Business Leads UK

We’ve long known that it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it and now scientists have proved it.  The social signals people send out are more important in determining who will succeed, than the content of their message. 

The more successful people are more energetic in building relationships.  They do more  - more listening and they talk more; they spend more face-to-face time with others.  They pick up cues from others, draw people out and get them to be more participative.  It’s not just what they exude, it’s also what they elicit.  Charisma shows in their positive attitude, which is now proven to be infectious. 

Previous studies have shown that we attribute positive, good-looking people with intelligence and success, and we can put that down to the hard-wiring of our brains – after all our species has communicated in groups long before we developed language.  So it stands to reason that the signals from non-verbal behaviours are deeply rooted and significant to our interpretation of a message.  This scientific research shows just how significant those gestures and signals are.

For example researchers were able to predict which candidates would win a business pitch, based only on their observation of the social signals they used at a party, without even reading or seeing the pitch they correctly forecast the winners.

This research shows how important face-to-face communication is and has interesting implications for the current trend to increasing digital contact.  In another experiment the research showed that face-to-face communication affects productivity, generating as much as 2.5 times more than additional access to information.  

This information is from a recent article in Harvard Business Review (HBR) featuring the research of Sandy Pentland of M.I.T Human Dynamics Lab. 

Amanda Bouch works with people to improve the impact they make in their communications, contact amanda@amandabouchconsulting.co.uk to discuss this further.

You probably know the quote from Henry Ford, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right!"  It's spot on!   As a coach, this is one of the first things I find out as this determines how we need to go about addressing the situation the individual is bringing. 

There's a lot of work that goes into changing limiting beliefs and that doesn't really work in a blog, but if you'd like to know more, please contact me on amanda@amandabouchconsulting.co.uk. 

For now, what I would like to offer you is a simple tool to help you ensure you have the right attitude for the situation you face.  It's a self-check tool to help you prepare for any meetings, etc when you want to be at your best. It brings together four elements:  Attention, State of mind, Goal and Intent and I call it GISA for short. 

1.  Attention:  have you noticed how, when you're attention is on something it fills up the whole space?  Eg. If you have aching feet, they seem to take over your whole being, if you're out in the sunshine and enjoying the rays, that's all there is.   Right, so you need to pay attention to the thing that will make a difference in the meeting/conversation.

2.  State of mind:  is influenced by what is your centre of attention.  Eg Aching feet = I'm tired,  sunshine = pleasure.  So you need to adopt the State of mind that will help you achieve your desired outcome and linked with where you put your attention.  

3. Goal:  For your interaction, have a goal in mind, an outcome you wish to achieve as a result of the interaction.

4. Intent:  This differs from goal in that you intend to make this happen in the moment, so it should be in your control.  

Let's build this for a scenario of a meeting with a difficult person, who you want to build an effective working relationship with.  You might decide:

Goal: I'd like to demonstrate that I'm trustworthy and start to build a positive relationship with this person and I'll judge that by agreeing another meeting to discuss this issue in more detail.

Intent:  I want to enjoy the conversation and leave on a high.  To do this I'll look for interest and humour in our dialogue.

State of mind:  a helpful State of mind is curiosity to try to understand this person's view of the world

Attention: I'll pay attention to the useful information they give me and the nature of the questions they ask