The Monday morning meeting:

• Who’s keen, who’s not and who is still thinking about their weekend?
• Who wants to quit, and who wants the promotion?
• Who is controlling and who’s following?
• Who’s busy flirting with the employee across the conference table?

You are in a meeting at work. How can you tell who is leading the meeting, who is dominating and who’s following, who is nervous, who is defiant, who is the crawler, who is disagreeable and who’ll be argumentative? Who gets along with whom? Who can’t stand the boss?

In the workplace there are many activities that go on which are oblivious to the untrained eye. Here are some scenarios where body language can be used to help you spot the plays, communicate more effectively and be more successful in your career.

There are so many different characters, attitudes and emotions present at a work meeting you would not pick up on what’s really happening from the discussions. By reading everyone’s body language as they sit at the conference table, you can spot the true messages, power plays and dramas that underlie the superficial words of the group.

Body language is an outward reflection of the real emotions we feel while we are communicating with someone. They may reinforce our verbal message, but they can also contradict and reveal our true thoughts. This is vital in the work place as we need to know if a client really is happy with our services, or if they are simply being polite, which means they’ll find a competitive supplier of our services. We need to know if the boss was satisfied with our project work, or if we didn’t impress him at all.

Many people still find it difficult to accept that a human is just a hairless ape that learned to walk upright and has a clever, advanced brain. This concept is crucial to understanding body language. The verbal channel of communication is used primarily to convey information, while the non-verbal channel is used to negotiate interpersonal attitudes and sometimes substitutes for verbal communication. Some of our non-verbal signals and actions are inborn. Smiling for example, is inborn. Research has shown that children born deaf and blind smile exactly the same as a child who can see and hear. Some debate still exists as to whether some gestures are culturally learned, and become habitual, or if they are genetic. Most basic communication gestures are the same all over the world. People smile when they are happy and frown when angry. Nodding the head is an indication of ‘yes’ almost everywhere and shaking your head from side to side indicates ‘no’ in all cultures. Even babies, when they have had enough milk, instinctively shake their head from side to side to indicate that they’ve had enough.

Whether our body language is learned, or inborn, it’s the most important component of face to face communication. Yet most people, especially men, ignore the signals being sent through body language and take the verbal message and disregard all else. Women are often described as being intuitive. MRI brain scans reveal that women are excellent at picking up subtle subliminal messages sent from people via body language, and therefore can pick up that person’s mood.
This comes from the evolutionary skill of being able to interpret the needs of a baby through its appearance only. Most men are not in the same league as a typical woman when it comes to reading people in situations. If someone says “I’m great, thanks” men take that exactly as it is. Women however might pick up on the body language that could be saying, “I’m having a really bad day”, and will cater to that message.

Here are some of the things you are likely to see at the Monday morning meeting:

The handshake:
Shaking hands is a relic of the caveman era and has its origins in arm wrestling. Attitudes are transmitted unconsciously and with practice and application, certain handshake techniques can have an immediate effect on face-to-face encounters. Dominance or submissiveness is communicated in a handshake through whose hand is on top of the handshake.

The dominant character will unconsciously take the upper hand. This dominance is felt the other person because they are forced to have palm facing up by being underneath. Showing your palms when you talk is a signal that a person is being open and non-threatening because they’re not concealing anything in their hands.

There are several styles of handshake:

Palm down thrust: an aggressive shake style that gives the receiver little chance of establishing an equal relationship.

The glove handshake: the politician’s handshake where the initiator tries to give the receiver the impression that he is trustworthy and honest by placing both hands on the other person’s but it has the reverse effect. Other versions can be where the left hand is used to show extra warmth by grasping the wrist, elbow, arm, or shoulder of the receiver.

The dead fish: a soft, placid shake that communicates lack of confidence, and lack of strength of personality. Can be especially bad if hand is cold and clammy.

The knuckle grinder: the tough guy who makes a point of enforcing his dominance

The stiff arm thrust or pull: used to keep distance, or to pull the receiver into the initiators personal space.

In the next edition we look at hand gestures and other body language signals which you must be receptive to in the sales arena.