51. How to avoid being annoying
Data point of the week
You may have heard the statistic tossed around that 90% of communication is nonverbal—but that’s a misrepresentation.
The 90% figure came from body language researcher Albert Mehrabian back in the ‘60s. He analyzed face-to-face conversation and determined that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only.
It’s hard to pin an exact percentage on the importance of nonverbal vs. verbal communication, but eye contact, posture, facial expression, and gestures play a big role in conveying someone’s state of mind—and it’s important to be able to read those cues.
Reflection
We’ve probably all had the experience of someone NOT picking up on our body language … they’re standing too close and while we’re edging away, or rambling on while we’re trying to wrap things up.
I was recently talking with a friend about how we learn these important—but often subtle—social cues. I don’t remember ever being explicitly taught how to read body language or notice what another person might be feeling. It seems like something that’s absorbed by osmosis (or not) at a very young age.
Take this adorable twin toddler video—they seem to be attuned and responsive to one another and are actively communicating without saying a word!
Yet, like all social intelligence skills, reading nonverbal cues can be deliberately practiced and developed.
Connection Skill & Action Step: Pay attention to nonverbal communication
Consciously paying attention to nonverbal communication is a great way to increase your social intelligence skills. Try this:
Block off a few times on your calendar when you know you’ll be interacting with someone else
Make a point to observe the other person’s facial expressions and body language
Hypothesize what they’re feeling and communicating
If you’re not sure, and you have a comfortable relationship with them, you can check to see if you’re on track, such as “I noticed _____, are you _____?”
Make small adjustments to your own verbal and nonverbal communication to get in sync with them.
If you’re interested in assessing your ability to gauge emotions from facial expressions, check out the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, and/or this body language test. They each take about 10 minutes and are scientifically validated. However, they both feature white people almost exclusively. And while they give an overall score, they don’t share which answers were wrong, so it’s difficult to learn from mistakes.
If you’re aware of a better measurement tool (or want to make one😏) please let me know.
Questions (Please share your responses in the comments):
Can you think of a time when you were trying to communicate something non-verbally, and the other person wasn’t picking up your cues?
How good are you at reading other people’s body language?
How is the cat feeling in this interaction? How about the dog?