Mr. Media Training

Yesterday, I reviewed Joe Navarro’s excellent book What Every BODY Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People.

Today, I’m going to highlight five things I learned about body language from his book. The excerpts I’ve selected will offer you some fascinating insights into what the eyes, shoulders, hands, thumbs, and legs communicate to others, often without our knowledge.

And thank you, Joe, for generously granting me permission to use these excerpts,

1. EYES 

“When we like something we see, our pupils dilate; when we don’t, they constrict. We have no conscious control over our pupils, and they respond both to external stimuli (for example, changes in light) and internal stimuli (such as thoughts) in fractions of a second.”

“When we become aroused, are surprised, or are suddenly confronted, our eyes open up—not only do they widen, but the pupils also quickly dilate to let in the maximum amount of available light, thus sending the maximum amount of visual information to the brain…Once we have a moment to process the information and if it is perceived negatively…in a fraction of a second the pupils will constrict.”

“Any decrease in the size of the eyes, whether through squinting or pupillary constriction, is a form of subconscious blocking behavior. And all blocking behaviors are indicative of concern, dislike, disagreement, or the perception of a potential threat.”

2. SHOULDERS

“We use shoulder shrugs to indicate lack of knowledge or doubt. Look for both shoulders to rise; when only one side rises, the message is dubious.”

“Partial shoulder shrugs indicate lack of commitment or insecurity.”

“If you see a person’s shoulders only partially rise or if only one shoulder rises, chance are the individual is not limbically committed to what he or she is saying and is probably being evasive or even deceptive.”

3. HANDS

“Hand steepling may well be the most powerful high-confidence tell. It involves touching the spread fingertips of both hands, in a gesture similar to “praying hands,” but the fingers are not interlocked and the palms may not be touching.”

“I see women steepling under the table or very low, undermining the confidence they genuinely possess. I hope that as they recognize the power of the steeple as an indicator of self-assurance, competence, and confidence—traits most individuals would want to be recognized as possessing—more women will embrace this gesture and display it above the table.”

4. THUMBS

“Often seen with high-status individuals, the thumb sticking out of the pocket is a high-confidence display.”

“When individuals carry their thumbs high, it is a sign that they think highly of themselves and/or are confident in their thoughts or present circumstances. Thumbs up is another example of a gravity-defying gesture, a type of nonverbal behavior normally associated with comfort and high confidence.”

“Feelings of low confidence can be evidenced when a person (usually a male) puts his hands in his pocket and lets the fingers hang out on the side…this signal says, ‘I am very unsure of myself.’”

5. LEGS

“Leg crossing is a particularly accurate barometer of how comfortable we feel around another person…We normally cross our legs when we feel comfortable. The sudden presence of someone we don’t like will cause us to uncross our legs.”

“When people sit side-by-side, the direction of their leg crosses becomes significant.”

“Here’s an interesting feature of leg crossing. We usually do it subconsciously in favor of the person we like the most.”

Joe Navarro’s What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People is available in softcover here and for the Kindle here. A recommended read.

You can’t turn on cable news these days without coming across some “body language expert.” 

No licensing agency verifies the claims of those self-professed experts, so it’s no surprise that many of them come across with the credibility of a roadside psychic. I regularly roll my eyes at cable news segments that feature these allegedly wise people who appear to make it up as they go along (but they’d be right to view my eye rolls as a sign of disdain).

Reading body language is notoriously difficult. Sure, some “tells” are more certain than others, but even rather obvious tells usually require other, complementary tells—known as clusters—in order to accurately assess their meaning.

That’s why I so thoroughly enjoyed Joe Navarro’s What Every BODY Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People. His book is filled with all of the necessary and responsible caveats, but is still an easy read full of fascinating tidbits. Navarro rests his conclusions on the most recent science—his book has a three-page bibliography—but he impressively avoids the pitfall of weighing down the book with dense prose.

Navarro, a 25-year FBI veteran, says the face is one of the least reliable indicators of what someone is truly thinking. He writes:

“Having conducted thousands of interviews for the FBI, I learned to concentrate on the suspect’s feet and legs first, moving upward in my observations until I read the face last. When it comes to honesty, truthfulness decreases as we move from the feet to the head.”

In part, that’s because people are taught to lie using their faces at an early age, he says, such as when children are told not to make a certain face when eating a distasteful meal or to pretend they’re happy to see an unpopular aunt.

Navarro’s book does a nice job of explaining the “three brains,” and why our “limbic legacy” is responsible for the freeze, flight, or fight instincts that manifest themselves—usually without our knowledge—in our nonverbal behavior.

In subsequent chapters, he details nonverbal behaviors from head to toe—or, more accurately, from toe to head. His book also includes almost five dozen short side “boxes,” many of which contain fascinating anecdotes from his career as an FBI agent.  

Since I believe every review should take note of a book’s flaws, I’ll briefly mention that in a few places, I felt that the author stated the obvious. For example, it probably didn’t require a full page to explain that attire communicates a message, and that a person in a dark alley wearing a suit will be perceived as less threatening than a person wearing baggy clothing. But that’s a small point. Every time I started feeling that the author was stating an obvious point, I’d flip the page and learn three new things.

I’m late to this party. Navarro’s book was published in 2008, but still is ranked among Amazon’s top 500 bestsellers. Despite my tardiness in writing this review, it’s as worth the read now as it ever was.

Joe Navarro’s What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People is available in softcover here and for the Kindle here.

Please tune in tomorrow for five fascinating things I learned about body language from this book.

Eye contact shouldn’t be that complicated, right?

For media interviews, it can be. If you look in the wrong place, you’ll look uneasy or nervous at best – and some people in the audience may take your lack of eye contact as evasiveness, defensiveness, or worse.

In this video, I’ll teach you where to look for the three most common types of television interviews: "on set" interviews, sound bite interviews, and straight-to-camera (or "remote") interviews.

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This is the final article in an eight-part series covering the most important elements of body language for public speaking. Click here to read the entire series.

During my very early days as a presentation coach, I worked with a school superintendent who was responsible for tens of thousands of students and teachers.

In person, he was a thoughtful, kind, and engaging man. But when he delivered his annual “State of the Schools” speech to teachers, he failed to compel his audience. We worked together just before one of his annual addresses to help him motivate and inspire his staff more effectively.

Days after working together, he delivered his speech to the teachers. Shortly afterwards, his senior aide called me. “He was amazing,” she said, “The best he’s ever been.” When I asked what made the difference, she said, “He took your advice and didn’t stand behind the lectern. He moved to the center of the stage, was much more himself, and looked like he was having a real conversation with the staff.”

That moment has stayed with me for years, because it taught me an important lesson. Out of the dozens of tips and techniques we had discussed during our session together, my advice about where to stand had the single greatest impact on his performance. That advice is now among the first things I share with our trainees. 

It goes (almost) without saying that I have great antipathy toward lecterns. Speakers who hide behind lecterns separate themselves from their audiences and obscure parts of their body language that would otherwise help their audiences connect with them more easily.

If you’re speaking at a conference that typically sets up lecterns for their speakers, ask the conference planner in advance to have a lavaliere microphone available for you.

And don’t worry: Speaking without a lectern doesn’t mean that you have to speak without notes. Just place your notes on a small table or stool positioned slightly off-center to one side of the stage. If that option isn’t available to you, you may still be able to turn the microphone to the outside of the lectern and stand next to it instead of behind it. And for smaller groups (25 or fewer), you may be able to do away with amplification altogether.

Click here to read the entire series, which covers energy, tone, eye contact, gestures, posture, where to stand, how to interact with PowerPoint, and voice.

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This is the seventh article in an eight-part series covering the most important elements of body language for public speaking. Click here to read the entire series.

Years ago, I worked a trainee who presented her practice speech in the usual way, with her PowerPoint presentation projected onto a screen behind her.

What was unusual was the way she interacted with her slides. She must have snapped her neck from the audience to the screen once per second. I’ve never seen anything like it. Her frequent neck snaps reminded me of a chicken.

To get her to break the habit, I blacked out the screen and asked her to present with nothing behind her. The result was stunning: She suddenly appeared confident and, for the first time, connected with her audience. It was like watching an entirely different person.

Although her case was extreme, the underlying problem isn’t.

When people present with a screen behind them, they often present with their bodies angled halfway in between the screen and the audience. That’s because of something I call “PowerPoint foot.” Subconsciously, we position our feet in the direction we want to go. If we know we want to look at the screen, we’re going to position our feet at least partially away from the audience, in the direction of the screen.

When presenting a PowerPoint slide, your feet should almost always face the audience. When you present a new slide, you might walk toward the screen to point to something specific for a moment or two – but aim for squaring your shoulders off with the audience at least 98 percent of the time.

When presenting material on the screen, stand to the right of the screen (the audience’s left). Since people read from left to right, you will allow the audience to use their natural eye movements when moving from you, across the screen, and back to you.

Click here to read the entire series, which covers energy, tone, eye contact, gestures, posture, where to stand, how to interact with PowerPoint, and voice.

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This is the sixth article in an eight-part series covering the most important elements of body language for public speaking. Click here to read the entire series.

Most people don’t have a monotone vocal delivery. That’s the good news. The bad news is that most communicators use only a small portion of their available vocal range.

Our voices are incredible tools, capable of infusing great meaning into individual words and phrases. Simply by altering our volume, pitch, pace, and tone, we can better emphasize key points and help retain our audience’s attention.

For example, imagine you’re listening to a presenter. The woman delivering the speech is speaking at a moderate volume and average pace, but suddenly slows down and almost whispers, “And right then, I knew I was in trouble.” By changing her vocal pattern, she signaled to the audience that something important was coming.

Here are five things to keep in mind regarding vocal delivery:

1. 1. Volume: Speaking loudly adds energy and excitement to your delivery, while speaking softly increases intimacy and drama.
2. 2. Pace: Most people speak between 150-160 words per minute, but many people speak more quickly when they get nervous. Speaking quickly can be useful if you’re trying to add excitement to a specific point, but be careful not to rush through your entire presentation. Speak a little slower than usual when discussing more complicated information, emphasizing a key point, or building drama.
3. 3. Pitch: When you ask a question, your pitch usually goes up at the end of the sentence; when you give a command, your pitch typically goes down. People tend to speak with a higher pitch when they’re nervous or excited and with a lower pitch when they feel more relaxed and controlled. Both can be effective, but be careful to avoid vocal “upticks,” which occur when your pitch gets higher at the end of every sentence.
4. 4. Tone: Your tone adds emotion to words. For example, try saying “Sure, I love you” aloud in three different ways: Sincerely, sarcastically, or sadly. Those versions each convey something different, and good speakers align their words with the tone they wish to convey.
5. 5. Silences: Well-timed pauses can add drama to your vocal delivery or allow audiences an extra moment to consider your message. You can’t be silent for long periods of time, but even a short two- or three-second pause can be incredibly effective immediately before or after making a key point. Short pauses, the verbal equivalent of “white space,” allow the audience to process your ideas on their terms, meaning you’ve effectively transferred information from speaker to audience.

Click here to read the entire series, which covers energy, tone, eye contact, gestures, posture, where to stand, how to interact with PowerPoint, and voice.

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This is the fifth article in an eight-part series covering the most important elements of body language for public speaking. Click here to read the entire series.

In your role as a public speaker, everything about your physical presence should convey the sense that you feel comfortable being in control of the room. Your posture contributes mightily to that impression.

Stand upright and avoid slouching. Square your shoulders with the audience – face them directly instead of tilting your body at a slight angle away from them (unless you’re soliciting audience feedback, in which case turning your body at a slight angle can help encourage audience participation).

When you’re not actively gesturing, you can rest your hands in one of two places:

1. 1. The first option is to rest your hands at your side. It feels strange, but it looks fine to the audience.
2. 2. The second option, my preference, is to nest one hand within the other, keeping both at navel-level when not gesturing. Nesting is a nice option, since it allows you to gesture freely when making an important point.

Some speakers prefer to “steeple” their hands, which is when all five fingertips on one hand touch the five fingertips on the opposite hand. Because this can look pretentious, I don’t typically recommend it, but some speakers are able to get away with it just fine.

If you speak at a lectern (and hopefully, you won’t), rest your hands comfortably on top of the lectern. Avoid the lectern “death grip,” in which your hands grip the sides of the lectern and make you look like you’re holding onto the furniture for dear life. Another option is to avoid making physical contact with the lectern altogether by moving back a couple of inches and keeping your hands nested at navel-level throughout your talk.

Click here to read the entire series, which covers energy, tone, eye contact, gestures, posture, where to stand, how to interact with PowerPoint, and voice.

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This is the fourth article in an eight-part series covering the most important elements of body language for public speaking. Click here to read the entire series.

Many people tell me that they were instructed at some point in their early lives never to gesture when they speak. A few were even taught – often by grade school teachers – that gesturing while speaking is downright rude.

That’s terrible guidance.

According to body language experts Allan & Barbara Pease, “Using hand gestures grabs attention, increases the impact of communication, and helps individuals retain more of the information they are hearing.”

In other words, gesturing doesn’t only help you look more natural, but actually enhances the impact of your words.

We see that regularly in our presentation training sessions. When we encourage trainees to incorporate gestures into their delivery, their words get better. The physical act of gesturing helps them form clearer thoughts and speak in tighter sentences.

To gesture effectively, keep your hands “unlocked” at all times – no clasped hands, hands behind your back, hands in pockets, or arms crossed in front of you. Those closed positions are typically perceived as arrogance or defensiveness, and they lower the audience’s ability to absorb and retain your information.

If you’re having a tough time gesturing naturally during a speech, try speaking about 10 – 15 percent louder than usual (as you read in the energy section, that will also help boost your energy level). As parents know all too well, it’s impossible to yell at your children while your hands and arms are frozen – an increase in volume helps to reanimate motionless hands.

The larger your audience, the larger your gestures should be. If you’re speaking to a crowd of 500 people, you can’t rely upon subtle facial expressions to make your points, since no one will see them (except for the people seated in the front rows). Therefore, you’ll need to make your key points in more obvious ways, such as using big, sweeping gestures. For smaller crowds, the opposite is true. Use smaller gestures, and feel free to use more subtle expressions (e.g. an ironically raised eyebrow) or movements.

The most effective gestures are purposeful and controlled. Instead of keeping your hands in constant motion, hold your gestures for a second or two.

Keep in mind that gesturing is different than fidgeting. One thing that will help you avoid unhelpful fidgeting is to avoid holding papers, PowerPoint remote controls, pens, or anything else while you talk. (If you need to use a PowerPoint remote, place it on a table in between slides so you’re not holding it throughout your entire talk.)

By removing objects from your hands, you’ll not only remove a potential audience distraction, but will be perceived as a more open (and confident) speaker.

Click here to read the entire series, which covers energy, tone, eye contact, gestures, posture, where to stand, how to interact with PowerPoint, and voice.

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