Secrets Of Nonverbal Communication | Hacker News Reader

Secrets Of Nonverbal Communication

forbes.com

25 pointsjmonegro13 comments

I wonder if this book has any novel information that isn't available in the dozens of other books on the subject, or in the one I read fifteen years ago that covered all the examples in the Forbes article.

Although I've found it occasionally amusing at interviews and meetings, since reading that one book many years ago, to lead other people through series of posture changes, or to make some overconfident fool drop his alpha posture by adopting the same, in general these techniques are for bullshitters. If you're touching your neck because you feel uneasy/unsure, DO something about that. Don't find ways to appear competent, confident, whatever -- be competent, confident, whatever by knowing what you're doing and talking about.

These postures, gestures, etc. will flow naturally from the ease and confidence of having achieved something honestly. Like Lupe Fiasco says: The wings don't make you fly and the crown don't make you king.

Any suggestions for books of this sort? I've never read anything on the subject, and just realized how many of these I've been doing without realizing. (Especially "I'm the boss", oops.)

I wonder, however, if adopting the body language of the way you want to feel will make you actually feel that way, in the same way that adopting a facial expression will make you feel the corresponding emotion.

And with your suggestion to "be competent, confident, whatever by know what you're doing and talking about. These postures, gestures, etc, will flow naturally" - from personal experience I know that being competent does not automatically make me feel competent or confident, and it certainly doesn't make me appear that way.

I can easily see how these techniques can be used for bullshitters, but at the same time it might be necessary for someone learning how to honestly feel differently to know how to act differently.

Have you ever seen the Dog Whisperer? This guy Cesar Milan works with dogs with huge behavioral problems. With a dog that's incredibly fearful, he sometimes takes its tail and physically lifts it up, so it's in the position that a confident dog would hold its tail. When Cesar does this, the fearful dog becomes noticeably calmer. That's not the only thing Cesar does, but addressing the dog's "body language" definitely helps. Probably the same kind of thing works with humans too.

> Have you ever seen the Dog Whisperer?

Cesar Milan's body language communicates to dogs and humans that he is the leader.

"When Cesar walked down the stairs of Patrice and Scott's home then, and crouched down in the back yard, JonBee looked at him, intently. And what he saw was someone who moved in a very particular way. Cesar is fluid. "He's beautifully organized intra-physically," Karen Bradley, who heads the graduate dance program at the University of Maryland, said when she first saw tapes of Cesar in action. "That lower-unit organization—I wonder whether he was a soccer player." Movement experts like Bradley use something called Laban Movement Analysis to make sense of movement, describing, for instance, how people shift their weight, or how fluid and symmetrical they are when they move, or what kind of "effort" it involves. Is it direct or indirect—that is, what kind of attention does the movement convey? Is it quick or slow? Is it strong or light—that is, what is its intention? Is it bound or free—that is, how much precision is involved? If you want to emphasize a point, you might bring your hand down across your body in a single, smooth motion. But how you make that motion greatly affects how your point will be interpreted by your audience. Ideally, your hand would come down in an explosive, bound movement—that is, with accelerating force, ending abruptly and precisely—and your head and shoulders would descend simultaneously, so posture and gesture would be in harmony. Suppose, though, that your head and shoulders moved upward as your hand came down, or your hand came down in a free, implosive manner—that is, with a kind of a vague, decelerating force. Now your movement suggests that you are making a point on which we all agree, which is the opposite of your intention. Combinations of posture and gesture are called phrasing, and the great communicators are those who match their phrasing with their communicative intentions—who understand, for instance, that emphasis requires them to be bound and explosive. To Bradley, Cesar had beautiful phrasing."

"What the Dog Saw" by Malcolm Gladwell

http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_05_22_a_dog.html

Curbside appeal has several components, starting with looks. Tidy, neat, conservative clothes are preferable, Navarro says. A good rule of thumb: mirror, don't shock. "Observe how upper management dresses, and follow their lead," he advises. "Casualness can kill credibility." Unless, that is, you work in a place where the top brass wear jeans and polo shirts, like, say, CBS Studios in Hollywood, where Navarro recently discovered he was the only person in a suit.

I don't know about this "tidy, neat, conservative" stuff. For people working in a creative field, I think tidy, neat and conservative would be detrimental to success. It's a generational thing, too. People don't dress like the did in the 50's any more for a reason.

For me it comes down to taste and respect for norms. I've worked in hacking environments where as long as you've got clothes on and showered yesterday you're fine. I also worked at Accenture where the dress code was "smart casual" which meant "tidy, neat, conservative." I prefer hackers but Accenture paid better.

These days I work at a creative agency and although there's no dress code I have to collaborate with co-workers and rich clients. If I wore my most comfortable frayed, discolored, "liberal" clothes I'd feel lots more creative but would fear for my job. I'm not Michelangelo or a scientist, I'm just building web sites. But there are serious artists here who work with me and they dress "tidy, neat, liberal." When they wear shorts and sandals, it looks good. The reason is, they spend their money on beautiful clothes. There's a conscious way to do progressive and then there's a poor, just rolled out of bed, I don't care way.

$100 jeans (e.g.) are a signal of status, not taste.

$300 jeans are a signal of status, not taste.

$100 jeans are a signal of taste.

This is just the sort of self-important self-congratulation you would expect from "Forbes".

I would suppose that "Forbes" readers are upper management, and, like George Will, only own a single pair of jeans worn once yearly. Of course looking like "upper management" is the right thing to tell upper management readers who either never had any sense of style to begin with, or have had it ground out of them over the course of years of private boys schools, ivy league colleges, and board room meetings.

They say that everyone in the FBI is either an accountant or a lawyer, and nobody ever meets the lawyers. I think this is an article by an ex-FBI accountant telling you how to dress like an OCD accountant.

I foresee a whole lot of people making themselves look awkward and stilted if they try to integrate the techniques from the book.

People naturally adopt confident, outgoing, friendly body language when they're feeling confident, outgoing and friendly.

Trying to work it in reverse is a bit like trying to ride a bike while thinking of all the details of cycling - it looks a bit naff and you're likely to crash.

If people really want to adopt confident body language they'd be better off doing things to make them feel more confident - say getting in shape physically or skydiving.

I'd say it's still useful to know what confident, outgoing and friendly body language looks like, so you can recognize it in others and yourself. For one thing, it might help you deduce what kinds of actions make people more confident, outgoing and friendly, so you can try doing those things yourself. For another, knowing whether somebody else is confident or not can be important in deciding how to relate to them (you don't want to overwhelm an unconfident person).

It's definitely more of a sensory ('input') skill than an active ('output') skill though.

These 'self-improvement' gimmicks are a kind of tax on people newly intent on improving themselves. They are beneath the dignity of a true hacker.

If you try to mess with your body language you'll just look creepy. I suppose an exception to this is if the person you're trying to impress is sufficiently dumb and insensitive as to not notice. In which case why bother trying to impress him?

Instead of trying to project the image of a confident, kind person, try being a confident, kind person. The body language will follow naturally.

Some of the items are regional (east coast/west coast), but Joe Navarro is great. His book on poker tells is amazing. Reading it is like taking off glasses the next time you play a game.

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