Don’t Believe Every Body Language You See

Body language augments rather than replaces the spoken word. The meanings of certain actions or gestures can vary depending on the circumstances and the individual. Consider these examples:

· Sitting erect may indicate a stiff bargaining position, or it may indicate a stiff back. Stay alert to the body language, but combine your observations with the spoken words to determine the correct meaning.

· Gestures of anger are used when a person is genuinely angry; however, these actions can also be employed for effect. Some executives (especially in the entertainment industry) are notorious for using such gestures. But keep in mind that some people are just blustery by nature. Evaluate body language cautiously, just as you do all the other information that comes to you during a negotiation.

Different strokes for different folks

No matter how much you know about body language in general, don’t grow overconfident when applying your knowledge to a specific person — especially someone you don’t know very well. Each individual has unique body language. A child can tell when a parent is really angry, even if the body language that parent uses to indicate serious trouble is the opposite of what the general public uses. For example, although silence usually indicates that a person is calm, some parents clam up when they’re angry. In such families, the children soon learn that silence means real trouble is looming.

Consider the context

As you become more sensitive to body language, you become more conscious of the differences in the meanings of gestures. A clenched fist usually represents anger. Held firmly above the head, it can be a symbol of quiet rage. Pumped up and down, especially if the person is also jumping and squealing, a clenched fist can be an expression of extreme joy.

Prepare for the bluff

Most adults have the art of “faking it” pretty well perfected. People are prone to hide their real feelings in a business setting. Negotiators may display all the signs of accepting a deal, although their true reaction is quite the opposite. When you think the other side is accepting your proposal, try to close the deal. That provides a good check on your reading of the other party’s body language. If you can’t close, what you observed was something other than acceptance. Don’t be fooled the next time you see the same reaction from that person — and keep trying to close.

Smiles are almost always an expression of happiness. However, society sometimes requires a smile when the soul is not happy. The mouth drawn tightly and obligingly back reveals a devotion to duty more than merriment. And a half-smile (one corner of the mouth crooked upward) reveals a wry feeling of superiority — like the smile on the face of the bad guy just before he shoots the good guy in an old Western.

Most of the differences between the body language you see and the intended spirit of the communication are accidental. These differences are generally not the result of a sinister plot. The impact on you will be the same if you are misled. This chapter helps keep you from being misled by body language that is different from the message of the spoken word. When you make such an observation, don’t assume that the other person is intentionally trying to mislead you.

How to close the deal?

Often, closing a deal means physically closing in on the person with whom you’re negotiating. Consider the insurance salesperson who physically leans into the buyer’s space with an assuring nudge for her to sign the application. The agent lowers his voice, softens his tone, leans forward with the completed application, and says, “If all the information is correct, place your name here.”
Closing a negotiation often means closing in. Intimate distance — touching or being 6 to 18 inches apart — is usually reserved for personal, affectionate interactions. However, you may find yourself or your counterpart naturally moving that close as you reach more agreements and draw nearer to closing the deal. A good salesperson knows that an appropriate touch on the customer’s forearm or hand cements the deal.
The body language of acceptance varies widely from one individual to another. The exact point in time at which you get concurrence is more often marked with slight nuances than raucous outbursts. Seldom does someone jump up in joy at the moment of making the decision to close a deal. In my experience, the bigger the deal, the more subtle the display at that magic moment when the other side makes the mental commitment to close the deal. The terms are then generally reviewed by both sides to be sure that the deal is acceptable.
If you close a deal, don’t forget to carry out the terms of the agreement. This follow-up is important. There is no bigger let-down than to shake hands on a deal and then not hear from the other side for days. Be sure that the next step is taken. If it isn’t your direct responsibility, keep checking with the person who is responsible. You are the person who closed the deal, so your integrity is on the line.

Negotiating charades

You can modify the familiar game of charades to sensitize yourself to the importance and meaning of body language. These two formats seem to work best:

• Someone can mime an emotion, and the other players must identify it. This game is simple and fun, and it demonstrates the variety of nonverbal communications available in faceto face communications.
• Players can mime an entire negotiation —either individually or as teams. The other team or player is required to figure out specifically what the negotiation is about and what positions are represented.

Wearing your confidence on your sleeve

During a negotiation, projecting confidence is important. A lack of self confidence can result in nervousness. If your body language reveals that you are nervous, your counterpart may deem that you’re not secure enough to maintain a strong position in the negotiation. This person may be less inclined to compromise on the terms in an effort to reach an agreement. In addition to making sure that your body language expresses self-assurance, you can also benefit from being able to gauge your counterpart’s confidence level. This awareness of the other party’s strength as a negotiator can help you determine your own goals, limits, opening offers, and attempts to close the deal. Watching body language is the key to assessing your counterpart’s degree of comfort during the negotiation.

Just like children, adults who get nervous tend to fidget in their chairs (although this behavior can also indicate boredom or preoccupation with other matters). Nervous fidgeting can also include putting hands into the mouth, tugging at clothing, jingling change, fiddling with items in a purse, or fondling any personal object. When people are nervous, they often increase their distance from those they are negotiating with. Nervous people frequently verbalize their condition without using words through throat clearing, oral pauses, or guttural sounds. Confident people may place their hands in a steeple position (touching the fingertips of both hands together to form what looks like a church steeple). Sitting up straight and using frequent eye contact also shows confidence. Someone who is confident physically sits on a level slightly higher than anybody else. Propping your feet up is not just an expression of confidence, but an act of claiming territory. If you can put your feet on something, you own it.

Ferreting out boredom

One of the most important body language messages to look for during any conversation, but especially in a negotiation, is an indication of boredom. Looking out the window, holding the head up with one hand, doodling in a way that seems to absorb the doodler’s complete attention, drumming fingers on the table — all these indicate that the listener is no longer paying attention. What should you do if you notice that the other party in your negotiation is showing signs of boredom? People who are losing interest may be shifting in their seats, fidgeting, or pointing their feet toward the exit. Don’t start speaking louder or faster, as you may be tempted to do. Instead, say, “Wait. I need a reality check. I’m sensing that I’m losing you. What’s happening?” And then listen. You may find out what’s really keeping this person or group from accepting your idea. Doing a reality check can save a great deal of time and win you respect as a person who is perceptive and willing to risk hearing the truth. This fact alone makes huge points in your favor during any negotiation.

Even the innocents can catch other people’s body language

Some years ago, the great media hoaxer Alan Abel pulled off a hoax on The Phil Donahue Show that ballooned out of all proportion to Alan’s expectations. Alan is still pulling stunts on the media, got himself booked on the daytime talk show along with eight of his elderly pals. The show’s topic was gay senior citizens. What Donahue and the audience didn’t know was that Alan was planning a hoax called FAINT (Fight Against Idiotic Neurotic Television). Alan and his pranksters planned the scenario a week in advance. The scenario involved each of Alan’s pranksters raising a hand to ask a question to the gay senior citizens on stage. When Donahue held the mike for the question, each prankster fainted, pretending to be unconscious for 30 seconds. It was all a hoax, but soon enough, a really bizarre thing happened:

Members of the audience, who were not in on the hoax, began to faint. For real.
Even Donahue removed his coat, feeling hot under the collar. He braved on through the show, musing that the lights on the set must be too hot or that the air conditioning wasn’t functioning properly. After five audience members went down, Donahue evacuated the audience and continued his show without them. The broadcast ended ten minutes early that day. In fact, the joke was to see how long it would take the unflappable Donahue to cave in. Donahue finished the show as unflappable as ever.

The media had a field day with this story, which made the evening news and appeared on page 1 of the New York Post. The hoax was easy to verify because the participants all admitted their respective roles in the caper. The suggestive power of body language has never been demonstrated more convincingly.

If you want to see a video of the hoax, check out Jennifer Abel’s documentary about her father, Abel Raises Cain. It’s all there. Body language is truly contagious. When you start a negotiation, be positive — in your voice, in your stance, in your smile, in every aspect of your being. Others will pick up on it. That’s a fact!

How to see a change of heart?

Observing how someone is sitting or standing is only the first step in reading body language — after all, people aren’t frozen in time like statues. They move; their positions and gestures change with their attitudes and emotions. Notice these shifts. They are important. They may mean that the person is getting restless, or they may mean a shift up or down in the person’s acceptance level. As someone’s acceptance of your ideas grows, you may notice the following indicators:

• Cocking the head
• Squinting the eyes slightly
• Uncrossing the legs
• Leaning forward
• Scooting to the edge of the chair
• Increasing eye contact
• Touching the forehead or chin, as in the statue The Thinker
• Touching you (if the movement is to reassure, and not to interrupt)

Just as you can gauge increasing acceptance to your ideas by watching body language, you can also notice signs of increasing resistance to your ideas. For example, if someone clutches the back of his neck with his palm, you can interpret this gesture quite literally as, “This message is a pain in the neck.”
Here are some other gestures of resistance:

• Fidgeting nervously (cannot accept what is being said)
• Reducing eye contact (cannot accept what is being said)
• Placing hands behind one’s back (indicates an attempt to stay in control of one’s own self — resisting the urge to act out verbally or physically)
• Placing a hand over one’s mouth (may indicate an attempt to hold back a negative comment)
• Locking ankles
• Gripping one’s arm or wrist
• Crossing the arms in front of the chest
• Squinting one’s eyes dramatically
• Making fistlike gestures
• Twisting the feet or the entire body so they point to the door

How to showing that you’re receptive? (and knowing if your counterpart isn’t)

If you pay attention to body language early in a negotiation, you can spot signals of how receptive (that is, how ready to listen and how open to your ideas) your counterpart is. Consider eye contact, for example. Research shows that, during conversation, people look at each other between 30 and 60 percent of the time. A listener who meets your eyes less than 30 percent of the time is probably unreceptive. If eye contact is made more than 60 percent of the time, chances are the listener’s attitude is positive.
Receptive people look relaxed with open hands, displaying the palms, indicating an openness to discussion. The more of the palm that is visible, the greater the receptivity of the person. They lean forward, whether they are sitting or standing. Receptive negotiators unbutton their coats. Public television’s Mr. Rogers always removed his sweater, exemplifying the body language of an open, honest person ready to listen to what you have to say.
By contrast, people who aren’t willing to listen may keep their hands on their hips, lean back in the chair, or protectively fold their arms across their chest. People who aren’t receptive clench their hands into a fist or tightly grip some other body part. Having one leg up on the arm of the chair often appears to be an open posture, but watch out, this position may signal a lack of consideration, especially if the office doesn’t belong to the person demonstrating this behavior.
Studies show that parties are more likely to reach an agreement if they begin a negotiation displaying receptive body language.
This result appears to be true whether the stance was an unconscious decision or a contrived strategy for beginning a meeting in a positive manner. In addition, the defensive postures are also contagious. If one person assumes a defensive posture and holds that position for any period of time, you can actually watch others in the room adopting the same position. It’s amazing but true. Body language is contagious.

How to make 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.

How to know where to stand?

One of the most important observations you can make about a room full of people is the personal space each person commands. During conversation, for example, people don’t lean closely into the space of an important person they think has greater standing than they do (either in wealth, influence, power, or social status). In a study of personal space, rooms of unsuspecting subjects were photographed and later identified. Without fail, the more powerful people are accorded greater personal space by the other people in the room.
Spatial relationships come into play when you set up a room for a meeting. Almost intuitively, people know that an important negotiation warrants a table large enough to keep a formal distance between people. If someone must dominate a meeting, that person is seated at the head of the table. Control over the dominant chair may be the most obvious and enduring sign of power both in the workplace and at home. Seating in a meeting is important, because once the spatial relationships are established, they are not easy to change.
Take a moment before your next meeting and think about what relationship you want to establish with the other attendees. Arrange the seating accordingly. Watch the Coen brothers’ comedy The Hudsucker Proxy for one of the more blatant examples of power defined by the seating position during a meeting. The film is about a mailroom clerk, played by Tim Robbins, who finds himself thrust into the presidency of Hudsucker Corp., run by a brazen Paul Newman. In the boardroom scenes, Newman’s character stands at the foot of a very long and glistening conference room table, his position of control never in doubt.

Using Your Knowledge of Body Language in Your Next Negotiation

From the moment you walk into a negotiation, you should observe the body language of everybody in the room. During the negotiation, keep observing your opponent’s body language. Focus on the four channels: face and head, arms and hands, legs and feet, and torso. When you are so focused on the total person who is talking to you, you will listen better. Your observations of body language will help you pick up unstated nuances such as what items are more important, and what items are less important to the other side. Complete shifts in body language during a negotiation can be more telling than isolated signals. These shifts reveal that an issue is vitally important or is causing stress to the other party. For most of the negotiation, your counterpart will stay in the same general position. Notice any shifts from that position. These movements may very well indicate that the person you are dealing with has changed in attitude in some way. Being aware of this body language can be particularly important if the other party

• Feels that you are talking about a sensitive issue.
• Is losing interest.
• Needs a break or a stretch.
• Is turning off to your arguments.

Watch that body language! It can be like a traffic signal. The shifts in body language can be yellow caution lights telling you to proceed slowly, look, and listen. In the extreme, they are red lights telling you to stop! Stop now! Don’t go further without taking a break. They can also be green lights telling you to go in for the close.
Don’t ignore nonverbal signals. You may even want to include your observations in your written notes just as you include spoken words. This record helps build familiarity with the other person’s unspoken vocabulary. Everybody uses body language differently.

Emphasizing with body language

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.

How to Find Your Blind Spots?

If you get conflicting verbal and nonverbal messages from someone, but that person denies that a discrepancy exists, you are witnessing a blind spot —something you know about others that they themselves are not conscious of. Blind spots cause miscommunications and resentment. In a negotiation, if you suspect the other party has a blind spot, you need to take frequent reality checks. Check out your understanding with your counterpart’s body language. You may even begin with the statement, “I need a reality check.” Then go right into your reading: “I sense I have lost you,” or “I sense we should take a break.”

If you take responsibility for your need, your counterpart is less likely to be defensive, and you are more likely to get truthful information. This way you may get at your opponent’s true feelings. Sometimes you even uncover some underlying interests. Most people have at least one blind spot: one area in which they don’t really know how their words or actions are affecting people. Blind spots are like bad breath — everyone knows except the person who has it. The best way to find your own blind spot is to invite feedback. If the blind spot belongs to another, you need to ask the person if he or she wants your feedback. If the response is no, believe it. You may need to find a higher-up to deal with the issue — someone the individual must listen to.

Positive words but negative body language

Many employees complain that their supervisors give mixed messages with body language. The words are positive, but the body language is negative. For example, your boss calls you in for a meeting. She says, “Good morning,” and begins to discuss your recent improvement in punctuality. However, her arms are crossed at the waist, and her head is angled away from you so that she’s looking at you sideways. You know that these are negative signals. If you have the guts, you may venture, “It looks to me like something may be bothering you.” Your boss may be forthright about her annoyance, or she may pound a fist on the table and deny her true feelings with a sharp reply, “What makes you think anything is bothering me?”

The nervous laugh

One of the most common examples of body language not matching the situation is the nervous laugh. A laugh that is not a reaction to anything humorous signals nervousness or discomfort. In fact, it’s a dead giveaway. If you hear a nervous laugh, let a few beats go by and then turn directly to the source of the laughter and encourage that person to verbalize his or her feelings. Depending on the situation, you may say: “Ben, how do you feel about the pricing structure?” or “Ben, how do you feel about adding Leslie to this team?” Often, the person won’t admit to having any concerns. You know better. Keep probing. You may have to return to the subject a few times, rephrasing your request until the truth comes out.

Interpreting conflicting messages

Reading the body language of another person is not a trick to gain advantage. It’s a tool to improve communication. People who are exhibiting incongruous body language are frequently unaware of the fact that their spoken words and their true feelings, as revealed by their body language, are not consistent. By drawing out those differences and reconciling them, you have done a great service for your side and for the person with whom you are negotiating. If you pick up an incongruity between what a person’s body is saying and what that person’s mouth is saying, you can assume that something is going on. You want to take a reality check and start asking the person questions about what he or she is thinking and feeling. It’s usually one of the following:

• The person is unaware of his or her effect on others.
• The person’s body language is expressing a hidden agenda.
• The person is too tired or is confused.

I remember sitting in a theater watching the film Basic Instinct for the first time. In the film, Michael Douglas plays a San Francisco cop who is fatally attracted to a key suspect in an ice-pick murder. The suspect is played by Sharon Stone, in a star-making performance. Audiences gasped during the now infamous interrogation scene. I gasped too. Watching the film again recently, I was reminded that the interrogation scene is a good example of how body language can cause conflicting messages. In the scene, Douglas and his fellow cops interrogate Stone. She twists and manipulates her words, shamelessly toying with the cops’ libidos. Instead of nailing his suspect, Douglas is entranced by his femme fatale and eventually falls for her scheming ways. Stone is calm and collected during the entire scene, using her body language in a risqué fashion to successfully manipulate the situation.

How to read someone else’s body language?

Being able to accurately read the true attitude and feelings of someone across the table can be enormously important. Seldom do you see adults physically clap their hands over their ears to avoid hearing something, but people have other ways of signaling that they aren’t listening, such as allowing their eyes to wander or attending to an unrelated task.

Disney released a wonderful film called Frank and Ollie about a couple of the world’s greatest observers of body language. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston were two of the original animators of such classics as Cinderella and Bambi. This film shows them mimicking various elements of body language to communicate feelings and then making sketches of their own movements. Watch this movie as a primer on body language; it illustrates the points of this chapter better than all the words ever written on the subject. The ability to read a person’s body language enables you to adjust your approach to that person. Based on what you learn about the other person’s mood or attitude, you can temper your own words and actions appropriately — for example, you can calm down someone who’s agitated or perk up someone who’s bored.

Discover how much fun you can have reading the body language of others. The more you practice this skill, the better you will be at negotiating. The next time you go to an event connected to your work, pause a moment at the door. Instead of looking for someone you know, look over the room. Identify the more influential people. Try to distinguish who wields power. Who are the employers? Who are the employees? What differences in body language make social status apparent? If you’re at a social gathering, see if you can spot very outgoing people. Who is shy? Are any of the couples fighting?

How to match your body language with your words?

Don’t mix and match when it comes to your body language and your spoken words. Even people who haven’t read this book draw meaning from your body language when you speak. People expect corresponding body language to accompany verbal messages. Inconsistent communications from you will throw your listener off, even if the person has never heard the phrase “body language.”
When you’re speaking, be sure that your body language matches your words, if you want your words to be believed. If you are enthusiastic about a project, show that enthusiasm in your body. Don’t recline relaxed on the sofa. The message of disinterest communicated by your body will be remembered far longer than the words of interest that come out of your mouth. Several reasons may explain why your body language may not match your words.

• You’re having an energy drain. When you’re tired, keeping your body properly expressive takes extra energy. Think about the potential positive outcome of your negotiation session. It may provide you with a boost of adrenaline, allowing you to get through the negotiation energized instead of drained. Feed the left side of your brain with positive thoughts and don’t lose a deal because your tired body says, “I don’t care one way or another.” You can always stand up or walk around. If you have to, step outside for a moment to reignite your energy.
• You’re not concentrating on the communication of the moment. As you read about body language, you will notice that many gestures, movements, and mannerisms indicate that a person is actually thinking about a matter other than the current topic of conversation. If you find your mind wandering, the other side will quickly see it in your face. Ask for a break so you can make a phone call and clear a concern out of your mind. When you’re in a negotiating session, be sure that you are in the session with your heart, mind, and soul. Your physical presence may be much less important than your mental presence. Athletes call it “being in the zone.”
• You have developed bad communication habits. Some classic comic sketches illustrate this point: The disgusted spouse utters a terse, “Fine” with lips clamped tight. This reaction lets a partner know that things are anything but fine. And then there is the smiling letch leaning in for the kill who says, “Why, I wouldn’t hurt a fly.” In both of these examples, the body language trumps the spoken word. The listener gets the nonverbal message much more clearly than the verbal message. If you have any mannerisms that project a different meaning from the words you are uttering, work on breaking the habit.

What Our Bodies Can Say

Verbal and written communications are not the only elements of communication in a negotiation — or in life. Good negotiators only get better when they draw meaning and insight from the way a person stands or sits, the way a person dresses, or the panoply of facial expressions that play out during a conversation. That’s why, in my negotiation seminars, I say, “Listen with your ears, your eyes, and every pore in between.”
Different nonverbal communications are associated with different attitudes. Becoming savvy to these relationships can put you at a great advantage. As a negotiator, you have two distinct tasks:

• Make sure that your body language expresses the message you want to send. Your body language needs to be consistent with your words.
• Read the nonverbal signals of the person with whom you are negotiating. You need to recognize when someone is sending conflicting words and actions, and when someone’s gestures add emphasis to the words. When you become a student of body language, you quickly realize that gestures come in packs. Rarely does anyone invoke one random gesture to the exclusion of all others. Rather, there is a symphony of sight and sound, all working together.

Charmers aren’t necessarily the best-looking people in the room; they are the ones who have a command of body language. When such a person focuses on you, you definitely know that the person is interested; the attention can almost make you blush. The person is employing dozens of nonverbal signals to convey his or her focus on you.

Making a career of reading body language

During court trials, most people focus on the lawyers, witnesses, defendants, and victims. In high-profile cases, however, attorneys often hire consultants who concentrate solely on the members of the jury. Working in the courtroom, jury consultants study the body language of the jurors and interpret their reactions to specific witnesses and pieces of evidence. Based on these skilled observations, the consultants try to determine which way the jury is leaning — which witnesses are winning favor and which evidence is most persuasive.
When you reenter the United States after a trip abroad, you usually have to fill out some forms declaring what items you are bringing into the country. You hand the form to an immigration official, who is trained to look at a traveler’s eyes when asking, “Do you have anything to declare?” What the eyes say is much more important than what the form says.