sit down, stand up, internal, external, planned, impromptu- the list goes on. It is estimated that approximately 11 million meetings occur in the U.S. each and every day. Another estimate indicates that most professionals attend a total of 61.8 meetings per month. Many feel that over 50 percent of this meeting time is wasted.

No wonder then that many consider meetings a terrible waste of time. However, a well-conducted meeting can be invigorating, motivating and have a lasting impact on attendees.

Here are my 7 Ideas for Success for Conducting Effective Meetings:-

1. Have a meeting only if this method is the best to achieve objectives
2. Call only those who will add value
3. Have an agenda with start and end times ( time budgets)
4. Don’t have too big an agenda
5. Be sensitive to all meeting participants and their needs
6. Help meeting participants summarise take aways
7. Release action oriented minutes as soon as possible

You must have heard of Daniel Goleman? He is the renowned author of “Emotional Intelligence” which was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages.

Read what he has to say about email in the New York Times.

Email undoubtedly has many advantages -” it’s quick and convenient, democratizes access and lets us stay in touch with loads of people we could never see or call. It enables us to accomplish huge amounts of work together”

However, it can never capture the emotions of the sender as well as a personal interaction can.

“One reason for this is that we tend to misinterpret positive e-mail messages as more neutral, and neutral ones as more negative, than the sender intended. Even jokes are rated as less funny by recipients than by senders”

As Professor Clay Shirky an adjunct professor in New York University’s interactive telecommunications program puts it “Social software” like e-mail “is not better than face-to-face contact; it’s only better than nothing.”

Think about this before you dash off an email to the guy in the next cubicle or to the girl down the corridor.

Scott Bradley writes of the value of asking questions to enhance the success of networking.

I agree the right questions can help in opening a conversation and in building a relationship. I feel these questions have greater impact only if they are reinforced with the right body language. Eye contact, posture and tone of voice do add immensely to the value you get from these questions.

Shocking revelation in USA Today. We knew it was bad…but not this bad. According to the report as much as 83 % of all email is Spam.

“Unwanted commercial e-mail is growing by electronic leaps and bounds: An Internet-buckling 60 billion to 150 billion messages per day.”

I don’t know if it helps but I was advised never to unsubscribe to Spam as my email id gets further circulated. Any truth in this?

I do not know Vikas Jhingran personally but wish to congratulate him on his splendid feat.

He recently won the first prize in the Toastmasters International World Championship of Public Speaking . Vikas, a graduate of IIT, Kharagpur, is a Doctoral candidate in mechanical and ocean engineering at MIT.

This year’s competition featured 10 finalists, each of whom presented a seven-minute original speech to a panel of judges. Contestants were judged on content, speech organization, voice quality, gestures and delivery.

The event is called the Olympics of Public Speaking . Jhingran presented “The Swami’s Question”, a speech about finding himself through meditation and about getting into MIT, his dream school.

In a recent program, I spoke of the need to write in a more understandable manner. The objective is not to confuse the hell out of your readers but to make them understand what you are trying to say.

The Fog Index is a matrix that gives you an idea of how easy or otherwise your written matter is for others to read. It was devised many years ago by Robert Gunning, an American businessman.

Whether you use the Fog index or not, do read your written matter from the point of view of your reader. Would most people find it easy to understand? Are you being more verbose than necessary? Is there excessive use of needless jargon? Are you using simpler words to convey your thoughts and ideas?

It’s true. Body language counts. Even in the US Presidential elections.

CNN writes of the “for the first time ever debates” held recently on YouTube . This was to help viewers decide their choice for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the US Presidential election.

Sen. Hillary Clinton was said to have made the most positive impression based on her body language.

Many years ago, as a kid, I read about the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960. There was no TV in India then. We read that one of the most important reasons for Kennedy’s winning was his positive use of body language. He came out as being confident of the future and a go-getter. He demonstrated this when he was elected the President soon after. Nixon came out to be more cagey, which was proved by subsequent events when he became the President many years later.

We are in the age of “politically correct ” (PC) language. Not “Blacks” but”African Americans”, not “man hours” but “person hours”, not “sex” but “gender” and the list goes on.

“Politically correct language is humourous in its seriousness” says Walter E. Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

There is no doubt that we must be sensitive in the use of language such that it does not offend any one. However, are we in the process making language more tedious? Does a “dishonest” person feel better at being called “ethically disoriented”? Is a “fat “person any less fat by being referred to as being, “circumferencially privileged”? Would a “clumsy” person become more adept by being described as “uniquely co-ordinated”? Is a short person “vertically challenged”? Should the 33rd President of the United States, have been called Harry S. Trueperson?

On July 20, 1969 on landing on the moon, Neil Armstong said some thing which has become immortal” A small step for man, a giant step for mankind”. As an article I read somewhere said: ” Would he, if he were to do the same thing again, today say:” One small step for a person, one giant movement for all persons regardless of age, sex, religion, creed, national origin, physical limitatation or lifestyle preference”(edited to remove offensive content)?