Monday, April 11, 2011

Whether You're Leading a Corporation or Managing a High-Performance Work Team, Body Language Is Essential to Your Success

While most leaders are aware of the importance of what they say to employees, customers, clients and business partners, too few understand the powerful effect of what they don't say. From The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help – or Hurt – How You Lead (Jossey-Bass, April 2011):

• First impressions are crucial. Once someone labels you as "likeable" or "un-likeable," "powerful" or "submissive," everything else you do will be viewed through that filter. You already know that. But did you know that everyone you meet makes those crucial decisions about you – evaluating an array of nonverbal cues – within the first seven seconds?

• Two people can send over eight hundred different nonverbal signals in a thirty-minute negotiation. So if you focus on the verbal exchange alone and ignore the nonverbal element, you stand a high chance of coming away from a negotiation wondering why in the world your brilliantly constructed bargaining plan didn't work the way it was supposed to.

• Neuroscientists use electroencephalograph (EEG) machines to measure "event related potentials" – brain waves that form peaks and valleys. One of these valleys, dubbed N400, occurs when people are shown gestures that contradict what's spoken. (This is the same brain wave dip that happens when listening to nonsensical language.) So, in a very real way, when your words and your body language are out of alignment, you don't make sense.

"This brilliant book finally unravels a pivotal aspect of leadership." -- Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California

About the author:

Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., is an executive coach, management consultant and keynote speaker for corporations, associations and government agencies, and her clients include over 100 organizations in 24 countries. Through her firm Kinsey Consulting Services, she works with executives and senior managers, coaching them on leadership communication and the hidden impact of body language. Carol is a faculty member for the Institute of Management Studies and has served as adjunct faculty at John F. Kennedy University in the International MBA program, at the University of California in the Executive Education Department, and for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States at their Institutes for Organization Management. The Silent Language of Leaders is Carol's eleventh book, and she is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and the "On Leadership" column for The Washington Post. When she is not traveling the world as a speaker and consultant, Carol lives in Berkeley, California.