Even when you’re silent, you’re still communicating non verbally. what you speak out of your mouth and what you communicate through your body language may come up to be total different things. If you say one thing, but your body language says something else, your listener will very likely be confused.
What’s in it for me?
- What does body language means
- Importance of body language
- Easy going body language
- Different types of body language
- Body language mistakes to avoid
- Conclusion
- FAQs
What does Body Language means?
In simple words, the way we communicate through our body, through our face and usage of hands is known as body language. 50% of our communication is based on how we act, how we use our hands and arm, touch, how we cover the space and how we look directly into the eyes of people.
It is the form of non-verbal communication. It is something that helps you both personally and professionally to have better relationship and connection with people. When you are interacting with others you’re continuously giving and receiving energy. It can comfort anyone, offend anyone, confuse, draw attention towards you and even can make you more attractive.
Importance of Body Language
What you speak may not be remembered by people, but how you make them feel and how you speak is going to be remembered by them. It is the reason of how much likeable you’re to people.
It is the most effective way to adjust yourself during communicating. You can tell what’s going in somebody’s mind just by observing their body language.
Easy going Body Language
Using positive body language can help you get what you want if you know how to use it. A negative body language can keep you away from getting opportunities. It can also make people around you feel uncomfortable and not want to be around you.
An easy going body language is when you feel comfortable with your own self and not feel weird or awkward around people. However, there are a lot of factors that contribute towards effective body language.
Having an open and easy going body language is the only easy tool that you can use.
Different types of Body Language
FACIAL EXPRESSION
Facial expression plays an important role in knowing what someone is feeling without speaking just by looking at their faces. The facial expressions for happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, excitement and irritation are the same for everybody. It is easily identifiable by human body.
Be silent in those situations where you want your audience to concentrate and focus on what you are saying. Your silence will make them feel that they may have done something wrong.
POSTURE
The way you carry yourselves communicates a lot of information about you. Your way of sitting, walking and standing provides a unique way of perception.
Some tips to improve your posture-
–Be straight and don’t take the laid back approach. Looking comfortable and looking are way too much different from each other. Taking the laid back approach shows you are not high and enthusiastic on life.
-When you speak your palms should be facing outwards.
–Keep changing your position time to time. When speaking on a stage, changing your position shows people that they are not left out.
–Do not lose your natural self. Inculcate these habits but with your natural self.
–Don’t point finger at anyone because this is considered as an aggressive behavior.
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GESTURES
They are the movement of your hands and most importantly, the head while speaking. It emphasizes on an idea or an emotion.
Use your hands to describe because people always follow what you do more than what you speak. Get people to do some activities so that people are following you.
Use your head movements to get them to yes response. This method is known as trial closing, this is a really essential sales technique. When you use this, your audience are more likely to respond you with a yes.
Find out how to act while in a One-to-one conversation.
EYE CONTACT
When you are communicating with someone, a steady eye contact indicates that you are listening carefully and paying attention to them. When you speak, eye contact helps in showing people that you care and you are interested in speaking to them.
Even when you are not communicating and you want to talk to them give a steady eye contact for 5-7 seconds to make them aware about you want to talk.
If you are speaking to a number of people, make sure to shift your attention for every 2-3 seconds. Nobody wants to be ignored, everybody wants that adequate attention to be paid to them.
Connect better with people even when you are not communicating by smiling through your eyes. This technique is known as “smizing”. It is real hard to fake it. So, it should come from within.
SPACE AND STAGE COVERAGE
Do you know that you can make anyone feel uncomfortable because you may take a lot of space and might be dominating? It almost feels like you are invading someone’s privacy. Although it differs from situation to situation.
When speaking in front of public on a stage you want to make sure that you are covering the whole stage and not just a particular spot.
Always reach early at the speaking venue so that you can analyse the speaking area in advance that has been assigned to you. It is always better to be prepared as to how you want to cover the stage in accordance to the length of your speech. For example, change your position with every para or point as required.
Suppose you have to deliver longer sessions, it is always better to walk down to the audience and walk between them so that they will realize that you are one of their own.
TOUCH
A great way of showing affection and sympathy is through physical touch. Examples of such which makes anyone feel good are a simple touch on the shoulder, a warm hug, a firm hand shake, etc.
Body Language mistakes to avoid
In the real world, you may make some non-verbal mistakes that you are unaware of, you are probably making these mistakes unknowingly.
So it is really important to identify such habits and work on them as soon as possible. Now if you don’t then you don’t come out as a confident person.
1. Eye contact-
Avoiding eye contact or too much of it both ways you are committing a blunder. When you get a little distracted while you are speaking or you are so nervous that you fail to make eye contact.
2. Slouching-
When you speaking to someone and your body posture is not straight and it is bend then that is a mistake. It shows that you have a very poor self-esteem.
3. Weak hand shake-
Make to give a firm hand shake to the people that you meet. It is a sign of authority.
4. Arms folded-
When you are talking make use of your hands rather than keeping your arms folded.
5. Frowning –
No one likes people who have frown or aweful expressions on their face while speaking or doing their work.
6. Invading others space-
No one likes people who crosses personal boundaries. It’s important to maintain your boundaries while talking to someone.
7. Fidgeting-
It includes playing with your hair, picking ear, biting nails, clicking pen, etc.
8. Glancing at the clock-
We all are in a hurry, we all want to go home early. We may be unaware of it but we must stop making this mistake. That is very unprofessional and people will not like it.
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Conclusion
Not everyone uses the same gestures to convey the same meaning. So, be aware of how you interpret and how you use your body language. Never assume that you have accurately identified other person’s body language because context matters too. Faking gestures is equivalent to lying make sure you do not do that. It is important to make sure that your body language is clear in interactions with people you don’t know very well. lastly, be honest and non-judgmental.
FAQs
Be kind and humble as you can. Make eye contact while you are talking to someone. Lastly, be friendly and open.
If they are finding reasons to talk to you, touch you, compliments you more often and does a lot of eye contact. If he/she is laughing and looking you at the same time then that’s a good indication because they want to see if their crush is having a good time.
Be bold very in your body movements and at the same time be graceful.
Be confident and smile. That’s the only thing you can do to look more approachable. But, don’t smile too big that you look like a creep.
Whoever your idol is mimic them, observe their expressions and body movements, observe how slow or fast they speak and incorporate everything they do in your body language. Simple.
