When Actions are Louder than Wordd

Louder Than Words by Joe Navarro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ever hear the expression “ actions speak louder than words”? Our actions in this instance is body language. Knowing how to read and interpret body language is a key tool to success. Body language though is a double edged sword. You also have to convey the right message.

Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent. He had to use body language in order to stay alive and succeed in his career. In effect you might say he had to be a bit of a psychologist. Reading this book will teach you a good number of things. First off when caught in;a fearful situation we have three options, fight , flight or freeze. In the office these would be situations that cause discomfort. The author uses a comfort/ discomfort paradigm in assessing body language. Such signs of discomfort would be squinting, rapid blinking, hyperventilating and nervous hand gestures. When questioning his suspects, Joe would let them get comfortable. After all a comfortable suspect is a cooperative suspect. Getting them comfortable allows you to set up a baseline and observe which behaviors denote what is comfortable for the individual you are dealing and also what denotes discomfort.

When dealing with clients it is important that they feel comfortable working with you. Comfort equals safety and stability. This comfort would mean falling into step with your client which would entail mirroring back vocabulary that the client uses. For example if they describe their automobile you follow up using automobile.

The emotional system will always trump our use of logic. When clients get angry then the best thing to do is let them ventilate. Let the ventilate to someone in charge so they know their complaints are being heard. Later the offending employee should write a letter of apology. This also gets rid of a lot of anger.

Little things can spell the difference between success and failure. How you seat people at a meeting can prove to be very conducive for productive communication or communication failures. Usually you want to have people seated at 45 degrees to one another. Office set up is valuable as well. Have a couch that people can sit and be comfortable with, cold drinks is a good idea as well.

Our body language and what we do sends a message. If you are meeting with someone important you may want to lean in and show interest . Playing with devices shows you don’t care. Image is almost everything.

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