at the slides. Now, reading slides and looking at people occupy two different parts of our brain, and there’s a lot of inefficiency in switching back and forth. So when we’re looking at the speaker, we’re getting one set of cues. When we look at the slides, we get another set. When we switch, we lose a bit of either information stream.
So the result is two incomplete sets of information. That’s tiring and indeed annoying for us, so we get cranky and tune out.
That’s what PowerPoint (and any similar slideware or presentation program) does. With some exceptions, it adds to our information load, overwhelming it even faster, and causing us to tune out.
Don’t do it.
It’s All about the Handshake, Isn’t It?
You’ve probably been told a thousand times that any good meeting with someone new begins with a firm handshake. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a firm handshake, but in fact the important part of a meeting has nothing to do with the handshake and everything to do with the attitude that you bring to the meeting.
Before you say anything or even reach the other person, you telegraph, with a thousand subtle cues, how you’re feeling about yourself, and how you feel about the other person. Indeed, the relationship has largely already been set by the time you’re close enough to shake hands. Hand shaking just seals the deal. How you stand, how you move your arms, what your posture conveys, the expression on your face, the way you’re walking, and yes, what you’re wearing all affect the relationship more powerfully than that poor overstressed handshake.
Finally, generalizing from all the bad communications classes you’ve taken and coaches you’ve worked with, there are no secret power gestures or ways to position your hands or face so that strong men salute, women swoon, and everyone runs to do your bidding.
Individual gestures simply aren’t that powerful. Really. Let that one go. Lose the steepled fingers or the enigmatic smile or the T-bar move. None of those do much more than occupy your conscious mind a little too much, distracting you from what you should be thinking about.3
So it’s time to let go of the old rules and learn what’s really going on. Let’s begin with those much misunderstood gestures.
Two Conversations at Once
Every communication is two conversations. The first conversation is the one you’re aware of—the spoken content. The second conversation is the one that we’re all unconscious experts on—the nonverbal one.4
When the two are aligned, you can pay attention to the words, because the body language supports the content and so you can hear it. But when the two are sending out different messages, you believe the body language every time. That’s why it’s important. The body language always trumps the spoken content.
Moreover, these two conversations always go together. They are so integral to one another that most people tend to gesture with their hands and face even when they’re talking on the phone. Think about it. No one else can see them, yet they keep gesturing regardless. Why do they do it?
Is it just habit? No, there’s a profound reason why people gesture when they attempt to communicate, even when they can’t be seen.
We tend to think that the second conversation is merely an accompaniment to the first. We talk, and we wave our hands in the air, as a poor substitute or stand-in for content. We believe, if we ever think about it, that the gestures are just follow-ons: something to do with our hands, or something that clarifies the meaning, emphasizes whatever’s being said, or helps keep the other person listening. Or something that follows the words, perhaps—a physical flourish to enhance our sometimes less-than-thrilling (spoken) content.
That’s not what’s going on. In fact, gesture can convey meaning independent of words.
Try the following experiment. Sit in a public place, say, a restaurant where the tables are close together and the conversation is lively. Sit with your back to a pair of people who are having one of those animated conversations. Listen hard. Try to get as much of it as you can.
You will be surprised at how hard it is to follow the conversation. You will hear broken phrases, agreement to something you haven’t caught, simultaneous talking, abrupt changes of topic you weren’t expecting (but, for some reason, the speakers were), and apparently incoherent exchanges of information. If it’s an average, reasonably equal exchange, you will be astonished at how fragmentary and elusive the communication is.
Why is that? Because we communicate first with the gesture for some things, and only second with the word. Because the “second conversation” is really the first. For certain kinds of communications, indeed most of the ones we really care about, we communicate first with the gesture and second with the word.
What does that mean? It means that when people communicate topics of great importance to them, they gesture what they intend a split second before the word comes out.
Why should we care about that? Because it turns the commonsense way we think about word and gesture upside down, and because those interesting implications flow from that inversion of common sense.
Gesture comes first.
You can confirm this for yourself if you go back to that restaurant, this time keeping your eyes firmly trained on those two people in conversation and listening very closely. Focus especially on gestures that accompany the noun phrases.
How did you get there?
I took an airplane.
Let’s say that’s one of the exchanges you hear and see. Watch the gesture associated with the word airplane. Depending on the information being conveyed, the gesture will start before the entire sentence or just before the word airplane itself.
If there’s strong attitude, such as, something like, Of course I took an airplane; it’s three thousand miles away over water. How else would I get there, you idiot? then the gesture may convey all the emotional freight in the communiqué—all the Of course it’s three thousand miles away over water how else would I get there you idiot part.
The person might shrug and turn her palms upward, while raising her eyebrows and looking hard at the interlocutor. She might shake her head and offer a half-smile. Those facial and hand gestures would get across all the emotional meaning she wished to convey to her friend. Maybe not in precisely those words, but close enough for both parties to get the message.
It’s the nature of most of our communications that they unroll like this one; we use surprisingly few words and convey the emotional colors and tones of the conversation mostly through gesture.
The Language of Love
When two people know each other well, the words are even less important.
Why? Because when two people know each other well, gesture can take up a larger part of the communications between them. In this regard, gesture becomes a kind of shortcut that allows the two to alert one another to important shifts in the conversation or strong feelings or topics to avoid. When two lovers meet, for example, not the ones in movies who have just fallen in love, but those who have had an intimate relationship for a long time, a touch, a few murmured words, and a kiss may convey all that needs
