Making the first contact

One of the best ways you can begin a meeting is with great body language. Let your enthusiasm and energy show. Stick out your hand. Meet the other person’s eyes and give a good, firm handshake. If you don’t own a good handshake, develop one now. This skill is not difficult, but many people don’t shake hands well. Let the flesh between your thumb and forefinger meet the other person’s flesh between the thumb and forefinger. Press — do not squeeze —the hand. One pump accompanied by eye contact is plenty. One or two more may express great enthusiasm; any more than that can make the person uncomfortable.
Today, the landscape for making the first contact has broadened. For instance, women greeting women in America can touch both hands at the same time as an alternative to a handshake. A hug, even in a business meeting, is appropriate if the relationship between two people warrants this familiarity. Increasingly (especially in Hollywood), hugs between men and women, or two men or two women who know each other, are common. A classic male show of power is to shake hands in the normal fashion and reach with the left hand to also grip the man’s elbow. Watch old tapes of President Clinton who routinely used this two-handed greeting when he was president. However, as you begin taking more careful note of body language and how people relate to each other, you will notice that the space between two people still reveals a lot about the relationship. As you can see in Figure 9-1, friends may stand a foot apart, but you would not stand that close to someone you were being introduced to for the very first time.