Body Language Trumps Spoken Content

Usain Bolt Celebrates a Victory

Usain Bolt's body language is unmistakable. We know what it means: VICTORY! Did you know that even blind people know what that body language means? According to Amy Cuddy, blind children who have never seen another person do the "victory pose" will assume the pose when they are triumphant in something!!! (Watch Amy's TED talk here: http://goo.gl/tJn7S3)

The point: Body language is hard-wired into us. People will always use your body language to figure out what you really think about something. AND your body language betrays your true feelings.

What "message" do students get from how we carry ourselves, from our body language, from our tone of voice? Do they perceive that we are tired or that we really don't think they want to learn? (I know most students would rather be having "free time" than sitting in your class, but how we react to that fact--our facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, ect--matters a lot!

Body language trumps spoken content every time. It's true.

Dr. Albert Merhabian from UCLA studied presentation effectiveness and found that the effectiveness of our communication depends a mere 7% on the words we use. 7%! How comfortable and confident our voice sounds adds 38% to the effectiveness of our communication. A whopping 55% of the message we convey hinges on nonverbal things like appearance, posture, gestures, movement, eye contact, and facial expression.

How we carry ourselves matters. A University of Minnesota study concluded that we are 43% more persuasive if we stand instead of sit.

Here's a bold concluding statement... :-) Focusing on "content" and "PowerPoints" is a waste of time IF teachers don't care about how they present themselves to their students. 

(In a future post, I'll talk about how to fine tune body language...)