The Definitive Book of Body Language<\/a> <\/em>by Barbara Pease and Allan Pease give you useful tools to interpret the \u201cCritical Evaluation Signal\u201d and many more. Handshakes, smiles and laughter, arm signals, and hand gestures all give you information about the social interactions going on around you. Careful, though\u2014there are a lot of cultural differences to contend with. A thumbs-up means very different things in Greece, Japan, and Italy. Actually, unless you\u2019re a magician or a con man, what\u2019s most valuable about \u201cdictionaries\u201d like this is that they can heighten your awareness that complex and significant gestural signals do exist, and make you more inclined to pay attention\u2014but without jumping to conclusions.<\/p>\nThe information about others available through their body language is just one more reason why it\u2019s so important to pay curious attention to your experience. Unless otherwise instructed, your brain will happily disregard everything except its own non-stop activity. Connections with others won\u2019t happen until you stop, look around, and see what kinds of signals you are getting from the people around you.<\/p>\n
Try It:<\/em> At your next team meeting, really tune into the body language you are seeing in other team members. What might crossed arms, or hands on chins, or smiles or laughter tell you about what might be going on with others? By itself, this noticing doesn\u2019t give you quite enough information to effectively engage with others on your team, but it is a good first step.<\/p>\nPhoto:\u00a0https:\/\/pxhere.com\/en\/photo\/700902<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suppose you\u2019re just starting a new job and you\u2019re sitting in a conference room with your boss and your new team on the first day. You\u2019re excited about the new work and want to make a good impression. Then you notice it: someone across the table is giving you the \u201cCritical Evaluation signal\u201d: thumb under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-connectedness","category-tips-for-your-at-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Suppose you\u2019re just starting a new job and you\u2019re sitting in a conference room with your boss and your new team on the first day. You\u2019re excited about the new work and want to make a good impression. Then you notice it: someone across the table is giving you the \u201cCritical Evaluation signal\u201d: thumb under chin, index finger pointing up the cheek, with head and chin down. Hmm, it looks like this person may need to be won over. There\u2019s still a lot of missing information to be filled in, but that index finger is pointing out something that needs to be investigated.<\/p>\n