Non-Verbal Life

Buzz Submitted by :  Juan Antonio Narváez

(See also comment #1 by  Pedro Cárdenas Gómez below)

Buzz : ¿Qué peso tiene la comunicación no verbal?

A delightful buzz in Spanish that is packed with first class communication content

Even in Spanish, the title speaks to an English speaker but while we may guess that it is about non-verbal communication, we will not be able to guess at its content and that was what prompted me to look at the paradox wisdom of this buzz, because from the first paragraph, using American baseball vernacular, it kept hitting home runs.

The first thing I learned from it was something in Spanish that I did not even know in English - that there is a field of inquiry called Synergology.  It turns out this covers the science of micro-expressions but more importantly how to read body language that is highly predicative as non-verbal clues.   There are various videos online for this field but just as synergology was first formulated in Montreal, Quebec, so many of the videos on you-tube that describe it are in French.

My first thought was that this field is a great accompaniment to the mindset of personal branding and also the emergence of video's as a form of communication.  Most people who know me know that I see a lot of downsides to this mindset and when I came across Juan Antonio it made me think of exploring the culture of lying.  The proponents of personal branding for the masses lay it on thick that this mindset is about absolute authenticity, but that flies in the face of what I am discovering about the role of lying in human culture.  Here Pamela Meyer puts the record straight about that in her TEDtalk "How to Spot a Liar" and what it means to be a liespotter :

These are all good pointers in how to get people to accept our messages, but this is also manipulating what we learn about an audience to get our message delivered, it has nothing to do with the honesty of our message but the perception that is formed that allows our message to be delivered in a way that it is more likely to be received.  If we were truly aware of micro-expressions and understood the most subtle of body movements, why would be believe a message more because a trained speaker is giving with their open palms and not using gestures that are not statistically viable.  If honesty is something we treasure then how is it that society teaches us to adopt techniques to influence people, without them knowing that we are using techniques.  That reveals itself greatly in the secrets of influence that Robert Cialdini teaches, which are great techniques but why is it that we are more fascinated with techniques of social engineering than we are in investing ourselves in honest relationships?  We know why and that is because our culture practices deception.

What actually blew my mind is when Juan Antonio revealed some big myths about reciting the 55-38-7 rule that says 55% of communication in non-verbal.  When I discovered that this is an error that involves a major act of mis-quoting and he drew our attention to the Mehrabian's Communication Study - a study in communication conducted in 1967 by Mehrabian and Wiener. That this study has been misquoted for 50 years absolutely astounded me and that prompted to think about how many other myths about communication that get passed on by well-intended professional speakers, who simply have not done the homework that Juan Antonio has done and then revealed through his buzz. 

He also introduced me to the work of Nancy Etcoff, though when I went to see what I can immediately learn about her work, her focus was much more towards subjects that fascinate people, which is the entertaining part of work and then delivered in subjects like "happiness", so I will save that for a later date because of its pop appeal.  If it is not happiness that perks our interest, then it is sex, and if it is not that, it is how we can change how people see us.  Just the act of trying to change our people see us is not the same thing as "being ourselves" and evolving in our learning, it simply reveals our penchant for the deceptive is greater than our absolute intention about authenticity, transparency and freedom.  Instead of following up on Etcoff the next stop for me was about the human face - and her work is a part of that facial recognition.  So as I "face" upto what I learned from translating Jean Antonio's buzz - the answer is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH !!! and I have not even begun studying the whole art of micro-expression and that word I now know - synergology.

"