Want to play a little game to test your nonverbal communication skills? Use just your eyes to “say” the following things.
I love you.
I’m angry.
I’m so confused.
Can you believe him?
I’m disappointed.
I’m exhausted.
Were you surprised at how easily you could communicate each of those messages with just your eyes? You shouldn’t be. You are a master at nonverbal communication because you use it every single day of your life.
It has been said that more than 50% of the meaning we produce doesn’t come from our words, but from other communication channels like gestures and facial expressions. And yet we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about nonverbal communication because, well, we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. What I mean is, nonverbal communication comes so naturally to most of us that it disappears into the background. For today, though, we are going to spend some time thinking about what nonverbal communication is and how it differs from verbal communication. It’s time to bring this “unspoken” language to the foreground.
What is nonverbal communication?
Nonverbal communication is just that: anything that we use to communicate outside of our voice. Some people put things like rate and volume into this category, but I like to distinguish the two forms this way. Verbal communication is anything related to the voice (words, pitch, tone, etc.). Nonverbal communication is anything not related to the voice. We’ll walk through the most prevalent forms below.
1. Posture
The next time you go out to a restaurant, see what you can guess about the people sitting at tables around you just by looking at their body language. You’ll find that it can tell you quite a bit about their mood, their relationship status, and so on. The way in which we sit or stand says something about us to others. The next time you take the stage to present or sit across the table from a friend, think about what your posture is communicating.
2. Movement
Our eyes are naturally drawn to movement, so we can leverage this when we communicate. As a college professor, I will often casually move towards a student who seems distracted or is talking to a friend. All the while, I’ll keep lecturing and won’t reference the person at all. Just the movement of my body sends and message. Consider using your body to capture or regain your listener’s attention.
3. Gestures
Gestures are the movements we make with our hands and arms when we talk. Do they matter? Most definitely! Science of People conducted some research that showed just how much they matter. They separated out the top and bottom TED Talks of all time and ranked them according to their view count. They found that “the least popular TED talkers used an average of 272 hand gestures during the 18-minute talk.” On the other hand (pun fully intended), “the most popular TED talkers used an average of 465 gestures.” Which means gestures seem to be particularly effective in helping us to get our messages across.
4. Eye Contact
Eye contact is an extremely powerful communication tool. Just think about how skillfully you were able to use it to communicate many things in the beginning of this blog. Author of Eye to Eye: How People Interact, Dr. Peter Marsh says, “How we look at other people, meet their gaze and look away can make all the difference between an effective encounter and one that leads to embarrassment or even rejection.” When thinking about how you communicate with your eyes, break it down into two parts. First, consider the message you send by deciding whether you make eye contact with someone or not. For example, if you are checking out at a store and you never meet the gaze of the cashier, what message does that send? Second, consider how you look at the person. What message are you sending while you look at them?
5. Facial Expression
In her article in The New York Times Magazine, Malia Wollan says, “ A face is capable of more than sneers and smiles; expressions can be a form of advanced linguistics.” I have a friend whose face always tells me what she’s thinking. She simply can’t hide her thoughts because her face gives her away every time. While this can be funny in a friendship, the same thing might be harmful if you are in a business meeting or presentation. We all need to be aware of exactly what our faces are communicating to those around us. But that may be tougher than we think, as we’ll talk about below.
6. Appearance
Whether or not it should, your appearance is communicating to those around you. We all know that dressing more professionally for a job interview doesn’t increase your education or experience. But it does communicate that you are serious about the job and that you are concerned about how you are perceived. And that matters to a potential employer. Most of us tend to think carefully about how we look when we go on an interview or on a first date. But we need to remember that our appearance is always part of our nonverbal communication.
What makes nonverbal communication different?
Now that we know some of the main components of nonverbal communication, we need to know what makes it different from verbal communication.
1. It’s continuous.
We can’t turn off our nonverbal communication. It is always “running in the background.” Even if you have a blank stare on your face, others can draw meaning from it. Different people may believe you are bored, or rude, or deep in thought—all while you aren’t purposefully trying to send any of those messages.
2. It’s simultaneous.
It involves multiple channels at once to deliver a message. When you tell someone you love them, many things work together to express your message. You may take a step toward them (movement), wrap your arms around them (gesture), and smile (facial expression). You don’t divide different parts of the message to particular channels. Without even thinking about it, you pull together different types of nonverbal communication to send a message.
3. It’s spontaneous.
You’ve probably heard of the cliché, “bite your tongue.” It refers to the control we have, or at least try to have, over the words we speak. With effort, we can usually control our verbal communication. But that same task is not so simple when it comes to nonverbal communication. Even when we try to manage our facial expressions, something called “micro expressions” often give us away. Paul Ekman is one of the foremost researchers on this facial phenomena and he says they “occur in everyone, often without their knowledge.”
4. It’s revealing.
Because we are often unable to edit our nonverbal reactions, they may reveal more about us than our more carefully chosen words. I’m sure you’ve seen this play out before. You say something to a friend or family member and can tell by their facial expression that you’ve upset them. You ask, “did I upset you?” They respond, “I’m fine.” But you know they aren’t. Another way to think about this point is that nonverbal communication is always louder than verbal communication. And if they are in competition, especially if they contradict each other, your audience will always “hear” or believe your nonverbal communication above or before your verbal communication.
5. It’s impressionistic.
We can usually control how a listener will perceive our message because of the words we choose to use and the tone with which we say them. When it comes to nonverbal communication, though, it’s much more open to interpretation. In their article “Face and Body in Motion,” Riggio and Riggio say, “verbal communication uses a shared code (i.e., language), while nonverbal communication is much more impressionistic, with the receiver of nonverbal communication giving a unique interpretation to what the nonverbal cues mean.”
Nonverbal communication is the language we all speak that we don’t talk much about. But we are sending thousands and thousands of messages each day. With our facial expressions. With our posture. With our hands.
All of us seeking to become more effective communicators need to spend more time thinking about the power and prevalence of these communication channels.
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