The Definitive Book of Body Language - Barbara Pease [64]
The Solution
When you go for an interview, shake hands and then give the interviewer a two- to three-second frame of uninterrupted time for them to complete the process of looking you over. Look down to open your briefcase or folder, or to arrange any papers you might need, turn to hang up your coat, or move your chair in closer, and then look up. In filming sales interviews, we found that not only did the interviews feel better for the salespeople who used this strategy, it added up to a better outcome in sales results.
What Channel Are You Tuned To?
A person's eye movements can reveal what their mind is focusing on by telling you whether they are remembering something they have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched. This technique is a development of American psychologists Grinder and Bandler and is known as Neurolinguistic Programming, or NLP.
In simple terms, if a person is remembering something that they saw, their eyes will move upward. If they are recalling something they heard, they look to the side and tilt their head as if listening. If they are recalling a feeling or emotion, they'll look down and to the right. When a person is mentally talking to themselves, they look down and to the left.
A. Recalling a picture
B. Recalling a sound
C. Recalling a feeling
D. Talking to oneself
The difficulty is that these eye movements can occur in a fraction of a second and come in clusters, making it harder to read “live.” A videotape replay, however, can let you see discrepancies between what a person says and what they really think.
Thirty-five percent of people prefer the visual information channel and will use phrases such as “I see what you mean,” “Can you look into that?” “That's perfectly clear,” or “Can you show me that?” and you will get their attention by showing them photos, charts, and graphs and asking if they “Get the picture.”
Twenty-five percent prefer the auditory channel and use words such as “That rings a bell,” “I hear you,” “That doesn't sound right,” and that they want to be “in tune” with you. The other 40 percent prefer the feelings channel and will say “Let's kick that idea around,” “Our department needs a shot in the arm,” “I can't quite grasp what you're saying.” They love to test drive things and be involved in a demonstration so that they can “grasp the idea.”
NLP is a remarkable discovery and a powerful communications tool that should be addressed as a separate subject. We suggest you follow up by reading the work by Grinder and Bandler mentioned in the reference section at the back of this book.
How to Hold Eye Contact with an Audience
As professional conference speakers, we developed a technique for keeping an audience's attention and letting them feel involved. In groups of up to fifty people it's possible to meet the gaze of each individual. In larger groups you usually stand farther back, so a different approach is needed. By pegging a real or imaginary point or person at each corner of the group and one in the center, when you stand at a distance of ten yards from the front row, approximately twenty people in a group of up to fifty will feel you are looking at them individually as you speak and so you can create an intimate bond with most of your audience.
How to Present Visual Information
When you are giving a visual presentation using books, charts, graphs, or a laptop it's important to know how to control where the other person is looking. Research shows that of the information relayed to the brain in visual presentations, 83 percent comes via the eyes, 11 percent via the ears, and 6 percent through the other senses.
Impact on the brain of information from the
senses during a visual presentation
The Wharton study in the United States found that the retention of verbal presentations was only 10 percent. This means