The silent language, the phenomenon of body language has evolved within us from the time we were babies when we could not speak and use words to communicate. Our bodies were used to provide some form of understanding through pointing, shrugging, shaking our head, nodding, screwing our face up, smiling, and an untold number of individual gestures that when we used them at the correct time provided us with what we needed.

These gestures can be observed across all cultures and are so ingrained within us it is almost impossible to remove them from our natural communication.

As we have matured we have sometimes deliberately suppressed this body language, perhaps out of embarrassment or desire to break from our cultural norm, in some circumstances we have reduced these observable movements to conceal our true feelings.

So understanding the importance of body language to communication it is easy to observe why emails and text messages can be so easily misinterpreted from what the senders’ intentions were.

To provide a clearer understanding of what we are saying we can add our gestures, the language of the body if you will that can be interpreted as meaning a certain thing regardless of the words we are hearing.

If someone is frowning at us when they speak we automatically interpret that they are being serious or delivering a message from an angry perspective. It is true that they may also be frowning because they are in some form of discomfort and when the words align with the body language we can gain a stronger grasp of what the message is about.

How important is this body language you may ask? Well, the next time you have been spoken to. Wait for 5 minutes until after your conversation has concluded then write down the text of what was said.

It is likely that you will not recall very much of what actually was said, but if we asked what do you think they meant or were trying to convey there is a strong likelihood that you would have a connection to their intent because of the body language and tone of voice. At the very least we could anticipate that they were happy, sad, angry, agitated, relaxed, and so forth.

In general conversation, most people will be exuding body language that reflects their intentions, particularly when there is no advantage to be gained by acting differently.

If someone is attempting to be deceitful with their body language there is a strong possibility that we will not be able to detect it, they have probably been practising it for a lifetime.

So we are probably best served by believing what we are seeing with body language and marrying that up with what we are hearing and the ‘inflection’ in the speaker’s voice……. more information on voice inflection is available in our Communications Pro learning sessions.

Tip: Observing what someone does over time is the ultimate indicator of their intentions.

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