{"id":875,"date":"2019-02-12T11:12:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T11:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.twentytwo.digital\/ukbodytalk\/the-truth-about-non-verbal-communication\/"},"modified":"2025-07-14T18:43:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T17:43:21","slug":"the-truth-about-non-verbal-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.twentytwo.digital\/ukbodytalk\/resources\/blogs\/the-truth-about-non-verbal-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truth About Non-Verbal Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>The Truth About Non-Verbal Communication<\/h2>\n<section class=\"section section--light\">\n<article class=\"article article--slim\">\n<div class=\"article__main\">\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-880\" src=\"https:\/\/dev.twentytwo.digital\/ukbodytalk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Man_and_women-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"206\" \/><br \/>\nSome people still quote the statistic that says 93% of communication is nonverbal.<\/h2>\n<p>This number is pulled from a\u00a0<span style=\"color: #800080\"><a class=\"au cf mb mc md me\" style=\"color: #800080\" href=\"https:\/\/ubiquity.acm.org\/article.cfm?id=2043156\">1967 study by Albert Mehrabian and it\u2019s widely misunderstood<\/a><\/span>. I\u2019ve seen this data used as evidence that you need to hire an image consultant, or even a website design company, because they claim they can help you communicate non-verbally.<\/p>\n<p>What the data actually refers to is an experiment in which people were asked a series of questions. They were only allowed to respond by using the word\u2019 \u201cmaybe\u201d. The participants were asked afterwards what factors helped them to understand the person\u2019s true feeling \u2014 body language, voice tone or words. Given the restriction on the person\u2019s words, there was of course a huge lean towards non-verbal communication to understand how the person felt.<\/p>\n<p>So what can we learn from this study? It\u2019s important to remember that when you are communicating facts words are very useful. Imagine explaining your address by doing charades. Not so easy is it? In this situation you are not able to communicate 93% of the information non-verbally.<\/p>\n<h2>There are two places where the non-verbal side becomes more important than words:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Communication of emotion<\/li>\n<li>When your words and non-verbal behaviour appear in conflict, we trust the body language and tone more than the words<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span class=\"ba\">FOR EXAMPLE: TONE.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>When a word and the tone it\u2019s said with don\u2019t match, then we listen to the tone more.<\/p>\n<p>Mehrabian discussed this on BBC Radio in 2010 when he explained some of the misunderstandings in his famous study.<\/p>\n<p>Essentially the study showed that if you hear a person saying a neutral word like \u201cmaybe,\u201d you\u2019ll listen for a differing tone to determine what the person is really saying. If they say it with a positive tone, you think they may actually mean \u201cyes.\u201d Same if they say it with a negative tone.<\/p>\n<p>Children know this instinctively. If their parents says, \u201cmaybe later,\u201d the children will judge the voice tone to understand if the parent is really saying \u201cno\u201d, or saying, \u201cask again later.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ba\">AND WHILE NONVERBAL TONE IS IMPORTANT FOR COMMUNICATING EXPRESSION, IT CAN\u2019T ACTUALLY CONVEY KNOWLEDGE.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>For example, if someone\u2019s speaking a foreign language that you don\u2019t also speak, you can often at least gain a sense of how they feel, even if you can\u2019t understand the complex ideas they\u2019re expressing.<\/p>\n<p>I learned this the hard way while living with monks in 1995.<\/p>\n<p>They all spoke several languages \u2014 Tibetan, Nepali, Hindi \u2014 but not English, which was the only<em>\u00a0<\/em>language I knew. Thankfully they could read my body language. So if I was trying to teach them the word, \u201cexcited,\u201d I had to express that physically. If I didn\u2019t look excited when I said it, they wouldn\u2019t know what the word meant \u2014 I could be saying \u201cpineapple\u201d or \u201cTuesday.\u201d By using my body language, my tone of voice,\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>my words, they were able to easily understand it.<\/p>\n<h2>However, this didn\u2019t work for all concepts.<\/h2>\n<p>Trying to teach them how to tell the time, for example, was a total failure. How do you communicate \u201cIt\u2019s 3:00\u201d with your body language? You can\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>When you have feelings to express you can do it nonverbally. When you need to communicate facts, that\u2019s where words excel. But it\u2019s the combination of the two that gives your conversation full meaning.<\/p>\n<p>What this means is important conversations need to happen face-to-face. If you\u2019ve got a really important issue that you\u2019re dealing with at work, there is no point in sending an email to try and resolve it. Your tone or emotion might not get conveyed \u2014 or worse, misconstrued.<\/p>\n<p>Think of it this way: peace talks are never resolved through Twitter or email.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ba\">THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT TO REMEMBER IS CONGRUENCY.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Many people are hampered by a professional \u201cpoker face.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No matter what they say or how they say it, their face and voice don\u2019t match the message, which can lead to confusion or inaction. The true meaning can get lost if all of your signals don\u2019t match.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve seen this before, where someone is speaking in a flat tone and they say, \u201cI have good news to share today,\u201d without sounding or looking like they mean it at all. The audience feels lost because there\u2019s no sense of any feeling or expression from the person speaking.<\/p>\n<p>You must remember that you will never go to a meeting for the rest of your career to give people information. You can do that by email. You are only ever in the room to deliver the message in a more human way, engaging the emotions of the people present and moving them more effectively than an email can.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about how we can help you please\u00a0<span style=\"color: #800080\"><a style=\"color: #800080\" href=\"https:\/\/dev.twentytwo.digital\/ukbodytalk\/contact-us\/\"><b>contact our team<\/b><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/section>\n<section class=\"section section--brand section--overlap\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<div class=\"grid grid--4-columns\">\n<div class=\"card__image\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people still quote the statistic that says 93% of communication is nonverbal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - 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