Pound the table. Wave your arms. Jump up and down. These are a few of the classic ways you can use your body to emphasize communication. It’s the equivalent of scrawling something in all caps and red letters. However, save these demonstrations until you need them.
If you use loudness throughout a negotiation, the added volume carries no special meaning when you really need it. You just seem bellicose. The late, great Johnny Carson used to refer to his lawyer as Bombastic Bushkin. The tag fit, and it stuck. Soon, no one around this particular lawyer paid much attention to the bombasity.
I once went into a print shop with a rush project. The owner slapped a big red sticker on the order. It felt good. He threw my project on a stack of work. Everything in the stack had the same red sticker. My heart sank. The red sticker lost all its meaning. Raising your voice too often has the same result. The key to emphasis is a change from the norm. Body language always involves a cluster of movements. It should naturally be tied into voice levels, tempo, and loudness.
Sometimes, you can create extra emphasis by exhibiting body language that runs counter to the communication. For example, you may lean forward and quietly, slowly say that you are very, very angry. Here the emphasis is created just as powerfully — maybe more so — than if you had been yelling at the top of your lungs. Surprises can occur in any negotiation. Generally speaking, however, you should know going into a negotiating session what will and won’t be important. Hold back your emphasis until you get to the stuff that is really important to you. This strategy is why a good negotiator lets the merely annoying issues slide by and saves the emphasis for the truly important points.
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