Keeping the Body in Mind

Like many people I’ve often tried to puzzle out body language. When I was 19 and heading off to university this meant buying a book on body language. Unfortunately, “How to Talk to Anyone” was not as useful as I had hoped and led to some rather awkward questions when it was discovered peeking out from under my pillow by my newly acquired friends.

So, I didn't know quite what to expect from On Purpose's training session with Noggin.  Thankfully, Noggin didn’t approach body language in the prescriptive way that I’ve encountered it in the past.  Instead of telling us to mirror every itch and hair toss, our trainers were more interested in making us mindful of the ways in which our own body language could be perceived by others and how this could potentially by enhanced by simple observations.

In one exercise we were able to observe free-flowing conversations between our colleagues become stilted and staccato when one of the people involved started to look away rather than look at their partner’s face.

We also found that while half of us were rather disconcerted by our partner leaning forward in their chair during a conversation because we perceived it as aggressive, the other half were spurred on by what they perceived as a display of eager interest. A clear indication of the potential for miscommunication before one even opens their mouth.

As Susie Braun has already mentioned, On Purpose training sessions do tend to stick and re-surface at almost any time. In a roomful of people I’ve found myself beginning to pick up wandering gazes and aligned stances.   Its just another way in which On Purpose is helping me to understand what my eyes are already seeing .