What you always wanted to know about body language

By GREG CALLAGHAN

What’s the best handshake in the business environment? 
One that builds rapport. If the person you’re meeting has quite a firm handshake, aim to match it; if it’s softer, reduce your grip.

firm handshake

This helps the other person feel you’re not trying to overpower them and shows them the relationship is equal. Be mindful of cultural variations, however. Even in Australia, country people tend to come in from a longer distance for a handshake than city people. 

What are the five worst body gestures that could sink your chances in a job interview? (1) Either not enough or too much eye contact. Always match the interviewer’s level of eye contact.

eye contact

(2) Slouching, especially with your legs pointed towards the exit door. This projects disengagement and indifference. (3) Fidgeting or touching things. Shows you’re either bored or nervous. (4) Crotch display

Crotch display

or the foot-on-leg position.

foot-on-leg

Both signal a competitive nature, which can be interpreted as a negative. (5) Hands behind your head or arms folded.

Hands behind your head

The first reads as superior; the second as defensive. Sit with your hands on your lap: it’s a more humble approach.  

How much of a person’s basic personality traits (for example, extrovert, introvert, anxiety-prone, laid-back etc) can you tell from their body language? 
You can’t judge a personality from just one piece of body language. However, it’s generally true that extroverts tend to touch others more, lean outwards, thrive on external attention, and move quickly. Introverts tend to touch themselves, lean inward and have slower action/reaction times. 

Studies show that men tend to project more powerful body language when they’re with other males. What strategies, then, should a woman take in a male-dominated work environment? 
Have your desk facing the door from a corner of your office. Use good eye contact. Don’t look down or away, which suggest shyness and/or submissiveness. Match a man’s handshake. Feel free to take up more room when you’re in a meeting – don’t appear small. Don’t use words or body language that appears overly deferential. Lean forward when listening; stand straight while speaking. Dress appropriately.

Tell us about the giveaways when men and women are “into” one another. 
There are obvious ones such as the face platter, in which a woman places her head on her hands.

her head on her hands

Proximity signals - placing a glass or handbag close to the male - also show a level of trust and acceptance. Her legs and feet will tend to point toward him. She may toss her head back and flick her hair

flick her hair

, or give a side glance with her head down and eyes up, Princess Diana style. She may try to fix something he is wearing – straightening his tie etc – or touch him a little more than is her custom. Rolling her hips when she’s walking away, or turning back and giving a smile over her shoulder are more obvious signs. The bloke? He’ll give longer-than-usual glances, lean forward, and may readjust his tie or shirt cuff. If he’s standing he’ll have his hands on his belt near the crutch to display maleness. 

Studies have shown that men tend to over-read sexual interest from women. She might flick her hair and smile but all she’s doing is being sociable rather than flirting. How can he be sure? 
Yes, playing with hair or flicking it back can also be a sign of nervousness in a woman. You need what we call the three Cs – clusters of signals (at least three or four positive signals), congruence (where her words match her body language) and context (the social environment you’re in at the time). Some men require at least three or four signals from a woman before it sinks in that she is interested…  

So women are better at reading body language than men. 
Yes, twice as good. Research from Harvard University suggests that when reading expressions and decoding situations, women were correct 87% of the time while men scored only 42%. Women are much better at reading emotion. This may be due to their having children: learning to read facial expressions and determine needs non-verbally.

A recent Dutch study found that waiters get much larger tips when they use the same words and speak in a similar tone to their customers. What can we learn from this? 

Using the customer’s language - and their level of vocabulary - helps to build rapport, which is why it’s a part of so much sales training today. If a customer uses simpler words than you, adjust your speech so you at least sound on their wavelength. Never try to change their words, however. If someone says to you, “This seems to be an issue”, don’t ask them, “What seems to be the problem?” What you’ve done is turn an “issue” into a “problem”. Tone - the way we use our voice, as opposed to what we say - is also important, and represents up to 38% of total communication. Mirroring is so successful because people prefer to speak to like-minded people.

We know that people without much of a conscience - sociopaths and hardened criminals - are the best liars. Who else are good liars? 
The hardest types to read are those who’ve been trained to communicate with body language – politicians, actors and businesspeople who are trained to project a certain persona or image. They can spend years learning to project body signals that don’t really reflect who they are inside. There’s a standard tactic to detect whether someone is lying, based on the “constructed” and “remembered” parts of the brain. I would ask someone what they did last week. Then I would ask them what they are doing next week and watch their eyes. They will access the remembered information with the first question; then they’ll access the constructed side with the second question. The third question would be the one in which I would seek the truth. The most basic telltale sign of lying is the so-called Pinocchio effect, where blood rushes to your nose and you touch it to counteract the effect. Covering your lips with your fingers and looking away can also betray dishonesty. 

A new study from Columbia and Harvard universities shows that certain male postures not only make people feel more commanding, but remarkably, can double their testosterone levels. 
The way we sit, stand or move changes the way we feel. The way we feel can affect our hormone levels. If you’re able to change your body language to match how you want the world to see you and you manage to stick with it, over time you will become the person you’re projecting - your internal world will reflect the outer. It has been shown over time that body language can even change the way we look, and our sexual attractiveness, whether it be a downward smile, or a more confident stride.

SOURCE

13:00:00 - By Vincent 0

Concluding Your Presentation: End With A Bang, Not With A Whimper.

BY Pivotal Public Speaking

Your conclusion should do much more than simply tell your listeners that your presentation is over. Your entire presentation, in fact, can hinge on the final impression you make. It's that last impression that can linger the longest. So preparing a strong ending to your presentation is every bit as important as preparing a strong opening.

A strong opener grabs your audience's attention and leads them to your key messages; a strong close takes them back to your key messages and brings your presentation full circle to your ultimate objective.

Plan your conclusion.
Your conclusion is a critical part of your presentation. It's where your entire presentation is heading. It should bring your presentation full circle to the objective you've been building towards. It should reinforce your key messages. It should sound like a conclusion, leaving no doubt that itis a conclusion. It should add to the positive impression that hopefully you will have created with your audience.


Conclusions should be short.
Don't ramble. An ending that drags on can actually undo much of the positive impact of an otherwise good presentation. Once you announce you're about to wind up, don't go on talking ... and talking.

"you should be clear about what you want your listeners to feel, think, anddo at the conclusion of your presentation."

If it's a call to action, make it crystal clear.
If you're concluding a presentation designed to persuade your audience, your conclusion should have two key elements: a final call to action based on the argument you've just made, and a reason to act.

Your call to action should be clear and specific. Your audience should be left with no doubt about what it is you're asking.

At the same time, you should be clear about what you want your listeners to feel, think, and do at the conclusion of your presentation. The reason to act should be framed in terms of what matters to them. So avoid phrases like "I want you to ..." Instead, for example, if your listeners have been looking for ways to increase their work productivity, make it clear to them that your call to action represents an effective way to achieve their goal. Show them how your call to action serves their interests.

Stay on message.
Be careful not to tuck into your conclusion new ideas or messages that you did not include in your presentation. That runs the risk of confusing your audience and obscuring your original messages.

Obvious as it may seem, be absolutely certain that your conclusion extends logically from everything preceding it. You clearly don't want to offer a conclusion that's disconnected from the body of your presentation. At the same time, don't leave out references to a major point you may have made much of in your presentation.

Make your last impression a lasting one.
People tend to recall best what they hear last. So prepare and rehearse your conclusion with special care. Consider how you can make your conclusion memorable both in substance and delivery.

Use some of the techniques from the successful presenter's toolbox. Consider, for example, combining intonation, pauses-and especially, to-the-point phrases that are likely to stay with your audience. Jack Welch, in his early days as CEO of General Electric, faced head-on the need for radical changes in the company's business direction. He would often end meetings with a simple call to the company's employees: "Change ... before you have to." The message behind that sound bite was unmistakable, and eventually resonated throughout the company. It was perhaps the best and most successful summation of Welch's business philosophy.

Speak or read?
It's usually better to speak your conclusion without reading it. If you're more comfortable using notes, put them in bullet form, listing the main ideas and messages you want to reiterate and reinforce from your presentation. Keeping your eyes focused on your audience instead of your notes is always helpful, the more so when your conclusion is a call to action.

When your presentation is followed by Q-&-A's.
If a Q-&-A session follows your presentation, don't stop talking when the questions are done. Have a strong finishing flourish ready as your final statement. Your best summation, however brief, should be the last thing your listeners hear. You can repeat your closing statement or re-phrase it, underscoring your key message one final time.

SOURCE

13:00:00 - By Vincent 0

My Blackberry Is Not Working! - Apple vs windows. A must see! Brilliant

Absolutley brilliant. almost 25 million views. I understand why. 

British humor at it's best. What do you think?

15:04:00 - By Vincent 0

Discourage Critical Feedback If You Want To Improve Faster

By Gavin Meikle 

I’ve been training presentation and public speaking skills for more than ten years now and today I’d like to share one thing I learned which has had the biggest single impact on the results I get.   If you are curious to know what it it, then read on.

I still remember the first bit of feedback I got when I stood up to give a talk.   The giver, no doubt intending to be helpful told me that I had said “um” 42 times in my three minute talk.   It’s all too easy to be critical but the question is, does giving critical feedback work?  Does it have the desired effect of improving performance and changing behaviour?   I’ve been a manager and a trainer for more than 20 years and I have learned the hard way that most critical feedback, no matter how well meant, has the opposite effect.

Why should this be?   Well I’d like you first to follow the instructions in the following statement. Ll

What ever you do, – Do not think of a purple elephant!   Under no circumstances should you think of a purple elephant!

So what happened?  Of course you couldn’t do anything else but imagine a purple pachyderm.   It’s the way or mind works, we cannot not think of something.   Our attention inevitably goes to the thing that is unwanted or forbidden.

Now imagine you say to someone, “don’t keep saying um.  You have a habit of saying it at the end of every sentence and you must stop saying um if you are to improve.”   Immediately your attention is drawn to the very thing that you don’t want to do as an a result you do more of it!      “Energy flows where attention goes”

Now imagine i said to you this instead. “I want you to concentrate on saying nothing at the end of every sentence.  Put a pause in, as you think of the next thing you are going to say.”   Now notice what you focus on.

But there is more to it than this.   Critical feedback hurts!

When I started teaching presentation skills I used to give lots of “constructive” feedback which inevitably meant pointing out things that people were doing wrong.    No matter how sensitively I gave this feedback, I could see the pain in the eyes of my students and despite their accepting nods, Is till saw the same unwanted behaviours repeated time after time.

And then I went to America for an NLP trainers workshop. During those long hard three weeks we would all be expected to give lots of presentations but a the beginning of the course, Robert Dilts our tutor introduced the concept of “Positive Feedback Only”  He challenged us to focus on commenting solely on what we liked about the presenters delivery, structure or visual aids and other than that to phrase or suggestions for improvement in terms of  “what presenter could do more of that would make his talk even better”.

Initially we were all sceptical about this approach but we quickly discovered that it has a hauge impact on the presenter and people improved far faster than using traditional critical feedback techniques.

When I got back from the States I incorporated this approach into my own one day workshops and the impact was huge!   The degree of improvement I started seeing over a day was at least 25% greater than previously.   So if you need some help with your presenting here are some suggestions to help you get the most change in the shortest possible time;

• Tell your audiences to keep any negative feedback to themselves but that you will be delighted to receive any amount of positive feedback.  My good friend Richard Wilkins does this at the start of every talk and it works a treat as well as getting a good laugh and lots of nods of agreement.
• Encourage others to confine their feedback to two areas – What specifically did I do that you liked or that worked?  What could I do more of that would make it even better.
• If you are looking for a trainer or coach, ask them how they give  feedback.  If the tell you that they will spend any more than 5% of the time telling you what you are doing wrong – walk away!

source

13:00:00 - By Vincent 0

Comfort zone challenge, day nr 4

Comfort zone challenge, day nr 4, making eye contact and smile.

14:04:00 - By Vincent 0

Discomfort Zone: How to Master the Universe

BY LEO BABAUTA

‘The only thing I can’t stand is discomfort.’ ~Gloria Steinem

Of all the skills I’ve learned in the past 7 years of changing my life, one skill stands out:

Learning to be comfortable with discomfort.

If you learn this skill, you can master pretty much anything. You can beat procrastination, start exercising, make your diet healthier, learn a new language, make it through challenges and physically grueling events, explore new things, speak on a stage, let go of all that you know, and become a minimalist. And that’s just the start.

Unfortunately, most people avoid discomfort. I mean, they really avoid it — at the first sign of discomfort, they’ll run as fast as possible in the other direction. This is perhaps the biggest limiting factor for most people, and it’s why you can’t change your habits.

Think about this: many people don’t eat vegetables because they don’t like the taste. We’re not talking about soul-wrenching pain here, not Guantanamo torture, but a taste that’s just not something you’re used to. And so they eat what they already like, which is sweets and fried stuff and meats and cheeses and salty things and lots of processed flour.

The simple act of learning to get used to something that tastes different — not really that hard in the grand scheme of life — makes people unhealthy, often overweight.

I know, because this was me for so many years. I became fat and sedentary and a smoker and deeply in debt with lots of clutter and procrastination, because I didn’t like things that were uncomfortable. And so I created a life that was deeply uncomfortable as a result.

The beautiful thing is: I learned that a little discomfort isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can be something you enjoy, with a little training. When I learned this, I was able to change everything, and am still pretty good at changing because of this one skill.

Master your fear of discomfort, and you can master the universe.

Avoidance of Discomfort

When people are stressed, they often turn to cigarettes, food, shopping, alcohol, drugs … anything to get rid of the disomfort of the thing that’s stressing them out. And yet, if you take a deeper look at the stress, it’s really an unfounded fear that’s causing it (usually the fear that we’re not good enough), and if we examined it and gave it some light of day, it would start to go away.

When people start to exercise after being sedentary, they are uncomfortable. It’s hard! It can make you sore. It’s not as easy as not exercising. It’s not something you’re used to doing, and you fear doing it wrong or looking stupid. And so you stop after awhile, because it’s uncomfortable, when really it’s not horrible to be uncomfortable for a little while. We’re not talking about incredible pain, but just discomfort.

When people try a healthier diet, they often don’t like it — eating veggies and raw nuts and flaxseeds and fruits and tofu or tempeh or black beans isn’t as thrilling as eating fried, fatty, salty or sweet foods. It’s a form of discomfort to change your taste buds, but the truth is, it can easily happen if you just get through a little discomfort.

Discomfort isn’t bad. It’s just not what we’re used to. And so we avoid it, but at the cost of not being able to change things, not being healthy, not being open to adventure and the chaos of raw life.

Mastering Discomfort

The way to master discomfort is to do it comfortably. That might sound contradictory, but it’s not. If you are afraid of discomfort, and you try to beat discomfort with a really gruelling activity, you will probably give up and fail, and go back to comfort.

So do it in small doses.

1. Pick something that’s not hard. Take meditation as an example. It’s not really that hard — you just sit down and pay attention to your body and breath, in the present moment. You don’t have to empty your mind (just notice your thoughts), you don’t have to chant anything weird, you just sit and pay attention. If you don’t like meditation, try a new healthy food, like kale or raw almonds or quinoa. Or a fairly easy exercise if you’re sedentary, like walking or jogging.
2. Just do a little. You don’t have to start by doing 30 minutes of something you’re not used to doing. Just do a few minutes. Just start.
3. Push out of your comfort zone, a little. My friend and Zen priest Susan O’Connell has a favorite meditation instruction that you can use for any activity actually: when you’re meditating and you feel like getting up, don’t; then when you feel the urge to get up a second time, don’t; and when you feel the urge to get up a third time, then get up. So you sit through the urge, the discomfort, twice before finally giving in the third time. This is a nice balance, so that you’re pushing your comfort zone a little. You can do this in exercise and many other activities — push a little.
4. Watch the discomfort. Watch yourself as you get a bit uncomfortable — are you starting to complain (internally)? Are you looking for ways to avoid it? Where do you turn to? What happens if you stay with it, and don’t do anything?
5. Smile. This is not trivial advice. If you can smile while being uncomfortable, you can learn to be happy with discomfort, with practice. When I did the Goruck Challenge in 2011, it was 13 hours of discomfort — raw and bloody knees, sand in my shoes as a hiked and ran with 60+ pounds on my back, carrying teammates and logs, doing pushups and crabwalks and other exercises, needing the bathroom and being tired and hungry and cold. And yet, I practiced something simple: I tried to mantain a smile through all this discomfort. It’s an important practice.

Repeat this practice daily. It will be strange, perhaps difficult, at first, but soon your comfort zone will expand. If you practice it enough, with different activities, your comfort zone will expand to include discomfort. And then you can master the universe.

What You Can Now Master

If you master discomfort, what can you now master as a result? Just about anything:

1. Procrastination. We procrastinate to avoid something that’s not comfortable, but if you can learn to stay with that task, even if it’s not comfortable. The discomfort isn’t bad. Those of you going through theProcrastination module in my Sea Change Program are learning about dealing with the discomfort of staying with your important task.
2. Exercise. We avoid exercise because it’s not comfortable, but if we expand the comfort zone a little at a time, we can make exercise something we’re comfortable with, after a little repetition.
3. Writing. If you want to write but always seem to put it off, that’s because writing is often difficult, or less comfortable than checking email or social networks (for example). Stay with the discomfort, and you’ll write more than ever.
4. Eating healthy. It’s amazing how much our taste buds can change over time, if we gradually get used to healthier foods. That means going through small periods of discomfort, but it’s not that bad in little doses.
5. Meditation. We avoid the disomfort of sitting and doing nothing, of focusing on the present. But it’s not that hard — just a little uncomfortable.
6. Waking early. Waking early means being a little tired for a little while, but that’s not a horrible thing. Read more about rising early.
   
7. Learning a language/instrument. Want to learn something new? That means doing something you’re not used to, by definition, and so we often quit before we master this new skill, simply because (you guessed it) it makes us uncomfortable. Stay with the discomfort, and before long you’ll enjoy learning this new skill.
8. Clutter. Clutter is just another form of procrastination. You don’t put things away, or you let a pile of things you don’t need build up, because it’s not comfortable dealing with it right now (as compared to, say, browsing the Internet or watching TV). But dealing with something right now isn’t that hard once you get past the discomfort.
9. Reading novels. We tend to avoid simply sitting with a book, because we are pulled towards something more comfortable (again, Internet browsing as an example). If we can just sit with the book and a little discomfort, we can read more.
10. Empty email inbox. Another form of procrastination — you get some emails, maybe look at them, but put off dealing with them right now because it’s easier not to.
11. Debt. This is a series of things we have to deal with that are uncomfortable — listing out our debts and bills, making a simple budget, doing things that are free instead of shopping, etc. But I got out of debt by finally facing all of these things, and it was wonderful.
12. New adventures. Many people stay with places they’re comfortable with, which means missing out on new experiences that might be a little uncomfortable. Even when they travel, many people stick with the tourist sights and food that they’re used to, rather than finding strange but more authentic experiences in a new land. We avoid meeting new people, speaking on stage, letting go of what we know, being open to new things … to avoid discomfort.
    

And that’s just the start. Within each of these areas there’s many things you can work on over the coming years now that you’re not afraid of discomfort, and there are many other areas of exploration now open to you.

Discomfort can be the joyful key that opens up everything for you.

‘Discomfort is very much part of my master plan.’ ~Jonathan Lethem

SOURCE 

11:21:00 - By Vincent 0